Bells

There is a huge convent about four minutes walk from my house. It is surrounded by a massive stone wall. Sometimes when I walk past the wall a large dog barks. He makes me nervous. The bells ring every day at 4:30. I can hear them from my desk and the ringing interrupts me when I hear it. The bells just rang.

I thought you should know.

Met another Canadian here in Perth

Craig had some friends over last night. One of them was a Canadian girl who is here on a one year work visa. She's a nurse and is working at one of the local private hospitals. She had some interesting things to say about Perth. I asked her how the private hospital compared to the Canadian public system and I was really surprised to hear her say that the hospital system here is about ten years behind the Canadian system. One example she gave was that the nurse to patient ratio in Canada is 1:4 and here it is 1:10. How is that even possible? Its a private hospital so I'd hate to see what the public system looks like. She also said that back home she is a regular nurse but here she is treated like a head nurse because she has so much more clinical knowledge than the other nurses. Strange. Nursing is a three year undergraduate degree here so maybe that extra year of training in the Canada makes all the difference.

Nice to hear another Canadian perspective on Perth.

End of classes and internets

Well, I've made it through the first term of classes. We have a week off for exams now. I think my last exam is on the 14th or 15th. Then its time to get a job of some kind. There were 40 students in the MPharm programme when we started. There were a few drop outs the first week. Then randomly one girl dropped out about half way through the term. Every more strange... someone dropped out last week. Who drops out on the last week of a term? Oh well.

Anyway, Danielle and I took a bus ride downtown today to check out some stores. I was happy to take the day off from classes. I might even take tomorrow off.

We've run out of high speed internet for this month. I think we get more bandwidth on the 3rd of November. What a joke. I still can't believe broadband internet is not unlimited here. The ISP offters no unlimited bandwidth package.

Its been raining all day. Very cold and windy.

Compounding exam Part VI and HJ's

Well, I managed to pass the compounding exam the second time around. I’m glad to be done with that lab. Also, this past Monday we had an oral exam with fake pharmacy scenarios involving role playing. It was stressful, difficult and awkward but I managed to pass this exam also.

This Thursday is the last day of classes. Then I have a few days off to study for finals which start early in November. I’m really getting burnt out so I can’t wait to be done with this trimester.

I really have nothing exciting to blog about. I’ve been studying too much. Today after school Danielle and I went for a bike ride to Hungry Jacks (aka: HJ’s) because I needed a break. For those of you who don’t know Hungry Jack’s is actually Burger King – same store decorations and same menu. When I first landed in Sydney there was an HJ’s in the terminal and it made me feel like I was on another planet. That was a sad moment.

Compounding Exam Part IV

So, yesterday was my second attempt at the compounding exam. The preparations were difficult but I think I will pass this time. We made an emulsion, an ointment, and some capsules.

There has been nothing exciting going on lately. I’ve been studying lots because finals are coming up soon.

Compouding Exam Part III

Dammit, I didn't pass. Only eight of us managed to pass and of those eight three had exactly the minimum passing grade. Rock bottom for sure. I was happy with my preparations so I don't know exactly where I went wrong.

I'll have to check tomorrow.

Hopefully this weeks preparations are simple.

Compounding exam Part II

Today in lecture my pharmaceutics porf told us that after marking 25 preparations only 4 people have passed. What a joke! I think if we're doing that poorly then the exam was too hard or the prof is doing something wrong. Either way she was very unhappy and disappointed with our performance. The marks will be out tomorrow and the re-write is scheduled for Friday morning.

I would really like to sleep in on Friday morning so let's hope I passed.

I'll update the blog once I get my grade.

Foot is better

This morning I woke up and my foot felt much better. I still don't know exactly what was wrong in the first place. It was inflamed and very painful.

I'm glad to be back on my feet.

Compounding exam

This past Friday was the big compounding exam where we were given three prescriptions that had to be compounded. The exam was three hours long, very hectic and stressful. The professor was cruel and gave us three difficult preparations, a cream, suppositories, and an emulsion. There was no “easy” preparation in the bunch. The cream gave me some difficulty but I was happy with my final product. The suppositories were a different story.

I couldn’t get the active ingredient of the suppositories to dissolve in the base. At the moment I don’t even remember what the active ingredient was or I’d look it up just to satisfy my own curiosity. I tried heating it but nothing was working. I think the drug was soluble in alcohol but I couldn’t find any on the bench. I ended up pouring them into the moulds with some crystalline drug still present in the melted base. I don’t know what the trick was – or maybe they were fine. Once they solidified I accidentally broke one in half! I couldn’t get it out of the mould and it broke. To fix it I warmed my spatula and fused the two pieces together. I didn’t have time to make more so the quick fix was my only option.

The last preparation was an emulsion. The trick for this was that you needed to know to add compound tragicanth to the mixture because the ibuoprofen would not dissolve. I knew to add it so I was happy.

If the preparations we not satisfactory we have to rewrite the exam. I hope I passed! Apparently last year over half the class failed the first compounding exam.

