Day 7 – Healthcare centre visit in Amersfoort

Zevende dag in Nederland!

(Its the 7th day in The Netherlands). For those that don’t know, ‘Nether’ means lowlands, and the name comes from the fact that half of the country is actually below sea level. The dykes play an important role in ensuring the the country doesn’t get flooded with water. cool hur.

Early in the morning, Lee drove us to Amersfoort to visit this healthcare centre. We were late because of the jam, and because she took a wrong turn on the road. Apparently, she often gets lost when going there and the pharmacist in the healthcare centre was amused.

So here we are, at the Gezondheidscentrum (health centre). Its something like a stepdown care hospital, or perhaps, more similar to our polyclinic back in Singapore. In this building, there are dentists, physiotherapists, radiologists, speech therapists etc and the pharmacy there serves all these disciplines. Our main purpose for this visit was to see the robotic pharmacy. Had no idea what to expect, despite having heard about it in school. I was half expecting to see a robot in the middle of the pharmacy, with outstretched arms to grab the medicines.

The pharmacist, who was Lee’s schoolmate, gave us an explanation of how the robot works. The robot is actually the shelf at the back of the pharmacy.

So the flow of work in the pharmacy goes like this.

The pickers transcribe the prescription and do the necessary checks. Then she enters into the computer the medicines that needs to be taken out from the shelf.

The robot receives the signal, picks up the medicines from the right compartment of the shelf, and then sends it through the delivery channels on top, to where the picker is.

It then falls out and tada, the picker gets the medicines without having to walk!

Of course the medicines won’t automatically walk their ways to the shelf. So manual work is required to put the boxes into the shelves. The possible for improvement areas of this robot are:

1. How can we work to make stocking up automatically instead of manually?
2. Each compartment in the shelf has limited storage area. Hence, there is a limit to the number of boxes that can be stored.
3. For prescriptions that required loose number of tablets, the robot isn’t able to take the blisters out from the box and then cut it before delivering it to the picker.
4. If the medicine is placed in the wrong compartment, it will pick the wrong medicine when the picker choose that compartment.
5. Not all medicines can fit into the compartments of the shelf.
6. Being a new machine, the compartments are still pretty empty and the pharmacy is working on filling them up after the initial trial period.

 

The back of the robot where the medicines are manually slotted in.

At the top of most pharmacy (attic) are usually where the old prescriptions are kept. In Singapore, all prescriptions have to be kept for 2 years by law, and those that contained controlled drugs, for 3 years. But here in the Netherlands, they have to keep it for 6 year originally. Recent laws have changed that to 15 years, as there was a case of a mother who received anticancer therapy 15 years ago, and now her grandchildren suffer from birth defect, hence the new law to keep prescriptions for at least one generation so that during lawsuits or making claims from insurance company, there can be proof. So you can imagine just how much prescriptions the pharmacies have to keep in their attic!!!! The funny thing is, everything is electronised now and the prescriptions can be dug out from computer systems. So why is there still a need to keep all the hardcopies for so long? Food for thought.

 

We went back home and Lee went to work, while we had some spare time to spare. Took our first and only jog and the park nearby. Its shiok or maybe not that shiok for people who like to sweat it out (like me!) to jog here because its so hard to sweat! The good thing about jogging here is that because its so hard to sweat, you conserve a teeny weeny bit of energy i suppose. Xf and I jogged for 45 minutes,but apparently the family doesn’t think that’s long enough! Eus said should have gone for 2 hours jog! Then again, he might have been joking. hahaha.

Us in our jogging attire on day 7 before going out for a jog. The family made a bed for Yixin coz she’s coming later in the afternoon!

Along our jogging path, we would come by this railway track. Me being silly doing a jumping shot in the middle of no where to keep up with my jump-around-the-world shots! hahaha

On our way back, Xf saw this particular carplate with her intials!

Went back home, freshened up and had cruesli with yoghurt and fruits for lunch!

 

Our lunches!

