One Rochester

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http://www.onerochester.com

Today I had a sort of “culture” training for NUH. They have specific standards on how you should act, how you should look, etc. I think it’s good for people who have never worked in healthcare before but I think some of it is repetitive for people who have worked in healthcare for a while already. Today’s training was about how to empathaize with patients and to understand how they feel when coming to the hospital. It’s like guidelines on how to act, how to speak, how to look, etc. It was interesting but also a bit weird considering some of those things (like empathy) can’t really be taught, I think it’s more of something ingrained in your personality. But I guess it gives new employees an idea of the “corporate culture” and what is expected of them.

We ended early because tomorrow is a public holiday and many people wanted to get home to be with family.

The Taiwanese crew at INSEAD planned a dinner at One Rochester which is a restaurant within walking distance from our condo. Not sure what to classify the food as but definitely not Asian.

I started out with a Dragonfruit Martini which was pretty light and tasted more like fruit punch rather than dragonfruit.

We had some foie gras which was pretty good although the toast was a bit much for such a small piece of foie gras. One order was actually served in two portions.

Ron and I shared two main entrees. One was the ribeye and the other carbonara. The ribeye was really tender and with great sauce. It was served with a sweet potatoe puree and green beans. The carbonara had a cute presentation in 3 bowls. It was a bit salty for my taste, I think because of all the cheese, but the sausage was yummy.

The service for our group wasn’t so good though. One person who ordered got his meal way before everyone else and there were two people who had to wait over 45 minutes for their dish. Some of us had already finished eating by the time they were served their food, even though they ordered at the same time as everyone else. The waitstaff was asked about the orders numerous times and after a while, they began to ignore our group and weren’t prompt with removing plates as they had before the complaints. Eventually though the assitant manager deducted the amount for those late entrees but it took a bit of convincing. He blamed things like they had a small kitchen or that those people ordered after everyone else (which was not true). I guess at least they made it right in the end but those two people where starving. I think about if he or she was diabetic and on insulin, if their meals arrived so late and they had already given themselves the insulin shot, they would’ve gone hypoglycemic and fainted…

Well anyways… afterwards we headed to bar of the week at No. 5 Emerald Hill. They had martinis, 2 for $15. I got to try the pandan martini and lychee martini. The pandan was too strong for me and not much pandan flavor. The lychee was very sweet and served with lychee fruit so was pretty good. The place had free peanuts and you throw the shells on the floor, it was so difficult to stop eating those peanuts! Oh, the bartender upstairs was pretty cool as he had lots of “flair” (I think that’s what it’s called) with his tricks when making drinks (eg, throwing around bottles, flipping cups, shaking drinks).

It was nice to get off work early, have a good dinner, and have a chance to chat with partners I haven’t seen all week. Tomorrow is the public holiday “Deepavali” so I have the day off. Yay!

Good ol’ Monday

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Lucky for us, the rain stopped this morning but boy it was thundering pretty hard and the lightning was a bit scary. It was hard to fall asleep at first but it started to die down around midnight.

So today I had the first day of staff orientation. The HR dept had speakers come in to talk about the hospital’s mission statement, our benefits, the CEO’s message, etc etc. We had two “tea breaks” for snacks and coffee or tea. It was pretty nice to break up the monotony of all the speakers. I found out that NUH is only 22 years old, a pretty young hospital. But they’ve been the FIRST in Singapore in many areas like the FIRST to receive JCI accredidation, the FIRST bone marrow transplant, the FIRST liver transplant, and many more.

In the afternoon we did the “NUH Amazing Race”. In a group of 6 persons, we went from floor to floor, building to building looking for all the answers to the clues. We even had to take pictures. Unfortunately we did not win but I learned more about the layout of the hospital and where certain things are.

When I got home I decided to try making some brownies in our new tabletop convection oven. One of the partners is leaving this week to return to France so there was a going away BBQ planned tonight. So I used that as my excuse to make the brownies so that we wouldn’t be eating the whole batch by ourselves.

It’s not so easy to keep flour and sugar here so for now I’ll probably be using mixes. So today’s brownies used Betty Crocker Fudge Brownie Mix and I added 1 cup of chocolate chips and 1 bag full of cashew nuts. I used 3 eggs instead of 2 to make it more cake-like. The cashew nuts are not a normal nut to add to brownies but that’s what Ron bought me so I thought I’d just try it.

Surprisingly they turned out pretty well and the saltiness of the cashews tasted pretty good with the sweetness of the brownies. I brought 3/4 of the batch down to the BBQ and saved 1/4 for us.

I’m excited to start baking some more things like muffins and other cakes… I’ll keep you posted! =D

The weekends are so short…

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It’s raining with thunder and lightning… I hope it doesn’t last until the morning…

Today we spent the day shopping again… Ron and Justine wanted to get their notes from Period 1 hard bound to be saved for reference and hopefully future use so apparently a good place is Queensway Shopping Center. We ended up heading out around 1pm because it took Ron a long time to sort through and arrange his notes.

Once we got there we stopped by one of the print shops and it cost $6 for a thick package of paper (about 2 inches) to be sewn together and protected with plastic sheets, it was only $4.50 for thinner packets. Sounds pretty cheap as when I did it in the US at places like Office Depot or Kinko’s, it was around $10 for plastic spiral binding. But they wouldn’t be ready right away but to be picked up next week so we went in search of lunch.

