Went back JB to celebrate Father's Day. Although we say celebrate, actually it's more like my father pay and everyone go eat together haha. In the end it became a family gathering instead, since our family of 6 don't usually meet each other so often since I came to Singapore and my two sisters went out to work.
I reached JB around 11.30 in the morning, only to be told that my father's going to reach in like 1 hours time *_* In the end walked around City Square and got tempted to buy a lot of things. However in the end never buy anything haha... No money liao.
After that we went for lunch together. It has been so long since we had lunch together, plus the kuay teow is really yummy, lots of oysters. I love oysters, so YUM YUM. After lunch we went Tebrau City a.k.a. Jusco, walked around shopping for clothes and other things, then suddenly my brother said wanna go Red Box, so in we went! I sing sing and sing until my brother also cannot tahan... Super long never been in such a relaxing mood liao. Well, someone who doesn't really sing can sing until the sky falls when he decided to muahahahaha...
Around 7 we went to a restaurant for dinner :P Grandpa, grandma + a lot of people there. We talked and ate and talked and ate until everyone almost fainted. If only I don't have smoking cessation roadshow tomorrow, I'll follow them back and sleep in my bed for one night! Oh man I miss my bed... and my room!
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Friday, June 6, 2008
Happy Birthday Alvin!
Haha for once I'm early to wish someone. Been super busy lately that I'm lazy to update my blog. Preceptorship's going on alright, just that I'm kinda feeling a bit tired over the lack of human interaction (I talk to less than 20 ppl per day). Somehow my preceptor's still very wary of me haha, maybe I just suck. Too bad.
Anyway, back to the topic, Alvin, welcome to the club! :P It has been a wonderful 15-years-long friendship with you. Hence, I decided you deserved a full post from me for your birthday haha. After all that we've been through all these years, I'm really grateful that you're always there looking out for me and supported me. If not for you I think I wouldn't even think of skipping my primary 4 to begin with. To be honest I've always seen you as my perfect model of how a student should be, minus off the give-yourself-too-much-stress part. It's good to rely on yourself to do your stuff, but sometimes do let other people share your burden. It's always less painful if you have other people going through difficulties with you, at least you'll know that you'll have someone that you can rely on if you get into deep trouble.
Haha now the post sounds like you're going somewhere far far away lol. I better stop here before someone accuses me of cursing you. Anyway, don't keep too much to yourself, you can always talk to me if there's any shit rolling down the hill of drop from the sky, I'll always lend you both my ears. Don't stress about results, I'm quite sure I'm worse off than you haha. Time to withdraw myself from this colourful world and become a hermit.
Last but not least, tell me when you're going to be back in BP again k? Meet up sometime soon! I missed all the talk cock sessions and driving around searching for food :P
Anyway, back to the topic, Alvin, welcome to the club! :P It has been a wonderful 15-years-long friendship with you. Hence, I decided you deserved a full post from me for your birthday haha. After all that we've been through all these years, I'm really grateful that you're always there looking out for me and supported me. If not for you I think I wouldn't even think of skipping my primary 4 to begin with. To be honest I've always seen you as my perfect model of how a student should be, minus off the give-yourself-too-much-stress part. It's good to rely on yourself to do your stuff, but sometimes do let other people share your burden. It's always less painful if you have other people going through difficulties with you, at least you'll know that you'll have someone that you can rely on if you get into deep trouble.
Haha now the post sounds like you're going somewhere far far away lol. I better stop here before someone accuses me of cursing you. Anyway, don't keep too much to yourself, you can always talk to me if there's any shit rolling down the hill of drop from the sky, I'll always lend you both my ears. Don't stress about results, I'm quite sure I'm worse off than you haha. Time to withdraw myself from this colourful world and become a hermit.
Last but not least, tell me when you're going to be back in BP again k? Meet up sometime soon! I missed all the talk cock sessions and driving around searching for food :P
Friday, May 23, 2008
Happy Birthday Mum!