Then we went out to the city and did our first top up on the prepaid card that the family got for us   Felt like a child learning to do all these simple things. hahhaha Albert Heijn, the biggest supermarket chain store here, has almost everything. And our top up was done there too! Bought some cruesli to top up the family’s supply too coz we cleared almost all their cruesli at the rate that we were eating.

We then walked to the city’s biggest shopping mall, Hoog Catherinje, which is attached to the train station that we were supposed to pick yixin up at. It was indeed HUMONGOUS. And the way that Lonely Planet described it was that its so HUGE people wish it will just stop! hahaha. Did some shopping there and then went earlier to the train station to validate our Eurail pass since we’d use it the next day for our Alkmaar cheese market trip.

Utrecht Centraal station had this board for you to check which train leaves at what time for where at which platform. Feels like im in an airport. hahah

 
We were suppose to validate our eurail pass/book tickets/buy strippenkaarts at the counters beneath the big board.

But smart me and Xfen forgot to bring our passports and hence, we took our first bus ride back to home t oget our passports, since Yixin would be late.

The list of bus stops along the bus service 11 line.
Every bus stop here has a name and the one at our house was Oosprongpark. Its quite a good service in the sense that bus stops can be used as landmarks. Also, when you get up the bus, all you need to do is to tell the bus driver which stop you would want to alight at and he would chop the suitable number of boxes on the strippenkaart (a strip of paper with 45 boxes that you stamp for each bus ride. Short journeys take up 2 boxes, longer one more. )

 

The interior of the bus. The buses here are in general more spaced out than ours, which probably making goin up and down with a luggage for user-friendly. The only difference with the bus is that the doors are on the opposite side because of the fact that over here they do right side driving.  

Went back home and we were greeted by the dogs. Doesn’t it feel good to have dogs barking to welcome you home? Then again sometimes it gets too noisy. hahaha

Got our eurail pass validated after a pretty long wait. met yixin. She got flowers for the host. Apparently its a dutch culture to bring flowers when you visit someone. And we also got poffertjes (mini pancakes) and a pie from Albert Heijn for the family. Yixin also brought us her dutch textbook together with the dutch cd so that we could learn some simple dutch. But to the last day that we’re here, we only managed to learn 2 or 3 lessons. oOopS. Nevertheless, I have to agree that the best way to learn a language is to be in the country itself. Coz you hear it see it everywhere, its much more easier to pick the language up.

Rob was cooking dinner when we were back. Cauliflowers in tomato sauce. wooO hoo. Not exactly chinese way of cooking cauliflower, but its yummy

The cauliflowers with the green leaves still on…

Robbie, our favourite cook! He cooks SuPEr duper weLL!

 

Lee bought some beer for us to try. She wanted to get Heinnekin, which should be green, but she accidentally grabbed the wrong one. Behind is Yixin’s flower for Lee. My first taste of beer. haha. I think i prefer wine more.

drie meisjes met bier. (3 girls with beer)

Since rob does the cooking, there’s nothing much that we can help except to help set the table

We even had candle lights for that night’s dinner. Attempted to take a family photo. But the photograph turned out bad due to the very poor lighting and my lousy camera plus poor timer effects. hahaha

After dinner, Robbie started playing on the piano and he’s damn good lar. So we just sat there, enjoying his music as though it was a after dinner concert. Its really impressive that he learnt drums, piano etc all on his own by figuring them out and he expects the same of mick too. He’s those geniuses who can listen to a song once and play it well next. We played Stephanie Sun’s 遇见 for him, and mick and him loved it. So we looked up youtube for them and he could play it the next day! Much more touching than the original version.

Here’s a video of him playing. Although I think it’s probably some classical music or something? hmmm

Its a pity we didn’t know who the artiste he was talking about. Otherwise it’d probably make appreciating his music even more great.

Us with Akira, enjoying the music.

 

We had dessert which was the apple tart we bought and the poffertjes. I like the european habit of sitting around the table together for koffie after dinner, chatting about the day over a piece of cake (if dessert is served) and just let time pass away. Life is definitely a much slower pace here. And it is indeed homely for everyone to be home for dinner every night.

