It's exam time again! Just had my Analytical Biochemistry paper yesterday. (Don't ask...)
A couple of years ago, I wouldn't have, in my wildest dreams, imagined that I would be studying something like Analytical Biochemistry. Well... it's not that I love it or anything... in fact, I'm only taking it because I have to. The thing is, I just didn't foresee myself walking this path towards this area of science. I've always thought that I would have gone into some design related field. It's weird how life turns out huh? You just got to take things with a pinch of Sodium Chloride cos you never know what's going to happen next.
Speaking of Sodium Chloride (that's salt for you non-Chemistry inclined people like myself), I'd like to say that the title for this entry comes courtesy of Alisa and Sufiyan. You see... after our paper yesterday, we decided to find somewhere to study for tomorrow's Pharmacology paper. We eventually settled down at Tanglin Mall McDonalds. Before we started studying, we had lunch and somehow, Alisa got a serving of fries with an extra dose of Sodium Chloride. So there she was tapping and shaking each and every French fry to get rid of excess salt before eating it, much to the amusement of Sufiyan, who was the only one who noticed her actions. Way to go Alisa!
Speaking of McDonalds, I finally managed to register my EZ-link card for the McDonalds membership thingie. I was logging into Wireless @ SG and since we were accessing it from the McDonalds hot spot, a McDonalds ad popped up and I noticed a link to the membership registration site where they added a link to retrieve lost registration details! So I clicked on it, got my details emailed to me, went to the in-store booth to complete my registration and Bob's your uncle. I'm a Member! I even got 500 points free, which according to Alisa, is worth a McChicken at least.
However, after my registration, not once did the guy behind the counter ask if I was a member. I went to get a Hot Fudge Sundae and an Iced Latte on 2 separate occasions and didn't get to use my new status as a member. Since the amount of each purchase was less than 4 bucks, I didn't want to risk looking like a cheapskate so I kept my mouth shut.
Haven't blogged for sometime now... just a quick update of events that have occurred recently:
1. Celebrated the Mid-Autumn festival with My Aunts at Woodlands.
2. Met up with Lifen and the ol'gang at her place for one last BBQ before it goes En-Bloc.
3. Another friend turned lesbian. (Didn't come as much of a shock really.)
4. Surolan has left for Australia. *Sob*
5. Had a fabulous Halloween Party at the old Changi Chalet. Spookilly fun!
Among other news... I'm leaving my current job as a purchaser! In fact, my last day at work is next Saturday! It somehow didn't turn out as well as I'd hope it would be. Initially, I didn't want to go back into purchasing but I thought that perhaps a change of environment would bring out the fearsome deal making purchaser in me. Turns out I was wrong. I hated negotiating and bargaining, I dreaded meeting up with sales reps and instead of doing solely purchasing, I found that half the time I was compiling reports for stock takes and helping finance & corporate services to draw up quotations which, they always give to us at the last minute and expect it to completed miraculously in record time.
What's more, I was handling mostly urgent orders for the specialist clinics and the hosptal itself and you wouldn't believe the kind of urgency in which stocks are needed. Now you have to understand that the normal lead time for delivery of stocks is at least 2-3 days upon receiving the purchase order. The purchase order itself, is very easy to churn out. After lots of practice, I can easily churn out a purchase order within 1 minute. However, the paperwork accompanying each purchase order is intense! It has to be accompanied by a Purchase Order Report which contains the total amount of each purchase order generated for each center, as well as the cost savings that each transaction gives.
Just this aspect of the documentation takes at least 5 minutes per purchase order and that is if you are not being interrupted by phone calls or sales reps who like to pop in unannounced, ignoring the "No Admittance" sign on the door. And since I happen to be sitting right next to the door, I end up being the department receptionist. What's more, I usually don't get just one or two purchase orders. It usually comes in multiples of 10. Then, I have to get the purchase orders approved by my boss before I can fax each one individually to the vendors.
Now that you know how tedious the process is, I can get back to telling you about how much time I get to bring in stocks.
We have a major distributor, thankfully, who does deliveries to the hospital twice a day. They can process our orders so fast that even if we were to fax in an order in the morning, we usually can have the goods in by late afternoon or even before lunch if we ask for it first thing in the morning. However, not all our suppliers are like that. Some need at least 24 hours' notice.
So at first, my body generated a lot of adrenalin when I first received a request for certain drugs within a day. After a lot of running around for signatures and such, I grew to get used to such "I need this item today!" requests which occur at least 2-3 times a week. Then came the "I need this item within 4 hours!" and the "I need this item within 2 hours!".
