This first picture will probably mean nothing to non Italian people, but when Roberto noticed the arab newspaper with the “La Gazzetta dello Sport” headline we had a sudden nostalgic feeling. I don’t know why Roberto was reading a newspaper entirely written in Arabic (maybe he’s practicing for the next travels in Saudi), but it was simply amazing finding this headline in the familiar font that is capable of unify our people more than the national anthem. For the non Italian guys and gals, I will steal a couple of sentences from Wikipedia, just a bit adjusted, to give you the feel of what La Gazzetta dello Sport means to us. La Gazzetta dello Sport is an Italian newspaper dedicated to coverage of various sports; the newspaper, published on distinctive pink paper, sells over 400,000 copies daily (more on Mondays when readers want to catch up on the weekend's events), and can claim a readership in excess of three million (thus it is by far the Italian newspaper with the largest number of readers). The Giro d’Italia (the second most important long distance road bicycle racing stage race for professional cyclists in the world after the Tour de France) was invented by the editor of the pink newspaper at the beginning of last century (1909), pink being the color of the shirt that the leader of the general classification in the Giro wears during the race ... for more info go to www.gazzetta.itBut lets’s go back to the chronicle of our journey; today we’re to leave Riyadh, so we check out at the Holiday Inn , load our luggages in the GMC car and go for our last meeting in this city. The Security Forces Hospital (from the hospital naming algorithm I described in the previous post I guess “Security Forces” must have been the name of some freakish king of the past, but I’m not sure) is a very big hospital, but our meeting with the head of the engineering department doesn’t seem to open interesting opportunities and the part of the meeting that deserves more good memories is the instant coffee we are offered in paper cups …
We are almost ready to go to the airport, but Majid (you can see him making one of the tons of phone calls he had to do in these days to keep us on track with the planned schedule) has a Steve-Jobs-like “and one more thing” surprise for us: we are waited at the Dr Sulaiman Al Habib private hospital, where the responsible of purchasing is more than welcoming and he expresses all his interest into our activities and possible services to his hospital. The karma is good with TBS today, so we happily say goodbye to Majid (in fact I’ll be back here Wednesday night, so we’ll have more time together very soon) and reach the airport.
At the airport I finally get into an electronics store where I hope to find a CompactFlash card to finally replace the one I burned yesterday, but they don’t sell it. Since I’m angry enough with my old camera (that holds inside its internal memory a couple of nice pictures I can’t extract because of the broken card), I decide to buy a brand new camera! I perform a fast Imaging Technology Assessment and buy a powerful Sony Cyber-shot 14Mpixel camera; I get an amazing 0% discount on the price (you can see me pathetically trying to bargain with the two Arabian clerks) and I happily start taking hi resolution fancy pictures (and I also got its user manual as an interesting reading for the flight …)During the flight from Riyadh to Jeddah (850 km we’re going to cover in 1 hour and a half) I and Youssef are still active and keep working all time long ;-) while Roberto and another person-I-will-not-mention switch themselves off much like the battery of my old camera. The person-I-will-not-mention somehow lets me know that he wouldn’t appreciate his sleepy picture to be published, so I have disguised it to safeguard his anonymity …
While we’re waiting to take off, I notice that a display is showing the shape of the airplane with an arrow starting from its center and pointing up to the right like a vector; it’s showing the direction to Mecca, in order to address the muslims praying on board. Another sign of the pervasive importance of religion is evident when the speaker invites the faithful to pray for a good flight, and Youssef explains me that for the muslims there it’s common to pray addressing specific moments of the day or events and actions you’re going to do.
When we arrive in Jeddah, we find our Budget-rent-a-car driver waiting for us; he’s from Bangladesh and he doesn’t understand English at all! Youssef tries talking with him in Arabic but the communication is very difficult; I try with some words in friulanian but he doesn’t seem to understand. At the end we manage to get to the right hotel; since tomorrow we’ll have to go up and down Jeddah for our all-day-long meetings, we hope for the best, greet the who-knows-what-speaking driver and enter the Hotel. The Rosewood Corniche hotel is a really beautiful structure with view on the Red Sea; my room is at the 16th floor, so I try to forget feeling dizzy and take a couple of scenic pictures.
It’s been another long day, but we are very happy to meet Marty of RTKL and have dinner together at the hotel’s Japanese restaurant. Strange things happen while we talk of technology assessment and planning, new hospitals being built, nuns getting home in a Ferrari, bananas on the train … Roberto almost gets drunk with a mint tasting kind of soft drink (and he breaks the glass, which is somehow good wishing) while Brian convinces Youssef that wasabi is a sweet and delicate cream. We end the day in a relaxed atmosphere that is great for team building and for preparing us for tomorrow; we’ll have another full day of appointments (3 hospitals, a meeting at the local offices of the Ministry of Health, the inauguration of a conference on social critical care and a visit to the RTKL offices in Jeddah) and it’s better for all the team to go to sleep (I am switching myself off now …).
I enjoyed!!
ReplyDeleteLuigi