They serve the poffertjes hot, with icing sugar on top. Xfen loves this…

More on Poffertjes …

Poffertjes [pɔfəɹcəs] are a traditional Dutch batter treat. Poffertjes look like tiny pancakes, but they are much sweeter. In contrast with pancakes, poffertjes are turned before one side is completely done, which results in a much softer core than pancakes have. Typically, poffertjes are served with powdered sugar and butter.

Poffertjes are not hard to prepare but a special pan is needed. This is a special cast-iron or copper pan also available in aluminium with teflon-coating with several shallow indentations in the bottom. In large restaurants, special plates are often used to prepare poffertjes. Restaurant chefs are quite skilled in turning the almost baked poffertjes with a fork.

 

Ingredients

• 420 g of self-raising flour
• 1 litre milk
• 3 eggs
• pinch of salt and a teaspoon of vanilla essence
• yeast

Instructions

• Dissolve the yeast in some milk.
• Put the flour through a sieve, make a small hole in the middle of flour and pour the milk with yeast into it.
• Starting in the center add the remainder of the milk, meanwhile whirling the batter. Finally add the egg.
• Put the batter away for 30 minutes.

• Place the pan on the stove and grease the pan with butter when it’s hot. Add a little bit of batter to each hollow, only filling them half way.
• Just before the topside of the poffertje is completely dry, turn it over. It should let go easily. Wait till the other side also has a nice golden brown color.
• Put them on a plate and dust them with the powdered sugar, till they are completely covered with sugar, and put a small piece of butter on top, this should melt.
• Serve immediately.

Variation

Poffertjes can also be baked without yeast and thus without the waiting time, but some would say that they do not taste as nice.

Supermarkets also stock mixes for poffertjes, to which only the eggs and milk need to be added. Usually they contain some kind of leavening agent, like baking powder to prevent the issue mentioned above.

They can also be served with other sweet garnishes, such as stroop (molasses), slagroom (whipped cream) or aardbeien (strawberries), for added tastiness.

Served with strawberries and cream they are known as ‘Poffertjes à la Bill Clinton’ in honour of his visit to Delft.

Day 6 in Haarlem and Zaanstad

Our host, Lee, was very nice to arrange for us to visit a hospital pharmacy at Haarlem. So early in the morning,we drove from our house, to Ien’s house (Lee’s youngest sister), a village near to Utrecht city, before we made our way to Kennemer Gasthuis (hospital at Haarlem, north Holland).

Along the way, we saw modern windmills.

Modern windmills are practically everywhere in The Netherlands. They are used to harvest wind energy to generate electricity!

We finally arrived at Kennemer Gasthuis, which is one of the teaching hospitals in The Netherlands. The pharmacy is located in a separate building from the main hospital and it has a few stories for the picking of medications, small scale manufacturing, quality control and etc. One of Lee’s previous employee, Monique, who just graduated from Pharmacy and is now doing her training of 4 years to specialize as a hospital pharmacist, brought us around. To become a community pharmacist, they will need to do 2 years of training instead, on top of their 6 years of school.

Monique brought us round the pharmacy. It was pretty big, with all the rows of medications in the cupboard. Their medications are placed all over the place, and not classified according to class of drugs or alphabetical order so as to minimize chances of picking the wrong medications that may look/sound alike.

Unlike the hospitals in Singapore, where the freezers are just a few rectangular boxes, here, the freezer is one entire room. And in the picture, you see the door to the ‘ice’ room.

And then we went to another floor to see the manufacturing sector.
Here , along the corridor are the plastic gowns that the staff have to put on when they go into the rooms to make preparations.

The material for this gown are special such that there will be no accidents of fibre falling into the preparations.

This is the room where sterilized injection ampoules are screened manually by 2 staff for the presence of small particles. After they pass the quality check, they would go through this machine to be labeled and packaged into boxes.

We then went into this maze where we can see from windows what each room was doing. This allowed for supervision from the outside of the process without having to put on special gowns and bringing in contamination from the outside to the clean areas.

