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we also have an award for the shortest time spent in the Magic Kingdom.....


Chris you have a good chance....

G,day G,day mate, I reckon I could qualify for that. I did 2 weeks in the early 80,s at the MOD Hospital by the " Rocket Roundabout" in Jeddah. The Saudi [censored] in charge was called Zacharias and apparently he thought I was a Jew. !! A Pox on him. Ha Ha.

Nice try, Mate ... but I suspect we're really talking about total time spent, in aggregate.

Surely you haven't forgotten Jubail? And ... the Hera, and Taif. And (dare I mention it) ... Onaiza?

Come to think of it, the shortest reign of destruction was probably by one of the guys I escorted to the airport at Abha back in 90/91! No names, no Pack Drill, as "they" say.

Thinking a bit more about those days ... I reckon it would be more use to compare notes about some of the more "interesting" (and usually, out of the way) hospitals.

For instance, does anyone else recall Zahran Al-Janoub (no power in the village)? Or even Tatleeth (no phones), Sarat Abidah, Muhayl, or Marjardah? Ballasmar (where they built the hospital and then started looking for a source of water), Al-Namas, Biljurashi (I could go on, but shall resist the temptation)?

How about the old hospital at Abha (one of the first in the Kingdom, equipped by Al-Gosaibi, and bombed by the Egyptian Air Force ... not whilst I was there, I hasten to add)? And ... the old Khamis Civil Hospital?

Anyone else remember the Al-Huwaylat Hospital in Jubail (the only hospital of any size I know of that came in bits on the back of trucks and was bolted together)?

And has anyone (else) been to the oil company hospital at Khafji (I found two knocked out Iraqi APC's sitting in the desert nearby)? And the G-100 on the other side of town (complete with shell holes from the so-called First Gulf War)?

Is nostalgia a thing of the past? Sigh!

We will have to have an annual Magic Kingdom award ceremony.

any other categories we can nominate?

How about one for the longest time spent in Jail?

Umish,
My mate could be nominated for closest to death experience,he was in a radar bunker near Jeddah when the Israelis were flying down to Entebbe and asked him to switch it off,he off course said no and they explained that if he didn't they would just take the whole installation out in about 30 seconds!

How about a nomination for the largest Bonus (tip) received?

Tony, for your information Zakaria was removed from his post this year. All the vendors he did business with held parties to celebrate.

We did have one guy in the early eighties in Tabuk, lasted about 6 weeks never heard of again. Knew nothing about biomed but always answered that he knew about high voltage transformers.

Tabuk was one of the (few) places that I never made it to, regrettably

But at another job site, I was once sent a "biomed" whose previous life had included being a "anti-Bilharzia spray man" in Jizan! He was a great guy, but didn't know much about things like electrical safety, unfortunately!