Before the day is over... allow me to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM!!!
Forgot I didn't make a blog entry about her birthday.... feel very bu siao now...
Going back early in the morning tomorrow (today?) to celebrate my mum's birthday. Really feel very bad for not calling home frequntly, maybe it's just guys... Anyway, God bless!
Forgot I didn't make a blog entry about her birthday.... feel very bu siao now...
Going back early in the morning tomorrow (today?) to celebrate my mum's birthday. Really feel very bad for not calling home frequntly, maybe it's just guys... Anyway, God bless!
More about preceptorship
After almost 2 weeks of preceptorship at Watsons, I've come to the following conclusions:
1. Retail pharmacy is not my cup of tea.
2. Singaporeans ARE really busy...
3. People QUESTIONS.
4. Doing business is UGLY...
5. Ethics don't work unless there's people willing to follow it.
6. Unreasonable people will always be unreasonable.
7. Singapore's standard of service is still far from perfect.
8. Sales reps are not always eloquent and know a lot about their products.
Why do I come to such conclusions? Firstly, I really enjoy slacking, but not to the extent of doing nothing while I'm supposed to be working. Sitting around doing nothing during some of the time I'm in the store just irritates me. I think I'd prefer the hospital style where I'm getting summoned around the clock. (But I still want my meal breaks)
Next, people who walk in to retail pharmacies really don't wait until you finish your counselling before they start to walk off. Most of the time you finished your counselling just nice when they're already at the counter.
About the questioning, I think some people don't really trust the pharmacist per se. You tell them it's for dry cough then they'll stand there for 5 mins trying to read through the box to prove to you that you got it wrong...
About the ugly side of business, one thing I don't really like. Some company actually asked the preceptee to call other companies to check on prices... Come one, wanna check price send someone over to copy isn't it faster? Exploting students like that is plain wrong. Unless, of course, the student did that voluntarily.
About ethics... Nothing much to say, self explainatory.
Some people are really super unreasonable. They can come into your store and demand that you have something right there right now even when you don't have the stock or cannot give it to him. When they can't get what they want they'll just scream at you... More information can be found on CP's blog.
There this patient which came in with a prescription a few days ago and my preceptor told him we don't keep the POM that he's given by the doctor. He told us that it's the 5th pharmacy that he went to on that day to try to get the medicine. I wonder why the other pharmacies can't just try to help him find out whether their branches keep the drug of concern. My preceptor helped him though, but the nearest branch that has it is Taka, so... as usual the customer is going to be super pissed off, although he didn't scream at us, but his tone suggests that he's super dissapointed with the pharmacies in Singapore. Oh, did I forget to say that he's a foreigner? There goes our reputation. So in the future nobody respects pharmacists you know who to blame.
So far 2 drug reps came to my store to promote their products. First one is some lady who just popped in and started preaching to us how great her products are before even like introduce who she is... I bet she's new... The second one came in today, a guy. He come in and try to explain to us how great his products are, I'm alright with his lack of continuous phrases, but apparently he didn't know a lot about his product. When my preceptor asked him one question, he does what most NS guys do. Taiji. So in the end the question is not addressed. This totally ruined my impression on drug reps. I always see them as someone eloquent and know a lot about their products so that they can push the products. Alas, the reality is always different from our imagination.
One more thing, after 1 week of MIAing, finally my preceptor is able to come for work. Super long never see him liao, almost forget how he looks like. At least he's recovering, thank God for that.
1. Retail pharmacy is not my cup of tea.
2. Singaporeans ARE really busy...
3. People QUESTIONS.
4. Doing business is UGLY...
5. Ethics don't work unless there's people willing to follow it.
6. Unreasonable people will always be unreasonable.
7. Singapore's standard of service is still far from perfect.
8. Sales reps are not always eloquent and know a lot about their products.
Why do I come to such conclusions? Firstly, I really enjoy slacking, but not to the extent of doing nothing while I'm supposed to be working. Sitting around doing nothing during some of the time I'm in the store just irritates me. I think I'd prefer the hospital style where I'm getting summoned around the clock. (But I still want my meal breaks)
Next, people who walk in to retail pharmacies really don't wait until you finish your counselling before they start to walk off. Most of the time you finished your counselling just nice when they're already at the counter.