Prior to going to the room for checking, the ampoules are filled in this clean room with staff fully gowned. This man has to stay in a covered area so as to minimize flow of bacteria from the environment.

A machine that fills the ampoules and the seal them up with flame automatically.

This guy here is doing a report on the culture of the air from the work area. They do this periodically to ensure that the workplace is free from contamination.

These 2 guys are making sterile preparations for cancer treatment. They always work in pair, so that the one seated down will stay there for the whole day, instead of going somewhere to get stuff, and then having to swap his hands with alcohol again before he can go back to the laminar flow chamber to do his work. Basically, the standing guy does all the brain job and pick all the necessary stuff, while the seated guy will just follow instructions from the standing guy or from a protocol what he should do next.

 Then Monique brought us to this area where we had to put on ‘astronaut suit’ from head to toe so that we could enter the clean area where they made capsules, cream etc.

Beyond the bench, everything is suppose to be clean, before we step foot through the door where air flow is in one-way direction out to minimize contamination again.

All of us looking silly but fun!

Photography wasn’t allowed in the clean section and hence no pictures for those. But the trip had really been insightful to see how the hospital pharmacy worked in The Netherlands. And it was also great being able to see whatever we learnt in school being applied here. We may all speak a different language, but the practice of pharmacy is universal and that’s what brings us all together.

Monique treated us all to lunch at the staff canteen, before we went to see their outpatient pharmacy where patients that visit the specialist clinics will pick up their medications . Compared to Singapore, it was less busy. No hectic wars to fight. This could possibly be because they have several stepdown hospital/pharmacies else where and hence the patient load is distributed.

We took a final photo outside the outpatient pharmacy before we bade her goodbye.

Ien, Xf me and Monique

We then drove to the city of Haarlem to shop around. Parked the car beside a canal. Canals are everywhere in this country !

The first thing that I saw there was this shop Pas de deux with 50% discount! Being a dance freak, I wanted to visit the shop but the signboard was in the middle of a small lane and I had no idea where the shop was exactly.Plus, didn’t really want to take up everyone’s time and so gave it a miss.

Lee brought us to this serene place collectively known as hofjes. In Lonely Planet, this kind of places are known as Haarlem’s Urban Oases.

Some information for those who don’t know what we’re talking about. From Lonely Planet:

Haarlem is a peaceful city at the rowdiest of times, but even such a serene place needs its fair share of oases. Collectively known as hofjes – leafy tourtyards enclosed by rows of sweet little homes – these green spaces initially served as monastery gardens in the Middle Ages. Eventually they took on broader roles for hospitals and inns, or as refuges for orphans, widows and the eldery. These private squares also give clues about Dutch social concerns and the origins of the modern welfare state.

Most hofjes date from the 15th to the 18the centuries and are open to viewing on weekends only, but you can usually take a discreet peek any time.

Some of the hofjes in Harrlem:
Brouwers Hofje : Lodging for the brewers’ guild in 1472.
Frans Loenen Hofje: Almshouses built from a merchant’s estate (1607)
Hofje van Loo: A women’s hospital donated by mayor Sijmon Pieterszoon van Loo (1489); one of the most visible in Haarlem.
Hofje van Staats: One of the town’s biggest, donated by a Haarlem merchant to poor women of the Reformed Church (1733) and still houses single, elderly women.
St Joris Doelen: A provenierhuis given as a donation; almshouse, later a gentlemen’s inn (1591)
Teylers Hofje: Unusually grand affair, built by Pieter Teyler van der Hulst, founder of the Teyler Museum (1787).

The one that we went to was Hofj van Bakenes. It is the oldest small estate of Haarlem.It was founded intially in 1395.

View of the world outside from inside the hofj.

A water pump in the middle of the garden which they used in the past. Now, it has been locked and no water can be drawn from there. 