This resulted in me begging and pleading with the suppliers for urgent deliveries and I can honestly tell you, my phone number is probably on the blacklist of those companies with caller ID. Each time I call a supplier with an urgent request, I get an earful from the person on the other line about how we are being unreasonable in our requests and a lecture on how we ought to stock up on certain drugs to prevent such things from happening again.
The thing about this is that it's not up to me to determine the amount of drugs to keep. In fact, I keep pushing for the dispensaries to keep more stocks but they just simply don't want to do so because every 3 months, we have a stock take and if they have too much stocks on hand, they have to write a report and it's just simply easier to make life more difficult for Julian than to write a report.
What's more, my agony doesn't stop with being lectured by the suppliers. I keep getting hounded by the people requesting for the drugs. Now I do not have any control over what time the stocks get delivered and once the drugs are out of the warehouse, neither do the vendors. It all depends on the delivery trucks. So you can imagine what happens. I get calls every 5 minutes asking if the drugs have arrived and that the patients are already waiting for the drugs, that the patients are getting angry... etc etc etc.
I mean... WTF DO YOU EXPECT ME TO DO???
As time progressed, cheerful outlook quickly turned to scathing sarcasm. For the last one month or so, my usual replies to "I need this drug by XXX!" would be one of the following:
1. Sure! Let me just pull it out of my ass.
2. You don't need [drug name]. Just give them Panadol.
I also resorted to venting my frustrations by stamping the word "URGENT" all over the purchase order. Something which the vendors found quite annoying.
A lot of urgent orders (and one seizure) later, I decided to call it quits.
It also just so happened that Jen asked if I knew of anyone who was interested in working in a pathology lab of another hospital... I jumped for it and went for an interview. Even before I was accepted for the position, I had already tendered my resignation for my current one. I actually felt more guilt than relief as our department was really shorthanded and my boss treated me very well. I think she had high hopes for me but I had to disappoint her. What's more, my new job would result in a pay cut from my current one but I'm willing to sacrifice as I don't think it is good for my mental health to stay on.
Somehow... I find myself soon to be drawing a salary equivalent to what I got when I first started working 5 years ago.
I hope I haven't made a mistake.
A couple of years ago, I wouldn't have, in my wildest dreams, imagined that I would be studying something like Analytical Biochemistry. Well... it's not that I love it or anything... in fact, I'm only taking it because I have to. The thing is, I just didn't foresee myself walking this path towards this area of science. I've always thought that I would have gone into some design related field. It's weird how life turns out huh? You just got to take things with a pinch of Sodium Chloride cos you never know what's going to happen next.
Speaking of Sodium Chloride (that's salt for you non-Chemistry inclined people like myself), I'd like to say that the title for this entry comes courtesy of Alisa and Sufiyan. You see... after our paper yesterday, we decided to find somewhere to study for tomorrow's Pharmacology paper. We eventually settled down at Tanglin Mall McDonalds. Before we started studying, we had lunch and somehow, Alisa got a serving of fries with an extra dose of Sodium Chloride. So there she was tapping and shaking each and every French fry to get rid of excess salt before eating it, much to the amusement of Sufiyan, who was the only one who noticed her actions. Way to go Alisa!
Speaking of McDonalds, I finally managed to register my EZ-link card for the McDonalds membership thingie. I was logging into Wireless @ SG and since we were accessing it from the McDonalds hot spot, a McDonalds ad popped up and I noticed a link to the membership registration site where they added a link to retrieve lost registration details! So I clicked on it, got my details emailed to me, went to the in-store booth to complete my registration and Bob's your uncle. I'm a Member! I even got 500 points free, which according to Alisa, is worth a McChicken at least.
However, after my registration, not once did the guy behind the counter ask if I was a member. I went to get a Hot Fudge Sundae and an Iced Latte on 2 separate occasions and didn't get to use my new status as a member. Since the amount of each purchase was less than 4 bucks, I didn't want to risk looking like a cheapskate so I kept my mouth shut.