We ended up across the street at the Anchor Point shopping center. It’s being remodeled so there weren’t many stores but there was a food court in the basement. Surprisingly it was pretty busy without the shopping mall open yet but then Ikea is across the street and there is a Cold Storage grocery store in the basement as well.

There were a few stores so we wandered around and ended up at a VCD/DVD store. We ended up buying some Korean drama series for me which will hopefully help me to learn Mandarin as well since it’s been translated then subtitled in English. I usually don’t watch these things but I’m really interested in one about cooking and traditional Chinese medicine, aka “Jewel in the Palace“. The other is a TV series which preceded the movie “Hwang Jin Yi” which I just watched in the theater. I’m going to start with these so that I can move on to other series that look interesting… it’s relatively cheap to buy them too, they’re 40-50SGD for many many hours of entertainment. I’m going to have to limit myself though so that I can study for my license exam in December.

We then went back to Queensway Shopping Center to look for shoes and Ron eventually did find a pair that he liked and I also bought something for myself. I hope it will help with the pain I’ve been having in my feet after wearing not so comfortable shoes the last week at work.

After successfully buying shoes, we caught a taxi to IMM to go to the Giant Hypermarket to buy a microwave. Our microwave has been non-functional since September and we’ve been waiting for approval from our rental agent to buy a new microwave. It took her a while to reach an agreement with the landlady but they finally approved a $150 budget for a new microwave. We ended up buying a $60 microwave and a $60 convection oven instead of a single appliance. A combined one cost more than $300. We’re still under their budget of $150 so I hope they’ll pay for both because I really want the oven to be able to bake brownies and cookies! If they won’t pay for it, I guess we’re out $60.

When we got home, we set up our appliances and Ron made us dinner with leftovers from the BBQ and now I’m finally caught up with our blog! It took me so long to update pics from our Vietnam trip last week… well, Yay for me! I hope you enjoy reading and looking at pictures 😀

If there’s anything about Singapore you wish I’d write about, leave a comment or send me a message, I’ll try to accomodate. I already have a bit of a list to work on so that I’ll have something to write about during my “boring” days.

This next week I’ll be at hospital orientation which I heard should be fun but I’ll let you know 😀

Foodie Day

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Gosh today we ate too much!

We had dim sum planned with Ron’s classmates at Imperial Treasure Teochew Cuisine at Takashimaya on Orchard Rd. The service was fabulous and the food excellent. We haven’t had dim sum since we’ve been in Singapore so it was a nice change of pace and not too expensive. We were sufficiently stuffed for 24SGD per person which is cheaper than what we would’ve paid in the US for dim sum.

All the drinks and dim sum we shared:

We did a bit of shopping around the area as their was a Sanrio sale at Takashimaya and Ron needed new shoes. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the Sanrio stuff but I at least got myself a water bottle for work that I can use for water and coffee. We did not have any luck buying shoes for Ron even though we went to Takashimaya, Isetan, Lucky Plaza, and Tang’s. We had dinner to go to at 6:30pm so we left to head towards Suntec City to a restaurant called Kuishin Bo. It’s a Japanese buffet. Ron’s classmate Hiroshi arranged this dinner to celebrate another classmate Jackson’s birthday which they did not get to celebrate during finals.

They had lots and lots of variety: udon, soba, teppanyaki, chawanmushi, sushi, snow crab, ice cream, mochi, tempura, etc. It was about 40SGD per person for Sat night and it includes soft drinks (alcohol is extra). Again, buffets I can’t resist so I stuffed myself to the brim then had a plate of desserts and also carrot cake for the birthday boy.

My plates of yummy food:

The birthday boy’s surprise birthday cake:

I am suffering from food coma. Time to vegetate.

Friday night BBQ

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I think my posts are getting more brief and not so exciting… it must be work. I’ll prob be posting less often as I realize it does take a long long time to get things set up. I don’t know how some people can post more than one time a day. Maybe I’m just not that good at on the spot thinking.

Anyways, let’s see, Thursday was Hello Kitty’s birthday! Happy Birthday Hello Kitty 🙂 No, I didn’t do anything to celebrate but just wanted to wish her a happy day! I was at work and spent time on the Level 8 Cancer Centre which is different because these are private pay patients. One of the bills for the patient I processed was over $10K! Yikes! But they usually do have some help in paying for it later, it’s not quite completely out of pocket.

Today I went back to the Level 4 Cancer Centre which was busy during the morning, slow in the afternoon, but then busy again right at closing. There were lots of last minute orders in the last hour of the day. It’s always like that on a Friday afternoon, you wish things could get done earlier but there’s always that rush no matter how much you plan ahead.

We had a BBQ here at our complex which is usually bring your own food and drinks. We had quite an excess of food and drinks though, I’m surprised people did not eat more. It was good to see all the partners again since I hadn’t seen most of them for the whole week. We usually have morning Aqua-Gym and Partner’s Lunch or other social events but I haven’t been able to attend and some things were cancelled this week. Tonight was going to be the Monsoon Ball but has been moved to November 23rd (due to the recent tragedies). Instead there was a BBQ and to also celebrate a classmate’s birthday, he got dunked in the pool.

It was nice to be at home though so I could easily flop into bed 😛