Flowers in the hofj. pretty flowers everywhere here in the Netherlands. 

walked along the streets and we saw this. Any guess for where this is?
yea… the red light district. Saw women dressed scantily in the windows. They have to rent a window and they’d stand there to attract potential customers. No pictures were taken because we read in lonely guidebook that we should refrain from taking pictures if we did not want to be thrown into the canals.

The McDonald’s of Haarlem.

In the centre of the city’s Grote Markt stands the 17th century Vleeshal, a former meat market and the Verweyhal, an old fish market. They both now serve as modern art annexes of the Frans Hals Museum. This picture shows the Vleeshal. Animals are weighed there to fetch a good price for the farmers.

A random shop window display. Nice masks

Next, we went to Grote Kerk van St Bavo. This is a Gothic cathedral with a towering 50m high steeple. It contained some fine Renaissance artworks, but the star attraction is its stunning Muller organ – one of the most magnificient in the world, standing 30m high with about 5000 pipes. It was played by Handel and Mozart, the latter when he was just 10!

Exterior of the church.

Entering the church, we see the interior of the church. Notice the floor of the church is lined with slabs of stones? And on them are inscriptions.

They are actually the inscriptions like on a tombstone. And beneath those stones lie layers of bodies of the rich and royal family from the past. The church has a whole list of details of who was buried where, when, and where they used to live for identification purposes. Its amazing that such details from centuries ago are kept till now!

A closer look at what’s on the stones.

 

Replica of ships were hung near the entrance of the church

The caretaker of the church was very nice and gave us pretty much ‘personal attention’. He showed us this particular part of the church where beneath the wooden plank lay rows of human skulls that belonged to the royalty in the past. They were discovered by the archaelogists and they remain where they were found.

A look now at the church and its magnificient pipe organs.

 

 

The back of the church, opposite the magnificient church organ.  

Looking in, this is what we saw. Where the lamp is lies the grave of Handel? Not too sure.

The ceiling of the church.

One of the postcards sold at the church had this particular picture too!

We were told that this being a Protestant church, does not have too many pretty stained glass windows as would be seen in a Catholic church. Most of the windows look like this.

However, there were some stained glass windows donated to the church.

We had the fortune to hear the church organ in action as the player was practising on it. Melodious music filled the serene church.

The Organ at St. Bavo constructed 1735-8 by Christian Muller from Amsterdam.The organ features 25 larger-than-life woodwork figures carved by Jan van Logteren.

We saw 2 chinese looking people when in the church, and apparently they were Singaporeans coz we saw their comments in the guestbook. Hence we left ours in chinese too! directly after theirs.

Left the church and we continued to walk around the city, coming into this souvenir shop. There was a huge wooden clog outside the shop. We thought this was big, but we saw HUMONGOUS ones in our subsequent stay in The Netherlands.

Ien and Lee were very nice to get us each a calender that had pictures of Amsterdam so that we would remember The Netherlands everyday of our life next year. Pretty touched by them

The guy at the souvenir shop told Ien about this attraction called “The Hiding Place”. We had plans to visit there when we were doing reading up in Maastricht about Netherlands. But there was no time and hence we had to give it a miss.

For those who are intersted, The Hiding Place was made famous by the motion picture in 1976 called The Hiding Place. It is a quaint little watchmaker’s shop established in 1837 at 19 Barteljorisstraat in the heart of haarlem. It was here in the shop and home of a Christian, Opa ten Boom, and his family that jewish refugees fleeing  the wrath of Nazi Germany were hidden for a time during WW2. A hiding place was built in a bedroom where the refugees could go in case the Germans made a surprise inspecdtion. The ten Boom family operated the refuge for more than 18 months, until they were betrayed on february 28,1944.

We then took the car to Zaanstad. This is us eating the almond biscuit. Lee bought it so that we’d have a taste of how the real Sara actually taste like. It has a tinge of almond in it. Kinda like a soft chewy cookie.

Took us quite a while to reach the place because of the jam, and we kinda got lost coz the original road was closed. Hence, we had to take a temporary ferry shuttle over to where we were to go.

And off our ferry went!

