Random thoughts about what is going on

It may seem to my dear readers that I have lost interest in writing this blog as I am arriving at the fag end of my career here in Saudi Arabia. However, that is only partially true. The real reason is that I am doing a lot of other things to keep myself occupied. Currently, I am doing an online course (on www.coursera.org) on "Contemporary India". It is being taught by the faculty of Indian studies in the University of Melbourne. It was a pleasant surprise to hear the lectures given by Australian teachers who knew so much about India, its history, its culture and its people. Two weeks into the course, I am also surprised by the level of interest among non-Indian students - all 4000+ of them from all parts of the world. They have so much knowledge of India! I have met students who desire to visit India, and I have also met some who have been to India more than a dozen times in the last decade. Isn't that astonishing?

I am also trying to get writing jobs from www.freelancer.com.  

My visiting card for my writing jobs

I got my first job yesterday, when a Bangalore-based cardiologist hired me to prepare brochures for his practice. This will probably be an easy task to handle, but it will also get me more jobs as my profile will show a satisfied client who got what they wanted.

I am also busy looking after my own health. A few days ago, I came down with a severe backache. Today, it became almost unbearable, and I had to take many tablets and an injection of diclofenac (a pain-killer, commonly known as Voveran in India) to be able to work. I went to the medical director and urged him to find a replacement for me for some days so that I can rest. I also went to the physiotherapy department, but the Saudi technician working there was completely ignorant on how to use the different treatment modalities and ended up giving me a hot water bag only! (The Indian female physiotherapist Dr. Sumitra is on leave.) I am hoping that the Muderiya arranges for someone to come and relieve me tomorrow (I am writing this on the night of Monday, 3rd August 2015).

I have been following the antics of the Parliamentarians in India on Times Now on my idiot box and find that the way Congress M.P.s have behaved in the last ten days - disrupting the work of the Monsoon session of the Parliament - is really shameful. It was a good thing that the Speaker of the Lok Sabha finally suspended 25 Congress M.P.s from the legislature for five days. Hopefully, this implies that business will be conducted from tomorrow, at least in the lower House.

Finally, I will end this entry by thanking my readers. We have 367 posts in the near-four years I have been in Saudi Arabia, and over 40000 views of my blog. I hope and pray that my readers, i.e. you, will continue to follow me and my writing in the months to come, when I will probably change the title of this blog - or start a new one when I start working from a new location.

Thank you for being with me till here. Cya, bye.

 

India on my mind

And so it goes: the bags are gradually filling up. I am allowed to carry 2 suit-cases of maximum 23 kg each, but already one is bursting at the seams. The second one is currently empty, but will get filled pretty quickly with books. Books of all kinds, since I am appearing for the MRCPCH exams from India, so I will be studying a lot in the final fortnight before the exams, which are on the 18th of January in Ahmedabad. I am now in the last few days, and will reach India a few hours into the new year. Hopefully. 

The news from all over the world continues to be so disappointing. No end in sight to the Syrian war. A third Malaysian origin plane goes missing. Saudi Arabia will post a deficit budget for the first time in many years, thanks to the slowing down of the petroleum-driven economy. The prospective Dubai employer has not agreed to revise my salary upwards, in spite of my request to do so. In the end, if no other offers are forthcoming, I will accept the offer from D M Healthcare and will probably apply for exit after I return to Saudi after my vacation. But nothing is sure for the time-being. Only time will tell.

My family back in Mumbai has been "warned" to give me a good welcome. They are reluctant, as I will probably reach home only late in the night (of the 31st)  - or, if you wish to see it another way, just at the onset of the new year. The first few weeks are going to be all about studies, but later, let me see where we go with the fun and the pleasure. 

Back here, Al Muwayh stays the same as always. A few new structures are getting erected, mostly Ground + 1 buildings which have space for 2-4 shops on the ground floor, and a few rooms for rent on the first floor. However, the buildings are made over several years, since the owners do not pay the workers consistently to create the full structure in a short space of time. My room-mate and colleague Dr. Mohd. Afzal is a picture of piety and simplicity. His co-operation and generally good behaviour has been inspiring to me. I have also learned from him how not to be "food-centered" as I usually am. He is happy to cook one dish every 3-4 days and have the same item for both lunch and dinner all the days till the vessel has been emptied! It is something I can never, ever do. 