About the questioning, I think some people don't really trust the pharmacist per se. You tell them it's for dry cough then they'll stand there for 5 mins trying to read through the box to prove to you that you got it wrong...
About the ugly side of business, one thing I don't really like. Some company actually asked the preceptee to call other companies to check on prices... Come one, wanna check price send someone over to copy isn't it faster? Exploting students like that is plain wrong. Unless, of course, the student did that voluntarily.
About ethics... Nothing much to say, self explainatory.
Some people are really super unreasonable. They can come into your store and demand that you have something right there right now even when you don't have the stock or cannot give it to him. When they can't get what they want they'll just scream at you... More information can be found on CP's blog.
There this patient which came in with a prescription a few days ago and my preceptor told him we don't keep the POM that he's given by the doctor. He told us that it's the 5th pharmacy that he went to on that day to try to get the medicine. I wonder why the other pharmacies can't just try to help him find out whether their branches keep the drug of concern. My preceptor helped him though, but the nearest branch that has it is Taka, so... as usual the customer is going to be super pissed off, although he didn't scream at us, but his tone suggests that he's super dissapointed with the pharmacies in Singapore. Oh, did I forget to say that he's a foreigner? There goes our reputation. So in the future nobody respects pharmacists you know who to blame.
So far 2 drug reps came to my store to promote their products. First one is some lady who just popped in and started preaching to us how great her products are before even like introduce who she is... I bet she's new... The second one came in today, a guy. He come in and try to explain to us how great his products are, I'm alright with his lack of continuous phrases, but apparently he didn't know a lot about his product. When my preceptor asked him one question, he does what most NS guys do. Taiji. So in the end the question is not addressed. This totally ruined my impression on drug reps. I always see them as someone eloquent and know a lot about their products so that they can push the products. Alas, the reality is always different from our imagination.
One more thing, after 1 week of MIAing, finally my preceptor is able to come for work. Super long never see him liao, almost forget how he looks like. At least he's recovering, thank God for that.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
First 3 days of preceptorship
After 3 days of preceptorship, finally I have time to blog about it.
On the first day, we had some sort like a briefing from the coordinator at SMU Watson's training room. The refreshment is nice :P Deli France sandwiches and something that looks like muffin. And they shifted me to Raffles City instead of the original Marina Square. Guess what? The change in schedule is because my preceptor's getting married and she's going for her honeymoon =_=! The first day was alright, but my preceptor is still in Malaysia attending some seminar. So, the pharmacist on duty, who are a year 6, took me and Andrew in. She's like soooo senior-like, didn't give me the impression that we're students and she's a "preceptor". Nothing very interesting happen on the first day... except you consider meeting the Operations Director face to face on the first day counts...totally didn't expected it, at least she has the i'm-a-super-high-ranking-person aura. That aside, Andrew and I got shocked when we found out that Kai Tong (the year 6 I'm talking about) got 1st class honors... Nearly fainted when I discovered it. I always have the impression that those super zai one likes to go hospital rather than retail.
For the second day, finally I met my preceptor, Toh Yen. He's a super nice guy, although I admit that I was a bit intimidated by him at first coz he looked like super stern when I first met him. Anyway, he taught us a lot regarding export sales, prescriptions, receiving of goods, some basic counseling points for cold and allergy, eye drops blah blah blah and a lot more. Basically the second day didn't do much also, bumming around reading the product inserts and shadowing him (literally) when he counsels. I dispense my first Zyrtec on the 2nd day! Yay! But seriously, dunno why, it's super tiring on the second day. I'm like fell asleep at 9.30pm.. Totally missed my QT, faints. Oh ya, it's Toh Yen's birthday on the second day, so the preceptorship coordinator came down to the store and treated all of us lunch :P YumYum.