It was drizzling slightly. A really pathetic summer to be here in The Netherlands as what the locals said. Coz its been raining almost everyday and the summer is cold and wet!

When we arrived at the other side of the shore, what greeted us was some factory that made nuts. It was like an industrial area and if Ien and Lee were not around with us, we’d probably have thought that we were in the wrong place. We saw a bunch of tourists walking in the opposite direction and that at least let us know that we were on the right track to where we wanted to go.

Finally we arrived at Zaanstad, which is a municipality of Zaandam. The first sawmills were built here in the 16th century and promoted the development of the

woodworking and shipbuilding industries.

Doesnt this look pretty much like one of the photos in our front page? This is at the entrance of the Zaanse schans Museum. An open air museum!

The Zaanse Schans offers a variety of fascinating museums. The Zaans Museum houses a magnificent collection of regional artefacts and presents an innovative variety of exhibitions. The museum offers a complete historical picture of life in the Zaanstreek combined with stunning views over the Zaanse landscape.

Small, specialised museums situated in heritage buildings in other parts of the Zaanse Schans help to bring history to life the impressive history of the world’s first area of industry.

The Noorderhuis Costume Museum
Museumshop Albert Heijn Grocery 
Bakery Museum ‘In de Gekroonde Duyvekater’
The Dutch Clock Museum

More information can be found here.

Unfortunately because of the jam and the early closing hours of shops here, we didn’t manage to visit much, except to sight see and take pictures. Still, the picturesque scenery and the windmills were enough to satisfy our appetites.

Those green houses are typical Dutch houses.

Us with the windmills (molens in dutch). Over here there are many old windmills and no doubt this is the countryside.

 

 

Xf with a windmill.

The Netherlands is so closely associated with windmills, that it’s often the first fact people recall about the country. The Dutch built windmills for many centuries (and to some extent, the windmills built the country itself, since without them much of the land drainage could not have occured). In that time the mills were developed for corn milling, land drainage, saw milling, and in fact all manner of industrial purposes. Despite this widespread use, Dutch mills are in may ways quite primitive – using canvas sails, and turned to wind by hand (as distinct from the automated mechanisms that were developed for English windmills, including the fantail, and shuttered sails).

There are a very pleasing number of remaining windmills in the Netherlands – the number is about 1150 and rising, in that the Dutch only count complete workable mills, and in the past 10 years especially many extensive rebuilds have occured to add to this number.

Found this website online which actually allows you to locate a particular windmill and know its original function. Click here

 

A panorama shot of the place that definitely didn’t justify how pretty the place was.

Walked around, and we saw the first Albert heijn store here in Zaanstad. It was in one of those typical dutch houses. We also saw this shop that sold wooden toys, in particular, pinochio!

Wooden tulips at the entrance of the shops. So colourful! don’t they brighten up your days? It would have been nice to visit fresh tulips in the keukenkof, but sadly tulips weren’t in the season. They bloom from april to may and hence we can only settle for the wooden ones.

Went into the souvenir shop and we see delft wares. They are porceleins with blue prints, which were inspired by china wares.

A deflt violin. Exquisite and pretty isn’t it!

When we left the souvenir shop, it was raining again!   Braved through the rain and took the ferry back to the other side of the river and went home for dinner with Ien’s husband and children in the house. 

Day 5 in Holland

Rise and shine, we woke up to the second day of our work day here in Holland.

The host has been really nice. Offering to lend us their washing machines, and helping us to do some laundry together with theirs when they knew we were handwashing in the toilet. So we put out the clothes in the garden under the glorious sun before breakfast!

Xf doing the laundry!

We then followed Eus to walk the dogs Yara and Akira so that Eus can show us the place that we can jog. Its quite cool that they have such a ‘foresty’ path to walk, while in Singapore we can only do it in ulu places like p.ubin.

Went back after that for our breakfast. Rob calls us the ’serial killers’ coz we ate so much cruesli we kinda wiped out all their supply. Cruesli = CRUNCHY muesli. hahah and they eat it here with yoghurt which taste much nicer than with milk! Of course, breakfast can’t be without koffie, since they have it almost round the clock!