I am now off any diets, and have put on the 2-3 kg that I had lost during my GM diet days in the previous few months. I am putting in about 3-5 hours of study each day now. My Skype sessions are now not as regular as before since the sense of urgency is missing from among my Skype group members who are NOT appearing with me in January.

Saw a few interesting movies last week. PK, starring Amir Khan, was average in the story, but was lifted to a little above average only thanks to the awesome acting by the Khan. The other movie I saw, The Interview, is a Hollywood movie that was in the news because its release around Christmas was blocked by hackers from North Korea, the country that is ridiculed in the movie.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading. I will next write after 3-4 days, and it will be from India.

I finally found my periscope

Dear Readers,

I came to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia exactly 18 months ago. After a brief sojourn in Ta'if, I was taken to Al Muwayh to work as a specialist Pediatrician in the Ministry of Health's general hospital. My "incoming" was fraught with difficulties, and my regular readers probably remember the problems I faced during my first two weeks in the Kingdom. Of course, the difficulties did not end then, and even today, I continue to make compromises with myself as and when the need arises.

Imagine, therefore, my pleasant surprise when I discovered so much new information about Saudi Arabia today, while surf. ing the net. I came across a listing of blogs based on Saudi Arabia on the www.expatsblog.com site. These blogs have been maintained regularly. For example, the blog http://workinginsaudiarabia.blogspot.com has been online since 2007, and has had more than a million visits! The site http://www.blueabaya.com is a fantastic blog, as is the site http://www.americanbedu.com. These last few blogs have tremendous posts, great pictures and super blog views .

I call this my periscope because, until now, I was living at the bottom of a deep well and could barely look outside it. Knowing that there are other people out there who are also bloggers like me, and who have been writing such fantastic accounts of their life in Saudi Arabia has been a shocker, no less, for me. I have thoroughly enjoyed their blog entries, although I do not see their point of view when they criticise the Saudi government. The reason is simple. If you are in a foreign country to earn your livelihood, you must not speak against them ... it is an uncharitable thing to do! So, I am going to restrict myself to writing positive things about my stay here in the Kingdom. As they say, every cloud has a silver lining. So also this. I am going to concentrate on the positives. There are many, and there is no doubt there are negatives too, but it is not for me to be a judge of what they are and what they do as long as I am working here and earning my livelihood thanks to their generosity.

So, what is the periscope showing me? I read a post on ten things to do when you are in Abha. I read a beautiful post on the people and the village of Ushaigar (2 and a half hours' drive to the north-west of Riyadh). I read a post about the liberal lifestyle and dress of the Saudi women in the 1950s and 1960s before abayas and face covering were made compulsary. I think these posts have opened my eyes to the beautiful things that Saudi Arabia has to offer and it will be my endeavour to discover these things for myself in the months to come. Do stay with me, dear reader, for more revelations about this country.

Thank you for reading. That is all for today.

A fortnight has passed

Since I wrote my last post, a fortnight has gone by. I got a substitute doctor to work in my place and therefore, I managed to escape from my hospital for about 4 - 5 days. You probably already read about  that in my previous post. During the last fortnight, I have been rather busy with my work at the hospital, or walking in the garden, or solving questions for my future exam in May 2013, or sleeping. I usually try to watch at least one episode of either "Castle" or "Grey's Anatomy" (I am watching old episodes from Season 2 of both the serials ... thanks to my daughter Inas, who has uploaded these to my laptop during my last vacation in May/June 2012). While "Castle" is an out and out crime detection serial, it provides useful life lessons on how to bring up a teenager, and provides unexpected but welcome comic relief when the two main actors (Rick Castle and Beckett) spar with each other as they go about solving murder cases. 

"Grey's Anatomy", on the other hand, appeals to me as it is about medicine ... surgery, actually, as the story revolves around Meredith Grey, a surgical intern at SGH (Seattle General Hospital), and her four colleagues. Christina (a Japanese American) plays the parallel lead role. Both of them are great actors, as are the other lead players, the surgical resident Bailey, the two visiting surgeons, Drs. Sheperd and Burk, and other supporting cast. 

