when life gives you lemon, make lemonade

I am in my last station! Finally! For those who are interested (or maybe not), my last station happened to be Cytotoxic Drug Reconstitution (CDR) / Oncology / Radiotherapy (RT). Yes, there are so many names even I don't even know what to say when I picked up the phone.

The best thing is that I have handed in all my logbooks last week! Finally I am rid of them. It was so stressful trying to fulfill them and then running all around HKL getting my preceptors to sign and assess me. I am very grateful that most of my preceptors has been lenient and extremely generous to lil ol' me =)

However, I still have 2 more clinical presentations to prepare. The first one will be next Wednesday. Wish me luck! *crosses fingers*. It has been delayed way too many times that I really hope I can do it soon. In fact, I am supposed to be studying about it right this moment *gulps*. As usual, procrastination. 

I am in a good mood today because I went shopping! Yays, the best way to take all my stress away. Awesome sale at Isetan =) Also, the Forever 21 boutique at Mid Valley is ginormous! Tricked my mom into buying this lovely sheer cardigan so I can borrow it for myself too lol. All I ended up getting for myself is this cute spike bracelet. 

Despite not reading any fiction books for years, I bought, "Fifty Shades of Grey". Heard it is quite good and a bit dark. Not sure it is the genre that I usually go for but I am giving it a try. Hoping that it is as good as it was reviewed. 

What else is up? Mel graduated from UCSI last week (congrats again!), Jo getting engaged at Maldives (congrats babes), and that almost half of HKL prps are going to Thailand in August. First up, I will be going with my uni friends. After that, on the same day I am leaving BKK, Nico is going there with her boyfriend. On yet the same day she is leaving BKK, Li Ling, Len, Jiaa Yin, Stephy, Carrie are all going there. Bern will be going to Chiangmai with her friends that same week. Coincidence? Or we all have the same thinking?

Still feeling lazy so I think I am going to go read my book and fall asleep in my comfortable bed. So good to be lazy but I think I will deeply regret it tomorrow when I start cramming for my work. Will post pics next time, although they will largely be from Instagram. I think I update myself more often there then on Facebook. Facebook is becoming scarier actually. Too many people have them lol.

misery

I know that miserable people begets misery. Unhappy people tend to make those around them unhappy too.

I was in a foul mood this morning. Instead of trying to cheer myself up, I end up making people around me get annoyed today.

Whenever any problem arises, I tend to run away from it. I distract myself to not think about it, to not face up to it. Like it will all go away if I ignored it. Instead, the problems pile up and becomes worse than before.

I keep reminding myself to not run away but it is so habitual of me, to find the easy way out. I can think of a million different things to distract myself.

In the end, I feel overwhelmed and stressed out.

Right now, I have so much things to do on my list and instead of studying, I am blogging. See?

What do I do...

Out of words

The reason I have abandaned blogging of late is because I have started my nightmare stretch of 3 of the most difficult stations in a row. I have survived 3 out of the 4 months. TDM, TPN and I have just finished my clinical attachment in medical ward. I would like to give my one cent about these challenging but interesting stations but not tonight.

Meanwhile. currently still obssessed over Instagram.

Lunch breaks on a Friday afternoon are a bliss since it is for 2 hours and 45 minutes. On that particular afternoon, we stayed in and just did our own "things".

Joanne, Stephanie and myself finally found the time to go to Fukuharu. It was quite hard to convince Stephy to go with us since she isn't such a huge fan of Japanese cuisine as much as Jo and myself. But I am glad she succumbed.

i'm singing the blues

I am getting lazier these days. I finally graduated from OPD! So glad it is over. It has been a bittersweet experience filling, counselling and dispensing to 1000+ patients a day. Needless to say, after finishing OPD I am no longer sick as well wtf.
I was just telling a friend how I have absolutely no life outside of work these days. On weekends, I would rather stay at home and surf online and sleep. Every time I make plans to go out but last minute I would change my mind. Now, since I am at TDM, I have to spend my weekends studying things that I have forgotten for more than a year already. Oh, and I have to work weekends too!
Sometimes, I don't even know why I bother to have so many apps in my phone. At the end of the day, I only access to few of them. One of these days, I am going to bring myself to clean up the gazillion apps that I no longer use.

Currently I am pretty addicted to Instagram:

One fine boring day at counselling room, I was so wuliao I arranged all our demo insulin. I am so amazed by how creative patients can get when it comes to modifying humulin penfill to fit inside Novopen (Pharmacy inside joke). I should have taken photo of the "modified" pen.

hard times

Yes, it has been awhile since I last updated. I seriously don't know the reason I have been so busy lately. Maybe I am also a little uninspired to blog after Chinese New Year. 

After spending a glorious 9-day break for CNY, I returned to HKL to start in a new department, PRIC aka Pharmacy Resources and Information Centre. Besides answering drug enquiries from public and hospital staff, we had do proforma and design brochures and bulletins as well. At times, we had to be send as relief to Orthopedic Pharmacy and Methadone Pharmacy when they are under staff. My first week there was pretty relaxing but the weeks that came were super busy as I tried to rush finishing my brochure and bulletins. All in all, I really enjoyed my time there. It was one department which I felt that everyone there are really really nice to PRPs and they do acknowledge us, not just when they need us to do work. But alas, since there were so many public holidays that ensued, I only spend 12 out of 20 days there. 

