May Day, May Day, May Day

The first of May this year fell on a Thursday. Dear readers, you must be wondering about the title of this entry. I will presently come to it. Let me first begin by thanking all of you who have been following me through almost two and a half years now on this blog. It is thanks to people like you that I am nearing 30000 views of my blog. I know of at least three or four other people aspiring to come to Saudi Arabia as doctors who have contacted me because of this blog and have sought advice from me. Compared to some stalwarts whose blogs have crossed a million views, I am still small fry, but I am happy I was able to help even a few people take the right decision about whether or not to come to KSA to practice their professions, and to make more money.

Also, some of you kind souls have been clicking on the various ads that are seen on my web-pages, and this helps me to slowly but surely reach the payment threshold for Adsense by Google, whose ads I publish on my blog. In the last seven odd years I have been on Blogger (my first blog was Seriously Joking), I have managed to earn about USD 55/=. I will receive my first payment only when the total crosses USD 100/= so I guess it will be after another 7 years, LOL. Whatever, if the ads look promising, why don't you just click on them and help me?

My kitchen saw a bit of activity during the last few days. I made a mean Alu Muttar on Thursday, and a nice 3-egg omelette today morning. However, for the most part, I have a full refrigerator and I am not cooking much. Yesterday, I made chapatis. Now, let me tell you that on 2 previous occasions, I tried to make chapatis with the chapati maker machine that I have brought from India ... but I cannot seem to get the hang of it. The chapatis turn out very hard. I am still experimenting with the proportions of the various ingredients.

On Thursday night, Dr. Magdi and I went out to buy shwarma from the local shop and then we sat in the garden to eat it. While I had one, he had three of them! After this, we split up as he was called to the hospital to go with a patient to Taif (he was on referral duty). I dropped him at the hospital, and returned to the garden to participate in the send-off function of Dr. Yasser Mahmoud Al Shibiny, my outgoing colleague. He was quite calm, and a bit withdrawn, or so I thought. 

Now he is really, officially gone. My panic will increase, and I just might radio in for help. Now, do you get the title? It is about the first of May, isn't it?

Here are some photos of the send-off party.

And one more weekend with news from Arabia

Yes, it is one more weekend as I write this. Actually, more than half of it is already over, since the weekend began after 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, and it is now nearly 1:00 p.m. on Saturday! Thursday evening was fairly routine, and I just relaxed in the house. There were no calls. I have ample food in my refrigerator, so there wasn't much I could do in the way of making new food in the kitchen. I spent the evening browsing the net, watching some videos and playing some games. In the night, I went to the children's garden and played tennis with Dr. Essam for a short while.

Friday was a quiet day. Again, I had not a single call until the afternoon, when I had one. Then, for the entire day, none. I continued my usual home-based activities, not going out at all. I have begun studies for part 3 MRCPCH and also for IELTS (the English proficiency test one must give if one wants to work in the UK). While IELTS is fairly easy as English is more or less native to me, the MRCPCH is likely to cause heart-burn as I am studying little every day. Mostly, a friend of mine who is an Egyptian doctor staying and working as a NICU registrar in Riyadh, and I sit on Skype every evening and discuss some cases. His name is Dr. Sherif and he is far younger than me (he is only 34). Like me, he is planning to appear for the final stage of MRCPCH later this year. Married, he finds it difficult to save money as Fridays are reserved for his wife and their family affairs. Even so, at my urging, he took out the time to sit with me and discuss cases for an hour. I think it is necessary for us to be disciplined as time will run out all too fast and then we will not be able to complete our studies in time. 

As a diversion, I am also doing an online course on "Creating a Business Model in Health Care" from an online MOOC site called eDX.com. This course is from the Harvard Business School and I am hoping it will help me understand how to go about starting a new venture related to health-care industry. Unlike pure medical studies, there are several MBA graduates, engineers, technologists, and pure business people studying this course along with doctors, health workers, nurses, and the like. I hope this course turns out to be as interesting as it looks to be. Sometimes, business concepts can be quite tiring and difficult to grasp for professionals like us. The chief teacher has 41 years of teaching experience in this field and has enabled hundreds of students to start their own health-related business ventures ... and says the size of the pie is more than 6 trillion dollars worldwide - twice the size of China's GDP! Of this, the US alone spends nearly 3 trillion in health care, and yet, more than 20 million US citizens do not get access to their health care system as they do not have health insurance. 

In the initial weeks, we are expected to socialise with other students and join a team of like-minded individuals with whom we can finalise a business proposal. This seems like a daunting task, and currently, I am just trying to negotiate the deep waters of this aspect of the course. 

My family continues to be in touch with me as I call them almost daily. Nishrin is busy with her own salon, as is Inas - deeply committed to make a success of her work as a hair stylist. Hannah has finished the second year of her BMS (Bachelor of Management Studies) and started her fifth of six semesters. Mom is doing fine, and her companion, Sakinaben, continues to stay with her. I barely hear about my brothers, but I guess they are busy with their own families and work. 