Haven't blogged for sometime now... just a quick update of events that have occurred recently:
1. Celebrated the Mid-Autumn festival with My Aunts at Woodlands.
2. Met up with Lifen and the ol'gang at her place for one last BBQ before it goes En-Bloc.
3. Another friend turned lesbian. (Didn't come as much of a shock really.)
4. Surolan has left for Australia. *Sob*
5. Had a fabulous Halloween Party at the old Changi Chalet. Spookilly fun!
Among other news... I'm leaving my current job as a purchaser! In fact, my last day at work is next Saturday! It somehow didn't turn out as well as I'd hope it would be. Initially, I didn't want to go back into purchasing but I thought that perhaps a change of environment would bring out the fearsome deal making purchaser in me. Turns out I was wrong. I hated negotiating and bargaining, I dreaded meeting up with sales reps and instead of doing solely purchasing, I found that half the time I was compiling reports for stock takes and helping finance & corporate services to draw up quotations which, they always give to us at the last minute and expect it to completed miraculously in record time.
What's more, I was handling mostly urgent orders for the specialist clinics and the hosptal itself and you wouldn't believe the kind of urgency in which stocks are needed. Now you have to understand that the normal lead time for delivery of stocks is at least 2-3 days upon receiving the purchase order. The purchase order itself, is very easy to churn out. After lots of practice, I can easily churn out a purchase order within 1 minute. However, the paperwork accompanying each purchase order is intense! It has to be accompanied by a Purchase Order Report which contains the total amount of each purchase order generated for each center, as well as the cost savings that each transaction gives.
Just this aspect of the documentation takes at least 5 minutes per purchase order and that is if you are not being interrupted by phone calls or sales reps who like to pop in unannounced, ignoring the "No Admittance" sign on the door. And since I happen to be sitting right next to the door, I end up being the department receptionist. What's more, I usually don't get just one or two purchase orders. It usually comes in multiples of 10. Then, I have to get the purchase orders approved by my boss before I can fax each one individually to the vendors.
Now that you know how tedious the process is, I can get back to telling you about how much time I get to bring in stocks.
We have a major distributor, thankfully, who does deliveries to the hospital twice a day. They can process our orders so fast that even if we were to fax in an order in the morning, we usually can have the goods in by late afternoon or even before lunch if we ask for it first thing in the morning. However, not all our suppliers are like that. Some need at least 24 hours' notice.
So at first, my body generated a lot of adrenalin when I first received a request for certain drugs within a day. After a lot of running around for signatures and such, I grew to get used to such "I need this item today!" requests which occur at least 2-3 times a week. Then came the "I need this item within 4 hours!" and the "I need this item within 2 hours!".
This resulted in me begging and pleading with the suppliers for urgent deliveries and I can honestly tell you, my phone number is probably on the blacklist of those companies with caller ID. Each time I call a supplier with an urgent request, I get an earful from the person on the other line about how we are being unreasonable in our requests and a lecture on how we ought to stock up on certain drugs to prevent such things from happening again.
The thing about this is that it's not up to me to determine the amount of drugs to keep. In fact, I keep pushing for the dispensaries to keep more stocks but they just simply don't want to do so because every 3 months, we have a stock take and if they have too much stocks on hand, they have to write a report and it's just simply easier to make life more difficult for Julian than to write a report.
What's more, my agony doesn't stop with being lectured by the suppliers. I keep getting hounded by the people requesting for the drugs. Now I do not have any control over what time the stocks get delivered and once the drugs are out of the warehouse, neither do the vendors. It all depends on the delivery trucks. So you can imagine what happens. I get calls every 5 minutes asking if the drugs have arrived and that the patients are already waiting for the drugs, that the patients are getting angry... etc etc etc.
I mean... WTF DO YOU EXPECT ME TO DO???
As time progressed, cheerful outlook quickly turned to scathing sarcasm. For the last one month or so, my usual replies to "I need this drug by XXX!" would be one of the following:
1. Sure! Let me just pull it out of my ass.
2. You don't need [drug name]. Just give them Panadol.
I also resorted to venting my frustrations by stamping the word "URGENT" all over the purchase order. Something which the vendors found quite annoying.
A lot of urgent orders (and one seizure) later, I decided to call it quits.
It also just so happened that Jen asked if I knew of anyone who was interested in working in a pathology lab of another hospital... I jumped for it and went for an interview. Even before I was accepted for the position, I had already tendered my resignation for my current one. I actually felt more guilt than relief as our department was really shorthanded and my boss treated me very well. I think she had high hopes for me but I had to disappoint her. What's more, my new job would result in a pay cut from my current one but I'm willing to sacrifice as I don't think it is good for my mental health to stay on.
Somehow... I find myself soon to be drawing a salary equivalent to what I got when I first started working 5 years ago.
I hope I haven't made a mistake.
