About Me

Let me take this opportunity to introduce myself to you all.

My name is Ali Nasser, born in 1992. 

I am now living in the beautiful county of Cornwall, the south-western corner of the UK (~5 hours drive from my home in London). My home now is Truro, a charming little City where I am working now as a Foundation Dentist in General Dental Practice serving the NHS. 

I’ve completed my training at The Royal London Dental Institute, which is located in Whitechapel, East London. Graduating in the summer of 2020 (amidst the coronavirus global pandemic). 

The Royal London Dental School is a part of Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, which itself is a part of Queen Mary University of London. 

I have served as the President of the Dental Society during my third year of training (2017-2018).

I was born in Ashford (Middlesex) which is just west of London and have lived in a town called Staines for most of my life but have recently just moved out of that house. I now live in a small flat in Fulham, West London. Although I was born and bred here in the UK (so am technically British), I’m originally from Iraq. The last time I visited Iraq was back in 2001 (before the invasion) but hopefully, in the future, I will be able to go back to visit.

I won’t go into unnecessary details about my life but here’s a little bit:

My Family Unit:

I’m lucky to have two amazing younger brothers Hussein and Omar – there’s only 24 months between each of us so we are really close.

• There’s Hussein, he is a medical doctor. Having spent 6 years at Birmingham University where he completed his medical school training as well as an intercalated degree in global health. He then completed his post-qualification two years as a junior doctors working on the Academic Foundation Programme in Bristol. Following that, he is now working as an academic research fellow in Ophthalmology and Artificial Intelligence. He is hoping to specialise in ophthalmology – he ranked 35th in the country on his first round of applying for specialty training and was offered a 7 year training post in Manchester, but he decided to reject this and reapply in the hopes he can rank higher to secure a registrar training position in either Bristol or London. He’s a super high achiever, probably one of the smartest people I know personally being a serious bookworm – one of my greatest inspirations. 
• There’s Omar, he’s training to be an architect. After finishing his A-Levels he did a foundation art course in London and has now completed part I of the architecture course at Oxford Brooke’s University. Having spent two years working in Film & TV, he has now returned to Oxford as of 2020 to complete his Masters degree in Architecture (i.e. part II of his architecture training). Architecture training is long, very long; longer than either medicine or dentistry – it takes 7 years in total to qualify as an architect!

And we are so lucky to have such a wonderful mother who has always been there for us. She’s my rock, my inspiration, my best friend and so much more.

My mum qualified as a medical doctor at university in Iraq, but didn’t work for long as a doctor when she moved to the UK before she had my brothers and I and became a full-time parent. She now lives and works in London as a physician associate within general medical practice. 

Here’s a bit about me aside from my obvious passion for dentistry:

I’m obsessed with sport, health and fitness

• I do some form of excercise every day. 
• I love to run
  • I’ve done the Paris and London Marathons and many half marathons
  • My next big goal is to have completed an IronMan triathlon before I turn 35. I will start by working towards completing an IronMan 70.3 (i.e. a half IronMan) 
• I also love cycling. I usually commute on my road bike on weekdays and enjoy longer leisure rides on weekends. 
• My football team is Fulham FC whom I support and follow, but I would not describe myself as a hugely devoted fan. 
• Since 2020, I have become a yogi, albeit a rather inflexible one. I enjoy daily practices at home and love the physical practice, along with the meditative branches of yoga which have enriched my life enormously. 

It’s a relatively new hobby but I’m starting to get really into photography. At the moment I have a really good digital compact Sony camera (the Sony DSC HX90), a GoPro Hero 5 action camera as well as a Nikon D5600 DSLR with a 35mm Nikkor lens and a Sigma 105mm macro lens. I also take photographs on my iPhone 11 which is always in my pocket. 

• I love urban photography
  • The symmetry
  • The grey colour palette
  • Capturing old and new 
  • Playing with long exposure times to show movement in a still image
• I love portrait photography
• I also enjoy nature/adventure photography

I have serious wanderlust! I’m very lucky to have been able to travel to so many wonderful places in the world and the list I have of places I want to visit next is ridiculously long.

Linked with my love for travel is my great interest in languages and different cultures. I speak English, Arabic, Spanish and some Italian and French. I’d love to get better at Italian and French in the next few years so I can become a fluent speaker and the next language I want to learn is German!

I’m a huge foodie! There are very few foods I dislike. I love:

• Experiencing the endless food establishments all over London – you can never get bored with the variety. If you know where to go – there are foods from all over the globe!
• Borough market and all the other wonderful food markets
• Experimenting in my kitchen at home – finding recipes online and trying to make them. I spend most of my weekday evenings in the kitchen cooking for myself and family. 

I am a bookworm. I love reading and typically get through a few books every month. Genres I enjoy include non-fiction. self-improvement books, novels and as a complete dork, I also do spend a fair amount of time reading dental textbooks. In addition to reading, I also now consume a lot of books via Audible, which I have a subscription too allowing me to listen to books on my commutes or whilst enjoying a long walk.

Not sure what else to put here so I’ll stop here.

There’s another post that I decided to split into two parts: “Life Before Dental School – Part 1” and “Life Before Dental School – Part 2”  in which I go into details about what I was doing before I started at dental school as a 23 year old in September 2015.