Lets the Conference Begin

Lush green scenery. That was what greeted me when I was driven from Kansai Airport to Kyoto, about an hour away. It was a crisp spring morning, temperature of 10 degrees outside. In the comfort of the car, the journey took me through the hills upon leaving Osaka. Nice and tranquil.

The journey in was also painless. A nice comfortable flight, and I managed to sleep for about 4 hours. The flight was only 6 hours long with a little helping hand from the tailwind. Not much turbulence, but the flight was full, with screaming children for good measure.

The immigrations and customs were fairly straight forward, possibly due to the time of the day - it was just before 7 when we rolled in.

Need to refresh when I check-in. Next would be the taxi ride to the Conference Centre. Hmm! I only have USD with me. Need to get hold of some Yen.

More on my Kyoto trip here.

Late Nights

It had been a busy couple of days and last night, I only got back home around 10 pm. It was nice to meet up with colleagues after a while, catching up on the gossips and all. As for today, few complications in the ward needing sorting out.

Last night, I was at a meeting discussing the upcoming society meeting in Penang late April. This was followed by a lecture given by a Professor from Athens, giving up updates on latest treatment for myeloma. Something I heard when I was in Atlanta in December, but the opportunity to ask question was priceless.

Then came dinner. And this was when the gossips came in. A few memorable stories I must say ......

Meet up at G Tower

I didn't even know that the G Tower, right opposite Ampang Park, next to the Tabung Haji building was actually a conference center and hotel. I thought it was more o an office building of sort.

Yesterday was the first time I set foot there. A nice but small hotel, but the conference facilities were OK. There were only three floors of accommodation, suitable for those coming for an overnight meeting from out of town. The catering was also pretty standard.

I had a small conference there, followed later in the afternoon by my council meeting. Getting there was pretty straight forward from Subang, although I was not able to join before lunch due to work commitments. I took the NPE, then turning towards SMART tunnel, and when I emerged on the Jalan Tun Razak exit, I was almost there already. Took me user 30 minutes even in the rain, and Saturday afternoon traffic.

Well, I was bored .....We had an update session on Haematology, and it was a joint meeting between the clinician and Haemato-Pathologist. Very interesting session although I found myself hard to concentrate late on a Saturday afternoon. But the suggestion of building a centralised Lymphoma Pathology Center brought me out of my slumber ..... For which I would reserve my thoughts for the time being.

Anyway, just to mention that G Tower was a nice venue. That's all.

Morning at Ara

I was called for a meeting this morning at the our new sister hospital at Ara Damansara and I must say that the place looked impressive. Supporting a huge lobby with comfortable sofa, everything looked spit and span.

According to the Director there, most of the system were in place but a few of the services were yet to be launched. My role there would be to oversee the transfusion service and to see any Harmatology referrals should there be any.

Driving there was surprisingly breezy this morning although this was not often the case. It took me close to half an hour to drive back from Ara to Subang Jaya, getting stuck at a few bottlenecks. This being one of the issue about seeing patients across there.

As a result, my morning start was delayed and a few of my patients had been waiting all morning for discharge. Sigh!

A Talk on a Sunday

Having a Medical Meeting a day before Ramadhan starts was never ideal. However, since I prepared for the initially planned meet before, it was hard to say no. The invitation was initially for the 10th July, but the venue being in KL Sentral - Le Meridien - having a meet a day after the then unpredictable Bersih rally, it appeared to be a bad idea. It was then postponed to the 31th July.

My talk was in the morning and the turn-out was a lot better than I expected. The topic covered was also pretty diverse, but ran the risk of being too varied. The crowd mainly consisted of the more junior doctors in training, so it was rather too specialized for most of them.

My topic was myeloma, and constraining the talk proved a challenge as I was not keen to dwell on things which were standard knowledge. I tried to introduce the new announcements and controversies, and sticking to 20 minutes and 40 slides was not easy. I therefore made the talk more focused around three main points, for clarity and economy of time.

I would have another meeting in the afternoon before calling it a day. Comparing the talk to the one I organized in UMMC last weekend was definitely an eye opener. We did not have the resources but I believe that if you concentrate on content, the meeting would be a success. And that was what apparent from the two meets, with a clearly different financial muscle backup. I also spent time discussing avenues of securing funding for my future talks as we had the capacity to identify relevant and interesting topics. I believe that clinician-lead meeting rather than one driven by the Pharmaceuticals is the way forward.