Here, in Al Muwayh, work and life remain static. However, the same cannot be said of the weather, which swings in disparate directions almost every day. Some days, there is a windy climate, bringing with it a lot of dust that coats everything ... such as the window panes of my house, my car, the small shrub-plants that grow outside my entrance ... and some days, it is unbearably hot, so much so that if one tries to use water from the tap that brings it down from external overhead tanks, the water is searing hot in the afternoon. Then again, some days, there is unexpected rain. And, to cap it all, occasionally, we get hailstones! This event occurred last about a month ago, and shocked me completely, as I had never seen such a thing in the kingdom before ... that too, in the hot, central part of the Kingdom! I even collected a few hail stones from outside my doorstep and took pictures of them to remember this highly unusual occurrence. 

That's about it, I guess, and I will, after completing this entry, go to sleep for a while. In the evening, it will be time to do my Skype studies and then, perhaps retire for some TV watching before sleep takes over. 

Thanks for reading this. Do leave your comments.

The past week

The week that just ended was one where I was off call; however, I worked for the first two days and then proceeded on leave for the next three days. On day 3 and 4, I stayed in Al Muwayh; on day 5, I went to Ta'if and stayed at my usual hotel for the next two nights before returning to Al Muwayh on Saturday evening. This was one holiday when I did nothing particularly engaging, other than sleeping long hours, surfing the net and enjoying my meals at the Indian restaurants nearby. 

My younger daughter Hannah has gone on what is fashionably known as an "industrial visit" from her college. I have been speaking daily to her, and she is apparently having a lot of fun, but no real lessons in anything. In fact, according to her, the tour guides who are accompanying them show them stuff that is appropriate to be shown to school kids! Thus, there is a gap in the knowledge that they are getting. Of course, on the entertainment front, they are having a gala time of it. I think she is expected to return after some more days. 

Nishrin and Inas are on a house-cleaning spree now that Diwali is around the corner. To those of my readers who are not aware of what Diwali is, it is a "festival of lights" (and bursting of millions of rupees worth of fireworks) that commemorates an important event described in the great Hindu epic Ramayan. Apparently, when Ram entered Ayodhya after his 14-year long exile (when he lived an ascetic life in the forest), the people of Ayodhya lit up the whole city with hand made "diyas". Eventually, Ram was coronated and became the King of Ayodhya.  Although traditionally, this is a Hindu festival, it is now a part of Indian culture and people of all religions join their Hindu brethren in celebrating it. Diwali is an occasion when people clean their homes, make sweets and delicacies to eat, buy and wear new clothes, jewellery and accessories, burst fireworks, adorn their homes with "rangoli", "toran", lights and other traditional decorations, visit their friends and relatives, and generally enjoy themselves. Since the past two years, I have/will be missed/missing this great festival. However, inshallah, I should be back in India before Diwali 2014.

While India and Pakistan continue to engage in skirmishes at various points along the "line of control", in Saudi Arabia as well as in other countries where the people from these two countries have emigrated to work, people of these two nations behave in the most friendly manner. The events at the border between the two countries seem not to affect us where we stay. Some of my best friends here are of Pakistani origin. To give you an example, let me mention my car-mechanic friend Mr. Shabbir Choudhary. He is a Pakistani and has his workshop in Ta'if. I went to him during my visit to this city this week; he is a large, effusive man and talks through his heart. On previous occasions, he has surprised me with his friendly approach as well as his hearty hospitality. This time, though, we could not go out for dinner as he was very busy with his own and his clients' pending tasks. 

Meanwhile, just out of interest, I have begun taking oral lessons in the Filipino language! If I am able to reach a level where I can understand about 20-25% of the spoken language, I will be happy. 

In other news, I have completed my online learning courses on "Animal behaviour" and "Global Health" and in my last week of the course on "Vaccines". The next few courses I will be taking will be primers on "Diabetes", "Global Warming" and "Nanotechnology". By the time I complete those courses, it would be February or March 2014.

The last thing I wish to share is that my visit to India is now almost certain as I have received my vacation paper today. Inshallah, I should be in India around the 18th of November 2013.

That's all.

P.S. The women of Saudi Arabia are trying to get permission to drive cars in the Kingdom. They had planned a joint movement which was to be held on the 26th of October 2013, but they backed off because of the strict governmental directives asking them not to take the hasty step or they would be fined heavily or even arrested. In spite of this, about 50-60 women did take to the roads, and at least one such woman, an activist, was arrested and imprisoned for one night before being released.

The Week That Was ...

As I write this early in the morning of Sunday, 4th August, 2012, which also is the 17th of Ramadan, 1433, I wish to inform my readers that by the time you read this, my father would have returned home from the hospital after an almost 2-week stay for weakness and infection. In the interim, my brothers and my wife Nishrin have managed to clean up dad's place and remove unnecessary stuff so as to be able to accommodate a Fowler's bed (the hospital kind which can allow one to raise the head-end or the leg-end of the bed separately. They have already completed de-pesting the house with insecticides etc. and will paint the house and change the floor-carpets. This should relieve my mom a lot as she was fed-up of the diverse junk dad has stored down the decades of his living in this small place. 


