All in a Week

Dear Diary,

It is raining and I can’t go for my usual Sunday evening run. Oh well… so I am stuck at home, in front of the computer. It is just so strange that I don’t really have much to write about over these few days. I guess recounting daily events have kinda become repetitive. If you are a working adult, you will probably talk about your work or your customers or your colleagues or your bosses…. As a student, it would be exams, outings, birthday celebrations… Then again, most blogs are as stated above anyway. =P

For the past week, there were quite a number of interesting incidents including myself reluctantly doing a 10-min survey and was awfully surprised to be handed $40 cash as a reward. In fact, did another unrelated survey questionnaire and got $100 from it. Hmmm… $140 in all for this week. How timely… because I attended a colleague’s wedding dinner at the former Concorde Hotel on Wednesday evening. As much as I love to congratulate many friends’ on their marriages, invitations to wedding dinners can be pretty painful affairs… especially for the pocket. Normally, we do not budget such expenses from our normal monthly income.

Regarding customer contacts, I identified an allergic reaction. Asked that person to stop the prescribed Indomethacin for her son and sold her certirizine to reduce the periorbital oedema around son’s eyes. Then another came with massive widespread pruritus and redness… I suspected a probable heat rash and administered an anti-histamine. She came back with gratitude the next day. Yet another fan! =) Talking about female fans, I am getting scared at times. There is one who always talk to me in that flirtatious manner and kept talking about her vaginal problems. Oh man… I really felt sexually harassed. I can now understand how a female encountering a perverted man feel. “Suffocating” is the word. Guess what, she wanted me to do a medicine review for her… and she did not know what are the names of her medicines. Geesshhhh… She said she would come again! This medicine review campaign is fast becoming a counselling trap. A trap for the counsellor. =( Earlier on Tuesday, there was one lady who arranged for a medicine review appointment and eventually all she did was telling me why she is on anti-depressants when she is not depressed. Then she continued telling me about her life in the most depressing way. Sigh…

Now, two medicine review appointments next week. One of them looked genuine until my pharmacist friend who happened to pop by to ask me for lunch yesterday, asked me why the lady kept seeking clarification again and again if I would be the one doing the counselling. Hmmm… Oh well, we will see. Personally, I just feel that the public still does not really know the role a pharmacist play and what medicine review is all about. Some colleague even told me that many booked medicine reviews to get freebies which are worth more than the consultation fees of $2. Singaporeans indeed!

On the social front, gave a treat to a friend at Fish & Co (Centrepoint) on Thursday evening. We sat in that restaurant the longest… from 6.45pm to 9.15pm. Other customers came later and left earlier than us. Tried to comfort and advise her a little… can’t really do much. Somehow, felt that I couldn’t change her mindset and is genuinely worried that she might just hurt herself again in that doomed relationship (at least in her parents’ perception, her friends’ and my perception too). Maybe I would never understand what she has gone through. Love is just such a theoretical abstract to me. Why? I am pretty good at “diagnosing” the love ills but in practice, you can call me a dud.

A college classmate paid me a visit on Friday and so did a former receptionist from TTSH Outpatient pharmacy on Saturday. Even an administrator from Pharmaceutical Society of Singapore (PSS) came along and chat with me a little. Did not really communicate with her before except through emails. Know her by sight though. Quite nice to see all of them on those separate occasions. I am quite worried for my college classmate. Just have a bad premonition of the motivational workshop he attended because they employed some radically strange exercises. Can’t really baby-sit people anymore. Frankly, I think I am getting a little apathetic towards people in my busyness. This is not good actually. I remembered my college days which I would stay back after school to counsel or even evangelise to some friends. In the university, I proactively called people on their phones and chat. Pray for them and accompany them for their hospital appointments. Console and advise and be the listening buddy. Motivate and encourage them. All these things, now seem so foreign to me.

Even for myself, I have lapsed into religious apathy. However, I am fast coming out of it (I hope so). I can’t just stay stagnant. Despite the reinforcing of my faith in Christ Jesus in recent times, Christian apology has caused some paradigm shift in me. It can be quite an unnerving experience actually. Suddenly, I realise that living out my faith devotedly may even mean taking drastic steps in my life. Steps that I thought I took but maybe I never actually did. I remembered when I was in secondary three, just converted to Anglican Christianity… I wrote into my English journal about how I felt that I could not discount Catholicism. My English language teacher, coincidentally an Anglican, gently rebuked me. She was fiercely a Protestant Anglican while I have always been an Ecumenical Anglican. Recently, after years of dormancy, I really wonder if the Catholicism which stems from the ancient church of the apostles is the one that teaches the fullness of the Gospel. Just that hesitancy and thought is already quite unbecoming of a member of a largely Protestant-inclined Anglican community in Singapore. Denominational issues will have to take a back seat for now temporarily. Would “invincible ignorance” be a better choice? Maybe just not probe and just presume and assume and deduce… whatever. Yet I know that if I can’t get answers to such, I would not be satisfied.

I must first rekindle the fire and passion to talk to people about Jesus Christ who is the Son of God who died for the sins of mankind because of His love for us. His sacrifice will always remind me that there is no difficulty we cannot endure as there is always hope for one who trusts his life in God.

God Bless,

Andrew