After having a comparatively "relaxing" time at PRIC, my next department was one I feared - Outpatient Pharmacy. Although I can learn so much things there, having so many patients everyday just made me so stressed out. Especially when they placed me at Counter B aka the "Problem" counter, the counter to clarify all the problematic prescriptions. Actually, 80% of the problems come from illegibility of handwriting. Yes, HKL is so primitive in the sense they still use manual prescriptions, requiring prescribers to write manually. Because of that, I feel there are more errors since not everyone can decipher the handwriting. Not only that, sometimes the strength written is not available, and no duration or frequency is written as well. I have been fortunate so far in the sense that I have not been scolded by any doctors yet. 

The biggest problem I have to deal with is dealing with impatient patients. How I wish patients can be more reasonable. Sometimes it is so difficult to call the doctors, especially during lunch hour or sometimes when they don't even picked up the phone. I really salute those pharmacists and pharmacy assistants who work at OPD because they have to deal with this kind of stuff on a daily basis. Everyday, I get to witness nasty and annoying patients. We don't gain any monetary profits from doing our service, but we want to ensure zero medication errors so please just let us do our jobs. Also, please understand we have policies to abide by. 

"UNCLE, WE CANNOT SUPPLY MORE THAN 2 MONTHS OF MEDICATIONS!!!!"

If I can do it, I will really shout at the patient. He was so nasty forcing me to break the rules. After talking to my superior about taking the rest of the supply of his medications at another hospital, again he became impatient and threaten to report me to my supervisor. I was like wtf? Did you not agreed to take your supply elsewhere? Why the sudden change? Some Malaysians need to learn decent manners.

But luckily, not all of them are like that. I have met some really nice and grateful patients. In return, I feel happy to serve them. I just wish my work can be appreciated more, I guess.

Random pics taken from my Instagram that I am currently addicted to:

Madam Kwan's banana fritters with ice-cream tops my list of favourite desserts ever!

one year ago #cny

As I was going through my CNY archives, I realized I did not blog about last year's CNY. Or did I? Surprisingly, since I thought I blogged about lots of things.

It has been some busy couple of weeks for me lately since I was stationed at Ward Supply, which supplies medicines to wards =.=! duh! HKL has about 32 wards and 28 medicine trolleys so it was total madness in the morning. Not to mentioned each PRP has to be in charge of dangerous drugs (DD) for 1 week. All the recordings and worries that they will not tally kept me in a stressful mood whole week. But that is all done for now because after CNY when I go back, I will be in a new station already. 

So before I want to start blogging about CNY2012, here are some recap of photos taken during CNY2011. My CNY week is usually pretty quiet since my hometown is in KL and my family members are not that many. I only visit my mom's side of the family. My late grandfather's siblings left are just his sister and his brother. Even that, my grand aunt's children are in Bangkok and they don't usually come back for CNY. So the only busy side is my late grandmother's siblings. 

my cousin's rabbit year inspired nails

Last year, on first day of CNY I did not know what to wear because out of all the things I bought, this was the only red item - the jacket. I know! How can I be so blur? #fail. My biggest splurges was this pair of black wedges and heart-shaped bag. My mom was very against me buying those shoes since she knew what I a klutz I am but I still bought them. #rebel.

CNY feast day one

new year, new resolutions 2012

Happy New Year 2012!

This is my first post for the new year. I wondered how did everyone celebrated their NYE? Usually, I just prefer staying at home, away from the sweaty crowds. But this year, I received an invitation for dinner at a friend's house. It was so much fun chit-chatting with my Form 6 classmates all night. Will post up the pics soon!

*********************

Here is a short update on my activities in the last month of 2011. Not much actually, I think I have grown old in the sense that I prefer spending my free time relaxing in the comfort of my own home rather than facing the crowds at the shopping mall. I was really tempted to join in the rush for the year-end sales but when I think about the crowd, the queues, the parking, etc. Maybe I am just getting old.

Just sometime last week, all the PRPs and also new FRPs were asked to attend orientation course at HKL. It was a full day event, with short talks given about each department. It is really interesting, the introductions each FRP gave about their respective departments. My only wish is for their talks to be longer and also, I wished they had given us this orientation sooner, instead of giving us after 4 months of work.

Joanne, a PRP friend was "distracted" during the talks. She sketched this and had each sea creature represent us. I thought it was kinda cute and funny;)

can the truth really set me free? (december)

Can you believe it took me 1 week just to finish this post?

***************

Yes, I am blogging finally.

Just completed my one month at the Pharmacy Store. Not too offend anyone but I felt like it is the place I learned the least from. 

Yesterday I had on-call at outpatient Pharmacy (on a Saturday T_________T). If possible, I don't ever want to do Saturday on-calls anymore. Omg, I have never seen so many patients ever since I started on-call. I was trying to help with filling (which I am awful at) and every time I tried to motivate myself to finish one pile of prescriptions, another pile will come and another and another. Finally I gave up and went to eat lunch. However, fortunately by evening, less people were coming already. Thank goodness.

After an exhausting day, I went to Sg Wang to have lunch with my extended family. The occasion? Relatives from Bangkok were in KL so we had a nice dinner at Esquire Kitchen. But that will be for another post.

Here are some pics from my phone:

#1: Xmas at Pavillion

Seriously, I think Pavilion has really outdone themselves with the Xmas decorations this time around. The place looks like a gorgeous Winter Wonderland. However, with the throngs of Xmas shoppers, it was tricky to get good shots of the decor without getting people inside the shots.

Hate my hunchback of notre dame pose in this pic, but it's the best I got. Must teach mom how to use iphone camera more often;)

If you have read my previous post, maybe you would have guessed which birthday present I went for ;P