Today, which is the third day, is a lot better. We started on checking the prices of all the OTC and P item manually as well as electronically to make sure all the prices are accurate. Raffles City is really full of people having cold. Our cold medicines are literally flying off the shelves. I saw one lady take panadol like free... Shocked when she just walked to the counter and sweep the whole lot of panadol into her basket... Some Caucasian guy walked in today for antibiotic, and our preceptor asked us to find out what's his indication for 1g per day for two days. In the end, we found out that it's for STD.... And that guy doesn't look like he got STD at all... except his face being super red, maybe from too much exposure to Singapore's sun. Managed to secretly do some OTC counseling when my preceptor went in to the office haha. Hopefully I'm qualified enough to counsel and make recommendations for patients soon. Had free lunch again today courtesy of Toh Yen :P YumYumYum KFC and Pizza Hut.
Tomorrow's my off day! At least I can have time to really sit down and try to read up on cold and allergy before Friday so that I can answer the question asked by the preceptor. I really thank God for arrangement of my preceptorship. Good preceptor + Friendly staff + Polite customers = Happy Chern Yih!
On the first day, we had some sort like a briefing from the coordinator at SMU Watson's training room. The refreshment is nice :P Deli France sandwiches and something that looks like muffin. And they shifted me to Raffles City instead of the original Marina Square. Guess what? The change in schedule is because my preceptor's getting married and she's going for her honeymoon =_=! The first day was alright, but my preceptor is still in Malaysia attending some seminar. So, the pharmacist on duty, who are a year 6, took me and Andrew in. She's like soooo senior-like, didn't give me the impression that we're students and she's a "preceptor". Nothing very interesting happen on the first day... except you consider meeting the Operations Director face to face on the first day counts...totally didn't expected it, at least she has the i'm-a-super-high-ranking-person aura. That aside, Andrew and I got shocked when we found out that Kai Tong (the year 6 I'm talking about) got 1st class honors... Nearly fainted when I discovered it. I always have the impression that those super zai one likes to go hospital rather than retail.
For the second day, finally I met my preceptor, Toh Yen. He's a super nice guy, although I admit that I was a bit intimidated by him at first coz he looked like super stern when I first met him. Anyway, he taught us a lot regarding export sales, prescriptions, receiving of goods, some basic counseling points for cold and allergy, eye drops blah blah blah and a lot more. Basically the second day didn't do much also, bumming around reading the product inserts and shadowing him (literally) when he counsels. I dispense my first Zyrtec on the 2nd day! Yay! But seriously, dunno why, it's super tiring on the second day. I'm like fell asleep at 9.30pm.. Totally missed my QT, faints. Oh ya, it's Toh Yen's birthday on the second day, so the preceptorship coordinator came down to the store and treated all of us lunch :P YumYum.
Today, which is the third day, is a lot better. We started on checking the prices of all the OTC and P item manually as well as electronically to make sure all the prices are accurate. Raffles City is really full of people having cold. Our cold medicines are literally flying off the shelves. I saw one lady take panadol like free... Shocked when she just walked to the counter and sweep the whole lot of panadol into her basket... Some Caucasian guy walked in today for antibiotic, and our preceptor asked us to find out what's his indication for 1g per day for two days. In the end, we found out that it's for STD.... And that guy doesn't look like he got STD at all... except his face being super red, maybe from too much exposure to Singapore's sun. Managed to secretly do some OTC counseling when my preceptor went in to the office haha. Hopefully I'm qualified enough to counsel and make recommendations for patients soon. Had free lunch again today courtesy of Toh Yen :P YumYumYum KFC and Pizza Hut.
Tomorrow's my off day! At least I can have time to really sit down and try to read up on cold and allergy before Friday so that I can answer the question asked by the preceptor. I really thank God for arrangement of my preceptorship. Good preceptor + Friendly staff + Polite customers = Happy Chern Yih!
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