It has been a hard week for me being on-call. I’ve had disrupted sleep most nights and been stressed. I don’t know how pharmacists here deal with this type of work. My heart races each time the pager goes off and I worry that I won’t be able to answer the question posed to me. So far, I think I’ve been blessed to have the other pharmacists and the pharmacy assistants and technicians to help me.

Yesterday, I worked and also we got called back to the hospital to make an emergency chemotherapy at 8:30pm. My poor pharmacy assistant had to come back to prepare it even though she was already called in for the morning and she will be called back again tonight. She was called in on Saturday because Monday is a public holiday so the lab pharmacy is closed, she had to come in to help make the total parenteral nutrition (TPN) bags for the long weekend. She has to come in today as well because there is chemotherapy that cannot be made so far in advance, if it was made on Saturday, it would expire before the Monday administration. So we tried to make yesterday short, we finished in less than one hour since it was a simple preparation.

Last night I was paged at 3:40am asking if we had a supply of a very expensive medication. Thank goodness the A&E Pharmacy technician was able to confirm we had the drug and let me know the cost so I could inform the ordering doctor. But it’s hard being awoken at that time and then trying to get back to sleep.

I ended up sleeping until after 12. Although I was tired, I didn’t want this on-call duty to take over my life. We planned to go to the Cartier International Polo Tournament at the Singapore Polo Club. Ron received an invitation from INSEAD for the event a few weeks ago and it sounded interesting since we’d never watched polo before and it was free!

We arrived a bit early, around 2:30pm, but the game wasn’t to start until 5pm. But there was an exhibition game and a trick show so we went down to the field where the free seating was to have a few drinks and have some food. There was a buffet for $20 which had salad, vegetable lasagna, meat balls, lemongrass fish, five spice chicken, cinnamon roll, panna cotta, and apricot crepes.

Here’s the empty field:

It was really hot and humid so thank goodness we could at least sit underneath this tent and there were fans… only this missing were those misters to keep us cooler. There was a nice breeze so it wasn’t too bad.

There was an exhibition game, we think featuring the younger players of the club:

The horses were walking right in front of us and we noticed their nicely braided tails. Elina likened them to girls with long hair when they play sports, usually with tied up hair so it doesn’t bother your face.

The horses were really beautiful:

Ron and I patiently waiting for the match to start:

After the exhibition game, they had a tricks show. This guy was the one who waved the flag to start. The mound of sand next to him either held a target for the rider to spear or a handkerchief for the rider to pick up.

This was the first trick, the man standing while riding really fast:

This trick has the handkerchief on that mound of sand and the rider has to lean down low to grab it, he does it three times in one ride.

If I was the horse, I’d be scared and it’d be hard to counterweight the person leaning to one side.

Before the actual game started, a band of bagpipes brought the teams onto the field:

The game begins!

The game ends with Singapore victorious 7 to 4!

The awards ceremony followed. They gave awards away to the man and women with the best hats. Plus of course prizes to the teams.

I went to go pet a lovely horse. She was very frisky. The handler said because it was feeding time. She sniffed my hand and I pet her neck. She’d just had a bath so was a bit moist, at least I thought it was sweat from running around the polo field.

It was a lovely afternoon. I still don’t know much about polo but it looks like a hard sport considering you’re on a horse that is running really fast and you have to use this stick to hit a ball across the field and into a goal.

Have a bit of a headache right now so am looking forward to going to sleep. Tomorrow is a public holiday so I have the day off and I’m going to hand off the on-call pager and laptop to the next person in the evening. Our on-call is Monday 8:30am until the next Monday 8:30am. I was almost going to keep it for an extra day but I really need a good night’s rest. With the jet lag for 2 weeks and now being awoken almost every night, I feel like I’m going to get sick soon.

I hope tonight will be okay…