Dad's condition remains delicate. Although his kidney status is better and he is temporarily off dialysis, this will have to resume sooner or later; his infections are in control and he is ready to be discharged. My family actually delayed his discharge to be able to clean up the house. He may thus go home on the coming Tuesday. I entreat all my readers to pray for him. May his suffering be reduced and he spend the remaining years/months/days of his life with no pain or torment. May my mom also have no problems of health as she goes on to tend for her husband, our father. Amen. 


The past week I was on call. There were nights when I had no calls, and nights when I was being called almost every half an hour ... such as the one on Thursday night. I had five or six phone calls, and one where I had to go to the hospital to manage a snake-bite victim. That one took me over three hours, so that I decided to sleep over the next morning. As it was a Friday, I had no problem with the plan.


It was on Sunday night that one of the E.R. doctors, Dr. Imaam, invited me for iftaar at his home. His wife had prepared traditional Egyptian items, including Vermicelli-rice, a shorba that was fantastic, and rolls, samosas and many other baked and fried items! Dr. Ahmed Ouf, the ophthalmologist, and Dr. Mohammad Abd Jawed, one of the E.R. doctors, were also invited. After prayers, we relaxed outside the house in the courtyard where Dr. Imaam has spread out a carpet and kept his T.V. We chatted about this and that. We were served tea and a sweet dish, which being too sweet, I had just one morsel of. While Dr. Imaam's fourth child is an infant, the other three - two girls and a boy - came out to serve us our food and drinks from time to time. It was a wonderful experience indeed. 


My studies are proceeding satisfactorily, but I am not too happy with my scores. I am getting worried that I may not be able to prepare myself optimally for the Part1 exams that I am giving on the 9th of October. Please pray for me, dear readers. 

Miscellaneous jottings

I have several small things to share, and I am taking this opportunity to do so here.


First of all, I am really thankful to you all for continuing to visit my blog. I have repeatedly requested you all to let me know whether the blog and its entries are liked by you or not, and what, if anything, do you feel about some of the postings, but, I am sorry to say that most of you do not think it important to provide feedback. I feel like the man who stands outside his house and talks ... and talks ... with the others only waiting to see the "tamasha", and then walking away. Is this what you feel about this blog? If not, kindly comment ... I really need the feedback. I want the feedback to be as honest as the style I write in, so don't hesitate ... just tell me it is b@@@sh@@ if you think it is. I won't mind it. Really.


Okay, on to my jottings, then. 


I have, of late, stopped enjoying experimentation with cooking, and quite frequently end up eating my dinner at one of the local restaurants - either the Kerala one or the Pakistani one. Cooking by itself isn't so boring; it's the going to the market to buy things, the dicing of onions and the other preparation that really bothers me. Also, I have come to realise that although I make food that looks attractive and appetising, it is quite commonplace in taste. For example, I am unable to create the spicy red look in meat or the healthy yellow colour of the dal, no matter which permutations and combinations of spices and chilli I try. My room-mate Dr. Shahid, who makes his food every day afresh in the evening seems to think that my style is hampered by the fact that I do not use sufficient quantity of oil and/or I don't saute the onions and the spices sufficiently. Perhaps he is right. I am always a bit impatient when the onions etc. are getting sauted, and this is leaving the food inadequately tempered. 


Okay, so I have no car or any form of automated transport, and the hospital is 1.5 km away from my house. It does not matter much when Dr. Shahid is around, as I go and return with him. Or Dr. Narendra, whose house is bang opposite my own. At present, though, both of them are away, and it creates problems. Especially in the afternoon when I wish to return home for lunch. Most of the days, I manage to get some or the other person to give me a lift back home from the hospital, and the same when I have to return to the hospital after an hour. I have honed this skill so well that I find that I am usually able to get a Saudi to give me a lift ... something that Dr. Narendra and Dr. Shahid say they NEVER did when they were without a car during their beginning periods. My ability to get the lift has also made me get closer to my patients, and they now recognise me and even smile when I meet them out of the hospital setting. Another significant thing that helps me reach out to the local population is my daily walk in the evenings. I feel sometimes that Saudis desire to talk to me as much as I do to talk to them. But only sometimes. Most of the other times, they will look past you as if you did not exist!


Of late, I have observed that I am NOT losing weight in spite of keeping up with the daily walks. The reason is not far to seek: I haven't cut down much on calories, I do not do strength training and I hardly run nowadays. In spite of this, I am not so depressed since I have maintained my weight at around 77 kg or so since the last one to one and a half months.


I think this is about all that I wished to write today. I will continue my Zalm journey with the next entry. Thanks for reading ... and please, please do comment, either here or on the Facebook entry for this one. 


Bye for now.