triple i medicine symposium

PPIM-SC (students chapter) UIA Kuantan organized 'TRIPLE I MEDICINE SYMPOSIUM' last saturday and sunday, 27th-28th of September. ISLAMICIZATION, INTEGRATION AND INTERNALIZATION in the medical practice.

After months of planning, the day finally came and about 120 medical students from UKM, UPM, IMU, KUIM, IIUM matriclulation centre and several overseas students still in their holidays gathered in IIUM Kulliyyah of Medicine. the amount of participants was a record in itself. we had a tough time promoting the programme to the UIA students since many don't seem much interested in these things. it's always the same faces attending every time.

Originally, it was supposed to focus on 'women's health' having Dr Har, an eminent O&G specialist in mind, but later it was changed to 'Securing the lineage' and then everything was centered at that.

Overall, the program went well despite all of its shortcomings. in the initial stages, the main hurdles were finding suitable accomodation for the outside participants and sponsorship. UIA could just not accomodate more than 30 people for the lack of rooms. the new buildings are still unfinished and will take some time. after many turned down requests, finally, one school agreed to let us use their hostel. it was by far the cheapest and most affordable. getting participants to come was another thing but alhamdulillah, the response was quite overwhelming.

for this programme, i was assigned the post of assistant head comm of Special task- a first for me. i like trying out new things although mistakes are inevitable during the process. and i make enuf mistakes to embarrass me a year. the name tags, certificates, files, souveneirs, guest house for speakers, and transportation. seems easy? now i know better.

after delegating the work to all subcomms, i found myself handling most of 'em save for the first two items. it was an experience doing some of them like booking transport and the guest house and scouting for decent files. the day before the program, most of the items on my to do list was done, or so i thought. i should have scrutinized the list more carefully. i'd overlooked several things.

Dr Har called the night before the program to say she couldn't make it. We were certainly not expecting that. i was flabbergasted. alhamdulillah Dr Melor could replace her at the last minute though it could never be the same as if given by the original speaker. i wasn't worried at all on friday night thinking that i'd settled all i could.

the morning of the program i woke up late only to find most of the participants already arrived. files were with me and i was late. i know, i'm terrible. owh, did i mention that the files were empty except for 4 sheets of a4 paper. yup, there was no tentative coz i thought that Mok would be handling that. it turned out that he wasn't and everyone said 'tu memang keje special task'. drat, tulah, assume lagi. then and there i had to solve the problem. the name tags were okay but the committes and participants looked similar and people couldn't differentiate them. the names on them were hardly readable. ain't my fault. the design was totally azfan's part. i only helped with the cutting and laminating.

later we had to give out all the handouts that should have been in the file in the first place. menambahkan keje sendri je. i also forgot to provide a tray for the souveneirs. cam sempoi je bagi the cenderahati out of a bag... owh i do overlook these small protocol things.

that night, shuk, the director asked me to buy another 3 souveneirs for the following day. where was i supposed to get 'em at such short notice. i called kak ita, the coop girl and she said that the shop at the mahallat would be open until ten. it was raining hard so i had to go by car. i grabbed kak asma and asked her to teman me. we had to get kak jan's car keys from a pharmacy student who had a revisison class at that time. boy, was i embarrassed to interrupt that class. the mahallat coop didn't sell the things we wanted and we had to go to Tunas Manja, a supermarket nearby. alhamdulillah we made it in time just before it closed. choosing the right souveneir which matched our budget was another thing. i missed the whole forum.

the next day, the programme continued with talks and ended with a resolution. after the program, we went through the evaluation forms and had to admit most of the weaknesses pointed out by the participants. the food? where do i start? it was terrible- sikit, and not yummy at all. never again will we use the same catering provider. many commented that we were too informal and some suggested that we learn protocols from other organisations.

i guess, for a uia-level program, we did okay but for a national program like this one, we sucked quite badly. i guess we'll just have to hold our heads high and accept our weaknesses remembering to never repeat them next time. yep, next time, tak leh serik. "never give up, never surrender". hehe, that line's from the movie Galaxy Quest :)

p.s... kak ngah messaged last night and said that my niece has been named AISYAH ALHUMAIRA'.