Medical check up and meeting peoples

Oct 3, 2009

Six of us were brought to a medical center for medical check-up that consist of blood test and x-ray procedures. Asraf works in the finance section for marine core lab and he came from Kashmir - a place with a fantastic landscape, I was told. Tony from US works in the secutiry section, while Gao Shan Feng is a post-doc. Radi, a professor in the genome section came from Mumbai.

After the medical test, we headed towards the administration building at KAUST. Pretty lengthy briefing and by the time we are done, it is already ~3:30pm and I headed for lunch in the canteen. Stalls are all closed except for a sandwich stall. Have a bad headache and vomited lots of very acidic gastric - probably due to the bumpy trip and air-con temperature shock in the transport. My headache was gone after the throw up, but felt pretty lethargic slept in the canteen for a while till 4:30pm.

There are lots of palm trees in the campus, planted due to their ability to thrive in desert environment. A symbol of serenity and peace, which forms a stark constrast to the tight security wihtin the campus and at the gate. Blue shirt security with handgun-bearing light-olive green personnels are all over the campus. Soldiers bearing machine gun were guarding at the front gate, sometimes smoking or speaking through handphone, while barricades were placed strategically. As far as I experience, this is absolutely necessary and only slows traffic at a bearable duration.

Housing is not ready yet, and therefore have to travel to and fro between Crowne Plaza Hotel and campus. This evening the total waiting and traveling duration back to hotel is about 2 hours, from 5 to 7pm. Big round orange sun setting at a distance across the bushy desert, and then followed by huge round and bright moon hanging in the sky. I am not alone, there are about 10+ other staff in the bus to Crowne Plaza hotel for this suttle bus, while there are other buses headed towards 12 other hotels.

In the middle of our journey back to the hotel, Traffic were stalled to give priority to VIP convoy, pretty common in most other countries, I supposed.

Back in the hotel, I headed straight to the restaurant for dinner. Seefood Taco (mixed seafood) is my favourite of the day, though chinese noodles and fried rice with prowns are equally delicious. I ate much vegetables today.

There are only less than 5 patrons between 7-7:30pm. Asked a Filipino waiter and he told me that most south-western asian patrons have dinner at around 9-10 pm. I later, found out that most other KAUST staff prefer to request for room service for dinner, and hence most people just "disappeared" after alighting from the KAUST shuttle bus.