Ruddle On The Road: Second Pan Arab Endodontic Conference 2012

I’m really happy today to spend just a few minutes and give you a little recap on a long, long trip that Phyllis and I took to the Middle East.  We’ve had many opportunities to travel extensively in our lives to virtually every continent on the planet and we’ve been to the Middle East before but this was a special trip because we hadn’t been there for some years. 

Let me give you just a little recap about some of the places and the people and the things that I experienced—that Phyllis and I experienced together during our trip.  Well, it was a two week trip that started on January 9.  We flew down to LAX and out of Los Angeles you can catch a direct flight to Dubai.  That would be our first destination and we were going to fly Air Emirates.  I would have to say, if you’re flying, you might want to consider Air Emirates because it is one of the better airlines we’ve ever flown.  It competes right up there with Singapore Airlines.  Obviously when you get on the plane and you’re going to be flying for 16 hours, it’s very important to make friends with the stewardesses.  They’re a delight to have around and especially when they’re courteous and polite and we had a remarkable trip over even though it was long. 

We took the polar route.  During the polar route, it was a really interesting journey to look down and fly over some of these areas at 30,000 feet, you can make out the continents perfectly.  But, our trip started and we basically took off and headed out, we took the polar route.  During that route, pretty much when you’re up over the North Pole you see nothing, but as we started to come on down into continental Europe, it was interesting flying right over some of the places that we all know so well and of course those places would include right over Copenhagen, hit the European continent, headed South over Germany.  Crossed Austria and finally Turkey and then we were flying directly over Iraq.  We could look down and see Najaf in the North and then we could see Fallujah and Baghdad.  As we headed South and approached the Persian Gulf, we could see Bosra right below us. 

Well, heading south, at about 600 miles an hour, you could see out the left window, to the east, Iran.  And of course looking out our west we could come over Kuwait.  We could look out and see Saudi Arabia, the little island of Bahrain and all this was nice because we were rapidly approaching our destination.  If you look at the Arabian Peninsula, there’s a little boot and Dubai is right on the toe of the boot.  It’s actually very close to the Straits of Vermouth which is a very politically hot topic right now in international discussions. 

Well, it was interesting arriving there at Dubai.  You came into the airport and we basically transferred to the hotel.  Dubai quickly said, is a desert city, on the water, that only a few years ago was more or less a little desert town.  Today it’s a phenomenal, architecturally splendid city and it has a lot of interesting architecture and it’s noted for its towers.  Of course, on the tower highlight, I would like to bring your attention to the Burj Khalifa which is the tallest tower in the world.   It was designed by a firm out of Chicago and to this day it’s up there, I don’t know about 2400 feet, roughly. 

Well, we went to our hotel, the Intercontinental Hotel and checked in.  Then, a little bit later went down to check out the ballroom where I’d be lecturing tomorrow.  That’s just something that Ruddle likes to do, to kind of have it in my mind.  It was Ballroom A.   So, on the way out of the Ballroom A, just taking that little look the night before the lecture, I ran into the very people that actually had invited me to come to Dubai and that was a thrill.  Because for the first time I met Sammy Chogle and my old friend Harold Goodis, and of course the President of the Pan-Arab Endodontic Dental Society, Zuhair Al-Khatib.  Zuhair was a really cool guy.  He was the second President of the Pan-Arab meeting and so these were nice guys and they were very cordial.  Of course, Harold and I knew each other and have known each other for 30 years as a Schilder graduate out of Boston University.  In fact, he’s at the Boston University of Dubai.  So, that’s what’s going on in Harold’s life. 

So, essentially I met these guys, went back to my room, had a little room service with Phyllis and the Congress began the next day.  It was really interesting to see the people participating in this Congress because it was a—quite a few well known names internationally, Leif Bakland from Loma Linda University was speaking on trauma.  Christine Sedgeley, the new Department Chairman of Endodontics at the Oregon Health Science Center.  She talked on disinfection and that was a very stimulating talk and the room was well received.  People really enjoyed hearing Leif and Christine.  Then my friend Ove Peters, he spoke about ProTaper, the number one file system in the world, and he did workshops on following days.  Ken Hargreaves, an old pal of mine who’s the editor of the Journal of Endodontics, he was over there lecturing on pain management and he is a fascinating guy to hear.  Very smart.  A nice way to tie science to clinical endodontics. 

Of course there were many other participants that spoke.  Many people from the Arab world and I made some new friends and learned quite a bit from some of those lectures.

Well, as most of these Congresses do, that night they wanted to do a really nice thing, so in conjunction with the Dubai Police Department, we were taken out on a very nice boat ride in the Harbor of Dubai and there was a spectacular fireworks show and I was very pleased to experience all of that, good meals and good dinners and of course, Zuhair, I’ll say his name again, I’m not so good with names.  You people know this that listen to me, but it’s Al-Khatib.  And, Zuhair is really a delightful person.  He has a family and he’s a remarkable clinician.  I know we’re going to hear more about him in the years ahead. 

Well, I gave my lecture on Day One and it was on WaveOne.  I had a packed room and everybody was excited about WaveOne and wanted to hear a little bit more about it because it’s relatively new internationally.  My second day, my assignment was disinfection so I spoke about the EndoActivator and presented all the most recent research and updates to a very packed room and it was thrilling how many people are embracing the EndoActivator in this part of the world. 

Of course there were workshops and that was the third day.  So, on the third day, Phyllis and I gave some workshops and they were filled.  What was remarkable is Zeiss was able to supply microscopes to every single student that participate in the workshops and so we had a lot of fun.

Well, that pretty much concluded our trip into the Intercontinental Hotel where this meeting was being held, there was just one more little highlight that’s meaningless to mention but I got a thrill out of it myself.  When we went to the Intercontinental Hotel, there was a Pakistani who was one of the door men.  This Pakistani was very, very tall and was a slight reminder of the Burj Khalifa, remember the tower I just mentioned?  Well, this door man stood 7’8”.  There is some dispute, but he’s either the first or the second tallest man in the world.  So, when this man greeted us and then helped us get our things into the car to head to the airport to head on to Jordan, it was a big thrill to see this guy and anyway, he stands out in my mind.  His facial features stand out in my mind as a remarkable example of the experiences that one encounters in international travel.