Quack Quack, Is the Doctor in?

Visits to the doctor are always quite an experience back in India. There was the typical 10-rupee-per-visit doctor(heard that he had upgraded to the 20-rupee-per-visit price plan) who was kind of our family doctor and for the few thousand families in that locality. Yes, he had a monopoly for an astonishing number of 6 streets, which is very rare, considering the ratio of clinics-people in Chennai.

By the time it was the turn of my "token", I felt that the heavily coughing guy next to me could very well go back without visiting the doctor, because he would have coughed so much that his "disease" would have spread to so many people around him, that he would be left with none !
The first ten minutes of my visit would be spent on social discussions like my studies, my family, the runs i scored in that evening's cricket match(he lives in the same colony) etc. So, by the time he starts the actual medical investigation, the symptoms would all have magically vanished that i would be left looking like a fool with all my complaints.

So, are my experiences with Cyprus doctors any better? Well, they are definitely more interesting. Cyprus doesn't have a medical college and for the matter of fact, there aren't many for other disciplines too. A good quality professional education is definitely not a thing of high priority for Cypriots, as most of the country directly or indirectly relies on tourism. Everyone who studies in a Cyprus college would be studying in a college which is in the top ten list of Cyprus!

Ok, back to doctors..Doctors in Cyprus are mostly educated in the UK or Greece and have laminated certificates hung in their clinics as proof and believe me, without this proof, it would be very difficult to trust them!

There is a general physician pretty "famous" with Amdocs employees because he is one of the few who accept our insurance claim forms directly without a need for paying a fee. Vidhya was having a headache with fever, cold etc. So, we go to this doctor. He asks hundreds of very related questions like "Do you have dogs at your workplace?", "Did you have a similar headache at exactly the same time last year?" and so on. Then she was taken to the "examining" room where there were examinations of the nose, eyes and mouth for around 10 mins. Finally, he gave the conclusion (almost with drums in the background) "Vidhya, you have common cold" !! When we get ready to leave his clinic, he comes all the way to the front door, says "goodbye", "keep in touch" .Of all the people, you are the last one i want to keep in touch!

Few weeks back, we had been to an "allergy specialist" because Vidhya had been reacting very badly (started sneezing) whenever i went within a few feet of her! This guy looked a thorough professional, took out a piece of paper and started writing Vidhya's biography (same set of very related questions). Then, he said that he needed few minutes time to analyse what he had written to arrive at a conclusion.
Few minutes later he said "You have three main problems: sneezing, swollen nose, dry eyes. Of the three which would you like to be cured ?" !!! I hope this guy hadn't done his education from Tamil Nadu State board where you have a choice to write either your name or your friend's name on the answer sheet.

But, the best part about a visit to a doctor in Cyprus is something else. Imagine the frustration you would go through while waiting for your turn back in India. Here, the clinics have loads of celebrity magazines stacked for you to spend time reading. Well, most of these magazines, back in India, would have been banned! So, while Vidhya is sneezing away next to me, I am like "Poor Angelina Jolie, she doesn't even have money to buy a full set of clothes!"

In Search of Aphrodite

"In Search of Aphrodite" was the "name" of the treasure hunt i conducted on 4th March, here in Amdocs. Though the actual treasure hunt had nothing much to do with Aphrodite, the build-up and the pre-puzzles were "themed" in a way.
This edition of the hunt (the last one was in November 2005) was much longer and it went for almost 8 long hours. Imagine going without food for 8 hours while being constantly battered with crazy puzzles! This was what the 40 participants went through.
We also had some "activities" which the teams had to do to get a particular clue eg: make 20 points within 3 attempts on a dart board, pot 3 balls on a pool table within a specified time etc. One activity was to build a cube from letters such that each side had a 4 lettered country name. This was to break the monotony of puzzle-solving.
I am going to convert most of the clues of the two treasure hunts into a web-friendly form and make it into an online hunt. Will update as soon as that is done.

Two photos from the event .

The winners (on the left) : Sashi, Cijo and Anurag

The runners-up : Sanjay, Nikhil and Ligy

Back from my brief hiatus

Was very busy the past few weeks in preparing for the treasure hunt "In search of Aphrodite". This is the second treasure hunt I have done here at Amdocs and both went on pretty well. The first one lasted for 6 hours and the one on 4th March went on for almost 8 hours!! But, it was pretty well received considering the usually lazy attitude of the people here :-)
I have also finally managed to get the menu items on the menu page (what you see on the sides of the blog). It took a lot of CSS-bashing to get this done.

So, what's on the cards for this site?

I plan to compile all the puzzles of the two treasure hunts into an online-hunt, one in which you crack the puzzles in sequence. This should be done in around a week or so, as it involves some amount of work making the clues web-friendly. You should get around two dozen clues to crack which should keep you busy for atleast a week, i guess.

After this is done, I plan to start work on the Cyprus section with info on some treks and walks ..

okay , enough of talking, time to get into some action ..