Post Exam #1, I have been....

...Expanding my Mandarin vocabulary to include words such as side effects, natural sources, prescription, no refund and pay at cashier =) Oh boy, it's going to be an interesting linguistic journey for me here. Especially since most of the Chinese uncles & aunties that ask for counselling in Mandarin don't understand English AT ALL, so I can't even use the occasional English word when I can't think of the Mandarin version. And then there are the few that can only speak Hokkien. The only Hokkien words I know are 'eat rice', 'sleep', 'good', 'no good' and 'die'. Which makes for terrible counselling. I suppose there's always hand gestures. Haha. And if one thinks Malaysians should be able to counsel in Malay, think again. It becomes quite a challenge when the words you have to come up with are 'pencair darah' and the like. I often have to think again because I can't really tell if I'm literally translating the word or if it's a real Malay word. But I'm better than the Singaporean Chinese la heh.

....Learning new tactics for handling patients. Having had no chance to explain my retail knowledge to anyone for the last 2 months, I started off my retail attachment a bit over-excited and began explaining what aqueous cream does as opposed to a steroid cream, and why aqueous cream is more suitable bla bla bla and after a while, the aunty just asked me 'So can I use this or not?'. O.o  Verbal diarrhoea. One of the rare moments when I actually talk too much. I have since employed the method of simply asking questions then telling them what to use and how to use it. Seems to keep most of them happy enough. And the simplistic model works even for saying NO. People here like to take cough medicine like a daily vitamin supplement and explaining why they can't (and really have no need to) buy 3 bottles at once doesn't really get me anywhere. So all I do is keep saying 'bu ke yi' continuously and they eventually leave, albeit with a grumble, but at least they don't yell and shout.

....Exploring Singapore with friends. Some of the highlights include the BEST creamy pasta (what's plural for pasta? Pastas? Pastae? Heh...) I have ever tasted, some excellent apple crumble and Marina Barrage for a bit of sea breeze & awesome skyline. Barrage is definitely somewhere I would go frequently if I had a car, given my history of spontaneous night drives to Adelaide's Henley Beach ;)

Apart from that, life here has certainly introduced some new aspects to my relationship with God, and it's taken 5 weeks for me to start getting my head around it. More on that when it becomes clearer =)