Funny

I think this video is hilarious... maybe because I know people who act like that.

Lease

The lease is up on our new place at the end of this month. The property manager had said we could renew for a year. He drew up a new year long lease for us to sign and I was going to drop it off at his office tomorrow - signed and sealed. Then last night I got a call from Cathy (one of our housemates) who told me that the property manager left a message on her phone saying that we are only able to renew the lease for six months all of the sudden. That would put us to the end of July - a very bad time to find a place to live around here because its right in the middle of the school year. Today was a public holiday so I wasn't able to speak with the property manager but I hope we can renew for the entire year.

That's what's going on at the moment. Oh, and lots of assignments on the go.

Dinner and a movie

Last night Danielle and I went out for dinner at a restaurant called Cream. Strange name for a restaurant but the food was fabulous!!! I had the beef over horseradish mashed potatoes and Danielle had the nocci. Both our dishes we so good and I’m sure we’ll be back at cream once we save up some pennies. For Dessert we shared an upside down lava cake with home made raspberry sorbet.

After dinner we went to the movie theater to catch a late showing of “Juno”. We both enjoyed the movie although it was a tad strange. The movie theater had assigned seating so when you got your ticket they asked you were you wanted to sit. I’ve never seen that before.

Day off

Today was my first day off in a while. It was nice to be able to sleep in. I don’t really have anything exciting to update. Today is Australia day and there are some fireworks on tonight. From what I’ve heard Australia day sounds just like Canada day so I’m guessing there will be drunk and rowdy aussies all over the place tonight. This weekend is double demerits and fines for all motor vehicle offences. I think double demerits and fines is a great idea – they did it from mid December until after new years also. I’ve heard that drunk driving is a problem here and its good to see they are trying to curb it. The blood alcohol limit for driving is 0.6 here too.

Anyway. I’m working at the bike shop tomorrow. Hopeufully its not too busy or crazy.

That’s all for now!

Something I never thought I would see at lecture

Today in class my professor proceeded to breast feed her baby at the front of the class. She conducted about ten minutes of lecture sitting in a chair breastfeeding. With my immunology background I’m a strong proponent of breastfeeding but I never thought I would see a professor do it while conduction lecture. Kind of strange. Even more strange was that the lecture was about infant health… no it was not a demo. She ended lecture when the baby threw up on her shirt and started crying uncontrollably.

Only in Perth.

What's a meniscus

Some antibiotics, like amoxicillin, are shipped to the pharmacy as a dehydrated powder. They do this because it’s cheaper to ship and has a longer shelf life as a powder. When we get a script for one of these drugs we need to add a predetermined amount of water to the bottle to rehydrate the powder. At the pharmacy this week we received a script for one of these drugs and I was asked to measure out the correct volume. Upon handing the graduated cylinder to the pharmacist I was told that it was off by about HALF a milliliter. I was at a loss for words! Damm those super accurate, plastic, 100mL, dollar store graduated cylinders! I guess I don’t know how to read a meniscus anymore...right. Too funny.

Glorified shop keeper? ? ?

Pharmacy in Australia is a bit different from pharmacy in Canada. Here pharmacists truly are treated like glorified shop keepers and I think it’s sad. I’ve heard the pharmacy manager complaining that pharmacists aren’t treated like professionals here but its partially their own fault. I’ve got two prime examples from my placement site:

1) A customer walks all the way through the shop to the back so he can speak to a pharmacist. He’s wondering which battery is required for the keyless entry remote for his vehicle. The pharmacist found a screw driver, opened the remote and pulled out the battery then went the battery section of the shop to select the correct battery. After finding the battery it was installed and the remote was handed back to the customer. I was shocked to see this take place when we were so busy that the scripts were literally piling up. Installing batteries… they haven’t taught us that in school YET.

2) Customer comes to the back of the pharmacy and informs the pharmacist that she has a flat tire. The pharmacist them offer to change the tire for her and ends up spending 45 minutes outside in 38*C heat changing the tire. Now that’s what I call putting your pharmacy education to work. If that same customer was at her doctor or lawyers office she wouldn’t have even asked. I would have offered to call RAC (like CAA) for the customer.