In other news, I keep trying new food items, but I have yet to finish with the stuff I brought back from Ta'if - included among these are the delectable Mutton Biryani, a rather non-spicy Chicken Chilli, and Mutton masala. Also, I am going through my own cooked dishes like the dal, the lady fingers, the kheema and the now cooked black-eyed beans (chola). I can say that I am really enjoying myself. On the anvil in the next few days is a salad that I am planning to make with yellow, red and green peppers, lettuce and tomatoes, a noodle dish with real spring onions, and perhaps a fish curry.

TV watching has been taking up some of my time. Over the last few days, it's been an overdose of Times Now channel, with its round the clock reporting of the gang-rape case that occurred in New Delhi last week. All six men have been arrested. The victim is a physiotherapy intern, now battling for life in Safdarjung Hospital. She has undergone a near total intestinal resection on account of extensive gangrene and has a gastrostomy and a duodenostomy in place. Her only chance of return to normal life will be with an intestinal transplant, something that may have to be done abroad. Supporting her are thousands of normal Indian citizens, mostly women, who have come out on the roads with morchas, candle-marches, storming of the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the C|M's residence, the hospital, and so on. Protest marches are being held in more than 20 cities all over India, including Jammu, Bangalore, Delhi, Lucknow, Varanasi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Patna, etc. There is a demand to mete out the strictest possible punishment to the perpetrators ... viz. the death sentence. News is mostly confined to this story. The only other story that held the nation's attention was the assembly election in Gujarat. Narendra Modi has been re-elected for the fifth consecutive term, and is now eyeing the seat of PM-designate of the BJP for the forthcoming elections in 2014. Let us see what happens there.

On the family front, Hannah has some huge plans for the coming months. She wants to join some UK-university courses, wants to be a worker for some huge project for the United Nations, wants to be an intern at some company, and what not. Inas continues, albeit a little dissatisfied, at the Juice Salon. Nishrin is, as usual, a harried person, what with the house, the children and her work. It appears that my absence from the house has taken the most out of her, and although she is managing, she sure isn't happy that she has to bear so much burden, and is clearly tired of it all.

Mom continues to be confined to the house, and will remain to be there till mid-February, after which she can leave the house and be among the others in society. She is putting up a brave front indeed, and is sure to feel worse as the days pass and the feeling of being alone sinks in. 

That's about it for now ... 

P.S. My colleague is due to return by the end of next week ... what a relief! 

Day 95, Saturday, 18th February 2012

Today, I received a very early morning SMS on my mobile. The time was forty-five minutes past 3 a.m. The sender was my bank, and the not-too-disturbing SMS was "An amount of _________ credited to your account". 


It was my salary. Imagine the nerve of the Saudians! They deposit amount in your account in the deep of the night! :-) This, then, was my first direct account-credited salary, and I gave a silent whoop of joy before returning to sleep. The rest of the day pales before such exciting news in comparison, but, to be honest, I had a very silent first day of the ER duty. There was one admission, but that's it. No further calls and no night calls. 


I spoke to my family in the evening (here, it is evening, but it is almost half past nine or more in India, so I thank my family members for taking my calls and for speaking with me at such a late hour.). I am making plans to visit India either in late May or early June as a split holiday. In fact, only yesterday, in response to my earlier post on monotony, one of my readers suggested that I do this to relieve the boredom. I pointed out to him that I had already started thinking in that direction, and my call to my family merely helped solidify that thought into probable course of action. Thanks, Dr. Muhbeen. 


My alu-palak turned out to be more delicious than I had thought, and I invite readers to "taste" it with these words. It looked a healthy spinachy green, it had the right "saag-like" consistency, the alus in it were the right shade of cream, and the overall preparation tasted divine, both with chapatis and rice. There's lots more ... so if anyone from Al Muweh or Saudi Arabia is reading this, come over and have it with me.


