Tuesday, September 23, 1997
Back To the Sand
Dunes
by Hardeep Dhindsa
([email protected])
After seven months of trying to practice eye medicine in the U.S., I am about to reenter the U.S. expatriate parallel universe, the same realm where the writer of a previous fribble, Mike Williams, exists. The only difference is that where I am going -- Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- there is no free Internet access. (There is, however, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Cheesecake Factory, Ace Hardware, Toys 'R' Us, and Fuddrucker's.)
In other words, my daily habit of going to the Fool website is about to become incredibly expensive. So I will have to visit my favorite website much less frequently. It's going to be rough. Where else am I going to find insightful and current investment advice and folks who can counter the wit of Alan Abelson (being that Barron's will be my only source of investment information over there)?
Fixing my sights on the sand dunes in the distance instead of the daily fluctuations of the stock ticker on CNBC will probably be healthier for me and my portfolio -- and a lot more Foolish, too.
The top five things I am going to miss here in the good ol' U.S. of A. are The Motley Fool, NPR radio (especially Terry Gross's Fresh Air interviews and Cartalk), Border's bookstore (a weekly excursion there is much more rewarding than daily visits to Amazon.com), Starbucks coffee, and the Sunday edition of the New York Times. These are the things that give great pleasure and reward while living in the U.S. These are the cultural icons of the '90s.
It's too bad these pleasures don't compensate for the Byzantine and bizarre controls imposed on medical practices in the U.S. over the past few years. So I'm off (again) to the King Khaled Eye Specialist Hospital where, unencumbered by HMOs, restrictive insurance regulations, and the threat of malpractice, I can concentrate on quality care for my patients and their retinas -- you know, that thin piece of tissue lining the back of the eye that functions like the film in a camera.
Good luck to all the folks at the Motley Fool who have provided (and continue to provide) me and other Fools all over the world with an invaluable education in investment strategies. The withdrawal pains are already starting.
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