So, those are the strange things I’ve seen at the pharmacy in the past two weeks. Five weeks to go.

Phone bill

Our new place has a landline which I’ve used once to order pizza and another time to call Stephen’s cell phone. Today we received our first phone bill in the mail and I was unpleasantly surprised. I didn’t know, but in Australia phone companies change by the second to call a cell phone from a landline. They charged me 66 cents to call Stephen cell for less than two minutes!

Anyway I thought it was worth posting since I’ve never heard of such an unusual practice. Limited broadband internet and now this! These people don’t know what they’re missing.

Palm Tx

My Palm TX is giving me trouble. I use it every day for my digital study cards at school. I would be lost without it. Palm products are so unreliable and this is my third Palm in about 5 years. Ridiculous! I’ve got two years left of extended warranty through Best Buy but that is not much good out here. I hope if comes back to life but at the moment it’s completely dead despite being plugged in. Worst of all, Palm does not market products in Australia so there is no way to buy one here. I’d buy an HP handheld but the program I use is proprietary – they’ve got me hooked! That’s the end of my rant on crappy Palm products.

Wound care

So, the first week of the placement went really well. I’m learning lots of things and staff pharmacists have been really helpful. I haven’t met my preceptor yet because he’s been off for a few weeks but the other pharmacists are all great. I really like learning in a hands on environment. I’ve got a few assignments to take care of during the seven weeks of the placement but other than that it seems easy enough.

On Monday’s we’re at school for lectures and discussions. Today we had a nurse practitioner from the hospital teaching us about wound care - interesting stuff. She gave a powerpoint presentation with tons of disturbing pathological photos of the different types of wounds. It was interesting and reminded me of my LABMP 400 pathology class at UofA. I miss that class.

Tomorrow is the start of week two at the pharmacy.

Swan bells

In downtown Perth, along the Swan River, there exists an unusual structure called the Swan Bell Tower (Pictured). Danielle and I visited the tower not long ago to check it out since it’s one of the major tourist attractions in Perth. The grounds were nice and the tower is impressive housing 18 assorted bells formerly from a cathedral in London England. Apparently visitors are able to climb the tower but we arrived about 5 minutes past the last showing for the day. Maybe we’ll go back sometime to take a look inside.

Image only post

Source: The internets

First day at the pharmacy.

The day went well. The staff are great and the pharmacy is not too busy or too slow… it seems just right. It was nice. My experience from Shoppers Drug Mart really helped and I think some of the students who had no pharmacy experience we’re probably lost today at their placements. The owner was not at work today and neither was the manager so I got to work with a floater, which is sort of strange for the first shift but he was really nice.

I mentioned in a previous post that the pharmacy is not located in the best part of town. Well, today we we’re handing out methadone doses all day. I guess they have a huge client base of methadone program patients. Fun stuff.

Its Danielle’s birthday tomorrow! I’m working all day but we’ll spend the evening together and hopefully do something fun. This evening we tried to make a cake but it turned into a congealed mess and we decided to throw it out. Total let down!

Classes Start Again

Tomorrow classes start back up again putting an end to my aussie summer. I'm starting a 7 week placement in a community pharmacy working with a pharmacist. On Monday's we're at school for class and the rest of the week we're in the pharmacy. I had a chance to meet my preceptor this week and see the pharmacy. Its not exactly located in the best part of town but the shop looks nice and the people seem friendly. Overall I'm really looking forward to the placement. It will be nice to do some hands on learning for the first time in my academic career.

Other than that I've been working as much as possible to save up some cash. I'm only going to be working weekends once school starts. Nothing really exciting to report from work. I currently have a Specialized EPIC full suspension test bike in my possession which I've borrowed from the shop. I haven't had a chance to ride it much yet but I'm looking forward to hitting some sandy trails.