Hours to Hanoi

Dear Diary,

I am actually typing on my father's small notebook (or some call it a netbook), trying to get used to it since I will be bringing it along with me to Hanoi tomorrow. Managed to complete packing my luggage. The 6pm Korean drama serial “Lovers in Paris” had its last episode earlier this evening. That kinda marked the end of my usual daily marathon of Korean dramas. When the 7pm “Hearts at Nineteen” was still on TV, I practically watched 2 hours of Korean drama everyday from 6 – 8pm. Anyway, good that all ended by tonight since I will be off to Vietnam tomorrow morning and when I return, the dance class which I signed up for should be starting very soon.

Earlier, I was reading a report of the Ministry of Health survey sent to me. It was the survey which we did some time in May 2007. A sample size of 976 pharmacy graduates from NUS class of 1970 to 2005. I am from the class of 2005, so my cohort was involved in this study. In a particular section on why we study pharmacy in the university, 49% said that they took up pharmacy because it is the next best choice after Medicine and Dentistry! Wah... that's a higher percentage that I expected. However, I have this feeling that this study cannot be extrapolated to the subsequent graduates because I sense that many pharmacy students in NUS now really study this course as their first choice.

According to the survey, 48% of the graduates are doing patient-care work and 37% doing pharmacy non-patient-care work. I actually fall under the category of the remaining 15% doing non-pharmacy professions! Then again, I was doing retail pharmacy when the survey was done in 2007. I have this feeling that the 15% had grown over the last one year. According to the survey, the graduates of class of 1981 are earning the most annually. Their median annual salary stands at about $140K. That means about $11.7K per month. Hmmm... not bad. They are probably about 52 years old now. 10% of the sample hold a post-graduate degree in pharmacy (eg. Masters, PhD or PharmD).

An interesting survey. A pharmacy friend dropped me an SMS yesterday to say that if I am going to contribute something to the pharmacy profession, she will be most willing to join me. Nice try there, haha... She probably will never get called up if she is waiting for me to initiate. NUS just started the process of collecting our CVs so as to us for our roles as preceptors for the year 2008. Better late than never, right?

Okay, just some sharing before I go and sleep, haha... To Hanoi with love! ;-)

God Bless,

Andrew