UK Life, Two years on.

I completed two years of my work/stay in the UK on the 16th of November last year. Nearly two more months have elapsed. It is time to take stock of where I am, what I am doing, and what my future plans will likely be.

Let me begin with the good news. I am moving on to become a full registrar at Blackpool from coming March. The progress my consultants have seen in me and my work have finally convinced them that I am safe to be a full-time registrar and manage the department on my own. Thus, instead of working 40 hours per week, I will be on the full rota. This will mean that my locuming days will probably get reduced drastically. However, it will also mean that I WON'T need to work elsewhere, as my emergency hours work will get me extra income from within my own trust. 

This has been a very satisfying bit of news. I have the most extensive experience as a Paediatrician - even more in the number of years I have worked as a children's doctor than most of the consultants I am working under. However, thanks to my complete inexperience with the working requirements of the NHS, I was unable to inspire, so far, the confidence that I can manage patients on my own - until now. Come March, things will change, I hope.

How has life been? I could have had better life had I seized all the opportunities at my disposal and used them optimally. However, to be fair, I have tried to live a balanced life; this has meant that while I have worked very hard to earn the maximum possible money and experience, I have also enjoyed on those weekends when I haven't worked but roamed around the countryside, or within Blackpool, or even visited more distant landmarks within the country. The farthest I have ever been on my own is the Peak District National Park, the nearest, the Marton Mere Nature Reserve. I have undertaken many different railway-bus-car-on-foot journeys, some of which are definitely worth repeating.

I have taken up new hobbies such as learning to play the keyboard and learning how to colour pictures with a pencil colour set. I have persisted with my old hobbies such as cooking, travelling, birding and bird photography and a bit of writing and a lot of reading. 

The arrival of Sky TV/Telephone and Network changed a lot in my life. I now record a lot of programs, look up things I have missed and catch up with those, rewatch a few programs that I recorded earlier, and so on. I also purchased the mid-range New Amazon Echo, and with it, I am now able to listen to old, golden songs from the super singing sensations of the yesteryears, such as Mohammed Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshikar, Asha Bhosale, and many others. 

In the UK, I have also made a lot of new friends. More about this in my next post. 

Thanks for reading. 

Dr Taher

Several days later ... an update

Before you all think I have been lazy about not posting anything on this blog for so long, let me say this: you are right. Hence, I do render my apology. It's just that there is nothing exciting happening here since the past nearly two weeks. My life goes on as usual, and my weekends have not been as eventful as before. 

Spring has arrived. The trees outside my room were shorn of any green when I had first arrived here in November. Now, within a fortnight, they have bloomed - and how! The flowers are a shade of baby pink, and the view from outside my room is nothing short of miraculous. But this is not only with these two trees. Greenery is unfolding everywhere, and flowers are bursting forth. Daffodils are growing in all places - both in the wild and in structured environs, such as our own hospital. Insects are appearing too, and it is a sight I missed sorely during the long winter season. However, to be fair, I have just seen bees and ladybugs. I have yet to see a diversified flora such as the ones we see all around us in tropics.

My knee started hurting about 10 days ago, and the doctors have diagnosed this as a painful cartilage, hurting because of wear and tear associated with my walking and my ... ah ... advancing age. I have therefore not ventured out much. However, right at the beginning of this, on the weekend before the last, I did go for a long session of listening to jazz music being showcased as part of the 2nd Annual Blackpool Jazz and Blues festival. The festival ran for two whole days with live musicians performing at the Winter Gardens and the adjoining Gillow's Bar.  Now, I have never watched so much of jazz and blues, but I can tell you the guys and ladies who performed on the stage were simply rocking. There was this 17-year old on the electric guitar, a local Blackpool chap, who was really talented. Then, there was another guy, who was multi-talented: he could play the guitar as well as the drums. There were others, including non-British actors from all over Europe, who all played with a happy nonchalance. 

I hobbled on my right leg through the whole week, and now, after 9 days and ingestion of tons of pain-killers, I am almost back to being painlessly mobile, though not completely healed.  

The other event that broke the boredom was my assistance to the holding of the D.C.H, examinations in our hospital. The host of the exam was one of our consultants, Dr Rabin Mohanty. He was kind enough to enrol me as a volunteer for the exam. My job was to act as a welcoming member to the candidates. I was to then check their identity documents, take their photos for the record and to hand them their mark-sheet packs. I was also responsible for making sure that candidates did not cheat by sharing their experiences inside the exam area with the other candidates who had yet to go in. 

Before the day of the exam, I was invited to an examiners' dinner at the Village Hotel on East Park Drive near the hospital. This was on Friday night. Along with the examiners were present various bigwigs of the hospital, including the hospitals' Executive director, the head of the Families' Division Peter Curtis, and some other distinguished dignitaries. Yogesh Kuba, my colleague, was there as well. The dinner was a sit-down affair with a pre-selected menu; I had chosen a fish cake, a main dish also containing fish and profiteroles for dessert. I have taken some photos of all the dishes, and will post them soon. 

The exam was on the following day, a Saturday. I was occupied with it the whole day, from half-past seven in the morning until half-past five in the evening. It was a very enlightening experience. During the lunch-break, the host (Dr Mohanty) had ordered hot Indian lunch. I really enjoyed this, as there were chapattis, tendli bhaaji, onion bhajia and chicken biryani. 

Did anything else occur? Well, not really. I did, however, purchase a musical keyboard last week, and have begun to learn how to play it. This is just one more skill that I will attempt to learn while in the U.K. More on this in a subsequent post. 

Thank you for reading this rather long post. I promise to spice it up soon with pictures.