My evening jogs are becoming better and better. I am now able to jog for a continuous 30-35 minutes, or about 2.5 km. In addition, I also do some amount of stretching exercises and about 1/2 an hour of brisk walking. All in all, I guess I am doing just about enough to keep myself active and in good shape and good metabolic status. May Allah grant me these bounties for a long time to come. 

How life changes, one thing at a time, imperceptibly sometimes

Over the past one month, if there is one thing I have realised, it is this. Life change does not always occur as a cataclysmic event. Often, the changes creep up on you, and you suddenly realise that you have broken some BIG rules for reasons of convenience, comfort, regulation, need or compulsion. 


Let me list a few of these changes: back in India, I used to get up around half past seven, and then, only when Nishrin used to come into the bedroom with a cup of tea for me; here, I have to get up an hour earlier, as I have to reach the hospital by eight (in reality, the reporting time is half past seven, but everyone reaches by eight). In India, I never left the house without a full head bath; here, for the past week, the biting cold has inhibited me so much, that I just brush my teeth and scrub my face and leave for work; I take a bath in the evening, when the cold is less and the water that flows in the tap from the overhead tank is already warm. In India, I needed nothing other than a modest blanket in bed; here, I need a thick blanket, with the fan switched off, the window closed, a thick tee and a sweater over it, and full pajamas to be able to sleep. In India, I used to have hearty meals at home, or if not at home, outside, in a restaurant; here, there are limited options, and I hate the Saudi khubs, so I invent, compromise and get around difficulties to add fuel to my tummy. Yesterday, I had a breakfast of scrambled eggs, a lunch with rice and potato curry and a dinner with rice, french-beans and chicken gravy ... a luxury of three hearty meals, but most often, at least one, and quite possibly, two, of these are make-shift meals, with khubs and cheese spread with jam, farsan and tea, toast and tea, and so on substituting for well-defined meals.


In India, cosmetics were anathema to me; here, I have to apply Vaseline to my lips, back of hands and fingers, forearms, and heels to prevent these from cracking up. In India, if I needed to talk to someone, I had to just lift the phone or dial from my mobile; here, I have to first switch on my laptop, open Nokia suite to find the numbers (except those of my family, which I remember verbatim), then go online, wear a microphone and speaker set, start the Action VOIP program, and then enter the number in the box provided for the same, before hitting the "call" button. What a scene!


In India, I could, in my clinic, make a patient wait for some time in the reception while I was busy doing something else inside; here, the Saudis are so demanding and unforgiving, that if they are made to wait even for a minute, they become agitated; some have been known to go to the admin and complain about this ... about the doctor who makes them wait while he plays around with his stuff. My friend Dr. Narendra tells me  that compared to the patients in bigger cities or places like Aabha (a hill station nearby), the patients in Al Muweh are much better. In those places, they get so irritated that they have, on occasion, broken the laptop of the doctor or even physically abused or slapped him!


In India, the return journey from the clinic to home was punctuated by stops in front of hawkers, grocery, vegetable seller, friends one met accidentally on the road, and so on. Sometimes, road-side fights or other social events stopped one from progressing rapidly towards home; here, once you have found the person with a car you are going to go home with, there is no other option but to allow that person to deposit you in front of your house/lane/whichever point you want to get off at.


Yesterday, my gas cylinder finally emptied. I called up Dr. Narendra, who came with his car to my place. I had disconnected the cylinder from the pipe already, and brought it to just inside the main door. I lifted the cylinder and put it in the boot of Narendra's car. We drove to the gas dealer. The menial servant there removed the empty cylinder and put in a fresh one, stopping only to close the boot lid and collect the SR 16, which is the cost of a refill. Dr. N and I drove back to my house, where I underwent considerable trouble to bring the heavy cylinder out and take it up the 4-5 steps to my main door. After Dr. N left, I dragged the cylinder to the kitchen, re-fastened the knob to the pipe with a wrench and only then was I done with the job. In India, all this would have been an easy task: just call up the gas agency, which will send a man with the refill (albeit after a few days to a week), who will remove the empty and connect the refill himself. He will then issue a receipt, collect the cash and go away with a tip of maybe 2-3 rupees. 


See what I mean? There are a lot more things I want to write here, but let me leave it for a day when I have not much to relate to you about.