Yum Yum Thai and Peaberry & Pretzel on Sunset Way

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We had quite the dinner tonight. This was our second visit to Yum Yum Thai on Sunset Way near Clementi Rd. Joyce joined us this time for dinner because we both has this briefing meeting for next week’s new pharmacist pledge ceremony. It’s very similar to our “Oath of a Pharmacist” that we take during our first year of pharmacy school and at graduation except that this is a more formal ceremony. The ceremony is next Thursday so hopefully I’ll have some pictures then.

Anyways, for dinner, we had the traditional Pad Thai:

Fried vegetarian spring rolls:

Spicy chicken:

Pomelo salad (one of my favorites!):

Steamed scallops with chili sauce. This dish didn’t have much flavor and I didn’t really enjoy the chili sauce.:

Dinner was very filling but we saved room for dessert since while walking to the Yum Yum Thai, we spotted Peaberry & Pretzel and their desserts looked fabulous!

We had the fruit panna cotta, it was delicious!

Then something called “Super 7” which is 7 types of sorbet. From 12 o’clock and clockwise: lychee, mango, coconut, strawberry, lime, passion fruit, and dark chocolate.

Oh so good… we can’t eat like this everyday.

Lunch at Coffee Bean and IMM Shopping

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I am glad today was the last day of my on-call. I handed off the pager to the next pharmacist this evening at 5pm. I had three more calls today, one at 3am, one at 9am, and one at 4:30pm… I couldn’t easily get back to sleep this morning and got woken up again by the morning page. I really don’t know how the pharmacists here can handle this. If I was working a graveyard shift and had to answer drug information questions while on shift, I’m fine but to be woken up abruptly by a beeper and have to be coherent to whoever is on the phone is tough. I’m looking forward to a good night’s sleep tonight.

Today is actually Vesak Day which is a public holiday in Singapore so I didn’t have to go into work today. It’s sometimes called “Buddha’s Birthday” but is actually a celebration of the birth, enlightenment, and passing of Gautama Buddha. Each religion here has at least one celebration that is a national public holiday.

But although I didn’t have to go into work, I decided I’d head out with Ron to do some studying. He still had class in the evening and had some work to do as well. I took the opportunity to finish reading the notes on breast cancer that my boss let me borrow and also to read up on Bangkok since we’re going there next weekend!

We had lunch at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf at Holland Village before we started studying.

I had the chicken shiitake mushroom fusilli. I used my camera phone so it’s a bit fuzzy. The pasta was very creamy and had way too much shredded parmesan cheese. The toast was also stale tasting. The portion was well sized though, perhaps a bit too much and the sauce was actually quite good.

Ron had the Chinese chicken salad which had a bit too much salad dressing, the lettuce was coated with it.

We stayed at Coffee Bean until I had to go meet up with the next on-call pharmacist and Ron went to class.

I met up with the pharmacist at the IMM Building to hand off the pager, laptop, keys, and other documents. Afterwards, I headed inside for some retail therapy and shopped away for 3 hours. Next week starts the Great Singapore Sale but there were a ton of pre-sales, many things were already 50% off. The stores were very crowded. I can’t imagine what it will be like when the real sale starts on the 23rd of May (it lasts through 20th July 2008).

Now it’s time to get a good night’s sleep.

Cartier International Polo Tournament

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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…

Swensen’s Holland Village

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Tonight I went to Swensen’s at Holland Village for the farewell party of some of my colleagues. A pharmacist is returning to Australia. One pharmacy assistant is returning to Malaysia and the other pharmacy assistant is furthering her career and moving onto another job. It’s a bit sad to see them go but to make things less sad, we had a this dinner to celebrate their time with NUH. It’s a bit of a shock that everyone is departing around the same time.

I had my trusty on-call laptop with me and of course get paged right before we ordered… asking how to dilute amphotericin B (Ampho-Terrible) and how fast to run over. But I guess a simple question like that is better than a supply question.

I treated myself to a steak sandwich served with criss-cut fries and cole slaw. The meat was a bit tough but the sourdough bread and fries were very nice.

After our main courses, we shared desserts. The hot banana crumble was SO good! But I was way too stuffed to finish all… the vanilla ice cream and the pastry bottom were the best! It comes out on a hot plate and the server pours the bananas and cream over it… sizzling hot!

The rest of the crew shared the “Earthquake”, 8 scoops of ice cream.

Not sure if it compares to Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco… I think their “Earthquake” is much bigger…

But we all had a good time and are not all too stuffed.

Oishi Pizza Take 2

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Aiya, this week is gonna be crazy, I just know it.

So in Singapore, since hospital inpatient pharmacies are not open 24 hours, after-hours there is always one pharmaicst on-call for all types of inquiries (ie, supply questions, compatibility, dilution, etc). If you’re on-call, it’s for 7 days and Monday was my first day. I thought I’d get away easy because I went up until 10pm with no pages then I got a doozy of a page looking for a drug I had no idea was available at NUH or even in Singapore! It took few hours to resolve but lucky for me, the drug was available and the patient was able to start their first dose. I’m glad for the help I received from the senior staff.

I went to bed quite late then woke up early this morning to give a presentation to the pharmacists. I gave a adverse drug reaction (ADR) case presentation about rhabdomyolysis. We have these weekly presentations on Tuesday morning and everyone who attends and turns in the quiz gets CE credit. They are either journal clubs, ADRs, or disease/condition presentations given by physicians or pharmacists. Not that many people came this morning but I understand everyone is busy.

So I’m pooped today and Ron ordered pizza for home. We thought we’d try out Oishi Pizza again.

We tried the Chicken Ham & Shiitake pizza. The crust was a bit tough this time around, you had to chew a bit to make it manageable enough to swallow. This pizza was a bit sweet for me, had teriyaki sauce on it or something.

The second pizza we had was the Kimchee Chicken pizza. The kimchee was sour like it should be and the pizza had some sort of mayo like sauce on it that was a bit weird. same thing with the crust as the first one, a bit tough.

I still want to try the unagi pizza but if the crust is like this, maybe not…