An Illustrative Entry

Dear Diary,

Happened to notice my left knee bruise… arrgghhh… although I don’t feel any pain except a dull ache when I compress it with my fingers, I am surprised that this bruise which I sustained during that shuttle-run fall is still around… rosy and bluish-black at the same time. Geezzz…. Am I getting older that healing is slower too? Hmm… I have to admit my stamina is not like before. These days, I hardly work over-time at my pharmacy and I was wondering how am I going to accommodate my incoming NUS pharmacy student’s schedule so as to synchronise with mine… hmmm… a little tricky but I hope I can give her a good weekend off at times. =) Anyway, another preceptor’s student will also follow me for a couple of days next week. I dropped them an email to say hi… Well, let’s see if we can recapture the spirit of last year, hahaha… No exhibitions or showrooms or a library or a Raffles’ Place branch to bring her to… Never-mind… maybe some other branches. I can easily arrange for that, haha… Intending to include her in some of the smoking cessation road shows too… but I myself am giving those a miss, haha… quite tired of them already.

I think my brain is becoming more like a sieve than a sponge. I really hope I have some remnants of pharmacology in my brain… you know, those alpha-1, beta-2, histamine-2, noradrenergic, 5-HT receptors blah blah blah… May have to do some revision to brush them up but with all the notes I made from last year still intact, I am a little lazy to browse through those notes again… haha… Then again, although I have a lousy history of multi-tasking… I am surprised today that I dispensed some medication while thinking of other issues at the same time. So much so that when the patient left my dispensary, I wondered what I told her… oops! I guess that is how knowledge becomes part of you. You practically recite or rather… regurgitate them like you do with liturgy, hahaha… Okay just to illustrate… I am always so pleased with myself when I catch the bus home. It almost makes me feel that my physics teacher in college did not waste her time teaching me although I went on to do a chemistry/biology based profession subsequently.

For example… tonight… I was exhausted and looking at the signboard… 15 minutes before my bus would arrive…. Sianz…. I want to go home fast and with a seat to sit… yeah… that’s me. ;-) So the bus came after eternity… the crowd began to build up at the edge of the pavement. People are beginning to jostle… I looked. There… a car parked illegally parallel to the bus berth! What sort of a driver was that? I mentally expected the approaching bus to swerve towards the pavement at the earliest moment. Looking further down, there was no other bus tailing behind it, which meant that it could choose to stop earlier too. So I mentally pictured the angle it entered the berth and even a last minute attempt to proceed further can be influenced. I stood confidently amongst the pushing crowd. Time seemed to stop still… At the exact moment and precise timing, I lifted my hand out of the crowd before the halting bus. Upon seeing my hand, I assumed the driver wouldn’t want to bang it… so he braked … I put my hand down gently so that his braking wouldn’t be too abrupt and the door of the bus was stopped just in front of me. It opened and I was the first to board. It is really part of my lifestyle to be boarding buses first… hahaha… ;-) So the moral of the story is that though we may have assimilated knowledge so much that we thought we lose it… in reality, we become one with it, hahaha… Okay, just some rubbish talk here, hee…

On a more serious note, I am expecting a legislative change on the Pharmacy Act in the middle of the second half of this year. After the governmental sector increased the pay of pharmacists twice sharply, I suspect they may be trying to curb this trend with a loosening of criteria to practise pharmacy in Singapore. Yes, they may just lower the entry requirements and allow pharmacy graduates from the regional pharmacy schools to practise in Singapore if they can find an institution to take them for pre-registration training. In this way, many of the Filipino pharmacy technicians working in our hospitals and retail sectors will now be able to be full-fledged pharmacists and stop the recent trend of pay increment in the pharmacy patient-care sector. Hence, do expect a stagnation of pharmacist’s pay once again.

So do we get bitter? Of course not! We really need to reinvent our profession. No point to keep pushing for full-dispensing rights when it is futile. Repackage the initiative and press on. I hope that the pharmacy board sees that the only way forward is to push for partial dispensing rights and may I suggest… the exclusive right to dispense chronic medications will be that of the pharmacists’? The doctors should continue to prescribe and dispense acute medications like symptomatic treatments and anti-infectives. Maybe I should bring this up my pharmacy department’s echelon and see what they say, hahaha… I believe we should always act early because we don’t always have opportunity!

I was thinking of last month when I had to go for some military training in the evenings. I always seemed to bump into my neighbour. We stayed just side-by-side in our apartments but yet when I first bumped into her as she was returning from school and I going for camp, she was looking at me with that blank look but I smiled at her. Think she kinda tried to react but we just past by… yeah… The next time I bumped into her again as we crossed the carpark of the nearby Catholic Church, I went smiled and waved… at least, she smiled back. Then third time, I asked her, “Hey, you are from VJC? Good job!” I think that question is super lame because she was indeed in VJC uniform and I would have stumble if she replied, “No, I am not.” Hahaha… She smiled and said, “yeah.” The fourth and fifth time, I don’t know what to say… so just smile lor…. It just occurred to me that I don’t even know the name of my own neighbour although we lived side-by-side for 13 years! I told myself that the next time I bump into her (which I expected to), I would ask her name. One evening, two evenings, three evenings… We never crossed paths since I made that resolution. How ironic. Sometimes, we just have to do things fast and not procrastinate. Opportunity may just knock only once. Miss it and that’s it! So whether it is fighting for your profession, your career, your life, your dream, your girl or whatever… be brave and do it! Haha… I really need to walk the talk! =)

Okay, that’s all for the randomness of this blog entry… the rarr-ing, the emo-ing… yes, trying to keep up with the slang of the younger generation. Goodnight! ;-)

God Bless,

Andrew