Finding Halila

Yesterday

Before Dr. Ghada Wahby started her lecture, she told us about her "most intimate Malaysian friend" who graduated with her. She told us that they have lost contact after her friend "Khalila" went back to Malaysia and there wasn't Facebook during their time so intercontinental communication was hard.

"I told every Malaysian students that I taught but there wasn't really anything they could do."

And so lecture started and this natural stalker was fired up to help her.

---

I was the last one to leave class and so approached her to ask more about her friend. Dr. Ghada immediately lit up at my question.

I told her it was possible to track her friend because "the Malaysian students in Egypt has strong connection with each other" confidently assuming she graduated along the infamous Kak Jat's batch.

She told me they graduated in October 1999 and I was aghast. First, Dr. Ghada looked younger than 35-ish and second, how am I going to track the batch before the 10-year gap of JPA sending students to Egypt?

But then I remembered dad showed me something on the MMC website thus I smiled confidently at her. We exchanged phone numbers and emails and she thanked me profusely.

Now to get started.

Today

My internet was as siput as possible so I borrowed Syaimaa's laptop prior to our lecture today. I told her what I was doing and we opened the MMC Registrar that kept all data on every single doctor licensed to work in Malaysia. Dad showed me this trick years ago for the public to check whether their doctor was a licensed practitioner or a fraud endangering their safety.

I searched for graduates from Cairo University and out popped 147 results.

Used the Ctrl+F function and typed in "Khalila" but none was found. Maybe I heard wrong so I varied to "Halila" and you know what, there was a single match! Alhamdulillah~

Third thing to cross-check was her date of registration for her first posting and the Halila we found registered with MMC on February 2000.

We hit the perfect match.

Just to be safe, we varied the spelling of her name to be sure that there wasn't a mistake done, haha.

I wrote down my confirmatory data and the address of Anaesthetic Department of HKL where she is currently based. Syaimaa' helped me search for the email and telephone number of the department so Dr. Ghada can contact her directly through the Head Department if needed.

We were giddy, it was a good work done. "This was too easy. How come the students before us didn't find this?" I grinned victoriously.

Syaimaa' replied that maybe they didn't think of doing what I did; checking directly with the MMC Registrar.

My innards swelled with pride. I thanked God for my dad and prayed He keeps him safe.

---

After lecture, I told Dr. Ghada what I did and what we found. Earlier she was skeptical but I assured her that the Dr. Halila we found "is the only licensed doctor named as such in all Malaysia graduating from Cairo University." Despite the lack of graduation year in the record, her registration date matched of the gap usual for overseas graduates.

She hugged me.

We promised to keep in touch and in spite of my throaty voice, I prayed Allah ease her in succeeding to find her long-lost "intimate friend".

#StalkerBerjaya