A weekend of rest and play

As I write this on the morning of Saturday, I wish to inform my readers that this was my off-call week, and so I am rested and free from any kind of tensions. My colleague is on-call, but also pretty much rested as there is a lull in the flow of patients over the weekend. Remember, the next week culminates in Hajj. Hence, people of Al Muwayh have moved out of the village and are currently either in Makkah to perform Hajj, or have gone to their relatives' places in other parts of the Kingdom. 

On Thursday night as well as yesterday night, I played games of tennis with Dr. Essam, our medical specialist, in a make-shift tennis court just aside the garden. For making a net, we used a light pole and a rubbish can to anchor a clothesline; we covered the line with a large bed-sheet and used clothes-pegs to keep the sheet from flying away. There are no focus lamps, so we usually play wherever the illumination is better. 

The entire Egyptian community comes to the garden on all weekends, and I have, by now, made friends with most of their children. I guess that is what makes me return to the garden each weekend. On Thursday night, Dr. Ahmed Ouf's daughter Rahmaa celebrated her birthday, and I got sweets and cake from there. Yesterday night, it was no one's birthday, but we still got some food from the ladies' enclave ... the place in the dark where the wives of the Egyptian doctors chat in a circle. The tennis was quite good, and I was a bit tired after the game, as the ball keeps going away from the place of play, and I had to run around to retrieve it. The running doesn't tire as much as the bending your back each time to pick up the ball from the ground!

After writing this, I plan to go to Taif to spend an evening at the mall and perhaps meet a few guys here and there.

That's it for now ...

Day 48, Monday, 2nd, and Day 49, Tuesday, 3rd January, 2012

If I had been Sachin Tendulkar or Sehwag, and on the crease opposite Australians in the currently playing test match, I would have been very nervous as I am now close to completing my half century on this land that is Saudi Arabia. Well, I am not any of those people, and I am certainly not nervous, more jubiliant than I had thought I would be when I had come here over a month and a half ago. Thanks to the availability of the net, this blog, my readers (you, my dear friends), the cheap calls to my family and friends via VOIP every day, the quiet and calm of this small town, the unpolluted air, the friendly colleagues, the easy hours of work, the daily brisk walks and healthy food options that have enabled me to lose nearly 4 kilograms and the diverse activities that I undertake when I am free, I am quite content here. 


The last two days passed nicely enough. There were just 8-9 patients in the entire day on Monday, and even fewer on Tuesday. As I am not on ER duties, I was completely free to do my own thing after leaving the hospital in the afternoon. I must say that Monday turned up an unexpected surprise, and I worked on this surprise on Tuesday, so that I am quite happy here on Wednesday as I write this.


So, what exactly was the surprise, I can hear many of you ask me. The surprise was a 1 km walk along the main road of Al Muweh in the direction opposite to the one I take everyday to go to the Hospital. There is a garden here, sandwiched between the Tareeq Abdulla of Al Muweh and the Jeddah Riyadh highway.


A garden? Yes, a garden! I write this from hearsay that is possibly correct, since the sources include some informed people. The town has received generous largesse from the administration, and they have used this to decorate the town with lighted roadway lights, sculptures (made from stone, mud and wood), artificial and natural patches of greenery along the pavements on both sides of Tareeq Abdulla, and this garden, that was inaugurated last year. It is a landscaped garden (see photos on the new page I created to showcase the garden), with seats and umbrellas, and children's slides and swings, and a beautiful water fountain and just ahead, a water stream. Alas, children of this town have vandalised most of the artifacts. They have broken many of the toys, tilted over the seats, jammed the fountain nozzles so that its pump got burnt and play football where there is natural grass overgrowth so that the grass has withered away. Although I did not go close to the swings and slides, I think many of those are also broken.


In spite of the above problems, the garden was a sight for sore eyes. I visited it thanks to my room mate Dr. Niaz and his Pakistani friend who works in the Saudi Electric Co in a senior job as an overseer of connections and transmission of electricity in the entire region. This visit was between Maghrib and Ishaa  prayers, and we combined it with a rigorous walk that helped shed some flab (I hope). I resolved to re-visit the garden the next day with a camera. 


This is exactly what I did on Tuesday. I went there immediately after my return from the hospital, and I carried with me my Canon DSLR this time. The photos that I took there are in the new page I just created, and the photos of the birds I saw there are in the Photographs:Nature page.


Do read and comment on this post and also visit the photography pages to share your observations/comments. Thank you.