We get our results on Wednesday.

Identification and MD visit

I received my Western Australia issued drivers licence in the mail today. Its got a nice hologram on it but other than that its nothing special. I’m glad to finally have some Australian issued ID. It’s a class C licence which means I can only drive cars “equipped for less than or equal to 12 persons” – should suffice. A friend from school was telling me they issue licences for manual or automatic cars. The registry place didn’t ask me anything about my driving abilities so I hope I’m okay to drive a manual. I’m planning to pick up a small hatchback car which will certainly be a manual.

The other notable thing that happened today was another trip to the doctor. When I got home from class this afternoon my left foot started hurting. I took a rest in bed for 45min and when I got up my foot was hurting even more. I decided to go see the doctor because I was really in a lot of pain. The doctor wasn’t much help and told me to ice and elevate my foot for 24 hours. At the moment, the pain persists but hopefully it’ll be better tomorrow. I have a four hour practical lab exam this Friday and I need to be mobile.

That’s all for today!

Done!

I just finished the final touches on my medicinal chemistry report which is due tomorrow at nine in the morning. Its late and as per usual I’m up reading journals or working on a lab report. I don’t know why but the journals always seems to become more clear around 1:00 AM. I wonder how that works? The same goes for lab data. After about 1:00AM the data seems to line up and the equations just work. All of the sudden the rogue points on your Beer-Lambert plot don’t seems so crucial.

Funny how that works.

Good night!

Too much reading.

I’ve been working on a project. It involves reading countless scientific journal articles about drugs containing metal elements. I’ve been staring at my computer screen all day reading PDF’s and I can’t take it anymore so I’m taking a break to write this post.

Since it’s Thanksgiving this weekend back in civilization Danielle decided to make us a nice dinner so that we could take part in the festivities. Dinner included roast beef, mashed potatoes infused with parsnip, pumpkin/squash and Yorkshire pudding. It was a great meal and I was glad to have someone to celebrate Thanksgiving with here is Australia. I hope everyone else is enjoying a nice long weekend back home.

I can hear the rain pouring down on the roof right now. It was nice out this afternoon but it sure is raining now. However, the weather is getting noticeably hotter and drier. I can tell its going to be extremely hot come summertime.

Oh, I didn’t manage to kill that cockroach the other night. He was too sneaky.

Only four more weeks of classes before final exams start. I better get back to my project.

Licence and critters…

Today, after my compounding lab I took the time to go the motor vehicle licencing office to get a Western Australian driver’s licence. Since I’ve been here less than three months I was able to walk up to the counter, show them my Canadian licence, and receive an Australian licence. Nothing else was involved except a $35 fee for the exchange – I even got to keep my Canadian licence. No test! I don’t know how this is possible. The road laws are different here oh and … THEY DRIVE ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD. I should really have to take a test because I don’t know how it all works. They may as well be giving away drivers permits on the back of cereal boxes, I’m thinking corn flakes or even raisin bran. In fact, after witnessing how terrible some of the drivers are here my whole cereal box theory doesn’t seem so far fetched.

Anyway, after getting my permit Stephen, Danielle and I took a walk over to a local shopping mall sort of place. It was like a outdoor mall. There was a Subway restaurant there so I enjoyed a foot-long meatball sub. It was tasty. Upon return to the car we noticed that it had a boot attached to the front wheel. Great, more hassles in Perth!!! An hour and a half later and $120 AUD we were out of there. The whole thing was a joke and I don’t want to get into it but its just another THING.

I’ve spent this evening hunting a giant cockroach that keeps showing up in the kitchen. He’s absolutely massive and will certainly count for two kills on the cockroach kill counter. He only comes out when the lights are off so I have to leave the room and turn the lights off for a while to bait it out. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep soundly tonight unless he’s dead.

Kings Park

This past Saturday Danielle and I went for a long bike ride through Kings Park. Luckily, it’s located right across the street from my campus so we were able to bike right from home – no car required. The park is massive and sits atop a hill overlooking the river and cityscape. There is probably more than a days worth of things to see at this park and in the few hours that we were riding through we didn’t even see it all. Some of the lawns were more well groomed than your average golf course. I was impressed by this observation.

One of the features of this particular park is a structure called the “DNA Tower” (picture attached). It’s a double helix like structure composed of two intertwined staircases much like that of your cellular DNA. The molecular biologist side of me was unimpressed that the tower was not built with a major and minor groove to reflect, more closely, the actual structure or DNA. I got over it though and we did climb all 101 stairs to the top and took a moment to enjoy the view. From the top we were able to see a great distance and including the river and most of downtown. Definitely a great view. So far, this is the only destination in Perth that I would recommend to other travelers.

I also noticed at the park there were camels who were outfitted with saddles. I assume they were for hire but, being in Perth, the merchant did not have a clear sign posted with pricing or anything. Once again, being in Perth, this did not surprise me whatsoever.

I'll be back at the pack sometime to see the rest of the sights. I understand there are some nice botanical gardens and something called a whisper wall.