 After breakfast, we struggled out to work on the bike again. Xfen nearly crashed into the family car. *oOps*. Robbie’s heart probably dropped for that second although he didn’t say anything at that moment. But later in the evening at dinner, the whole family knew of the incident, and jokingly said that if we were to cycle, we ‘d better do it far away from the car.

 

At work today, Xfen and I split up. She did stockstaking With Ilse, while I had hands on session in making creams, lotions, capsules and suppositories with Jeanine. Jeanine’s a really nice lady who loves all things with rainbow colour. She’s really thoughtful, asking me if I wanted to take pictures, and helped me to take them even without me asking if I could take pictures! haha. According to their observations, Asians love taking pictures, and they like to have humans in it but for Europeans, they don’t like to take pictures and don’t really like to be in the picture too.

First up, I made hydrous eucerin cream. Rather simple preparation involving just mixing Eucerin anhydrous with water!

On the left and in my hand is the bottle of Eucerin cream anhydours, and on the right is the box of water for prepartion! It comes in a bag, put in a box, that allows you to dispense it like a water cooler.

And I thought it was a simple preparation. But the amount of cream was so much and water was so much, it took quite a bit of effort and strength to mix them well.

Finally after much effort, the cream is done and ready for packaging into aluminium tubes. My first attempt at putting them into tubes and then sealing them up, putting on labels and all ready to go out to the patients! Beside me is Jeanine measuring thyroid powder for making 4000 thyroid capsules. In the whole of Netherlands, there’s only 2 pharmacies that make thyroid capsules. Hence, they do this every week in bulk and people travel long distances just to get their supply of thyroid capsules.

First, Jeanine demonstrated how to use the capsule making machine. We can make 200 capsules at one go! no more filling of capsules one by one to ensure that they each have the correct weight as we do in lab classes. And then I had my try. fumbled with the machine for the first few times i used it. But now, I think me and xfen are both proficient in using it to make capsules anytime! haha.

Capsules that were hand made.

Jeanine also made paracetamol suppositories 60mg for this baby that’s 3 months old. The usual panadol is 500mg paracetamol for adults,and for children above 6 years old is 120mg, both of which are too high for the baby. 

To make paracetamol suppositories, known as zetpillen in Dutch, we used 103g of witepsol as the base, and 6 g of paracetamol powder. This preparation can be used up till 24months from date of manufacture.

So we used a roterstat to mix the mixture, and we had to ensure that the mixture stayed at 35degrees celcius when it’s poured into the mould. Otherwise, it may take too long to solidify and the active ingredient will also sink to the base.

In order to ensure quality in the suppositories made, the last 2 supplies of every batch are thrown away since their concentration are probably very high.

 

The suppositories made,waiting to go into the boxes.

Other things made in this day were lidocaine-leveomenthol gel, Dexamethasone 1.5mg with cellulosum microcrystalline capsules and triamcinolone acetone with tretinoine cream.

Putting the cream onto a plastic strip so that it’d be easier to go into the aluminium tube.

Really appreciate the fact that they allowed us to make all those stuff for patient use, when it’s just our second day at work and we only learnt it in school, without any practice in real life in making all these stuff. Its rather interesting, and it is something that makes a pharmacy, a pharmacy, rather than just plain distributing medicines from the factories. Nethertheless, it is appparent that in Singapore’s health care system, there probably is a lack of manpower to do these since we’re still struggling to find more pharmacists and time to counsel patients.

Xfen doing stock taking.

 

The Dutch book of medical terms

 

Xf with all the medicines she picked.

The things that I made for the day.

We took a walk around the neighbourhood and we saw lavender. Flowers for grace

The street of the pharmacy.

And the pharmacy itself.

Further down the street, we saw a cake shop. Cute looking cakes!

 

Day 5 in holland!

Doing silly things .haha.

Eus came back after we finished dinner and there was no more food. so lee whipped up a salad for him based on what we had over the weekends at Maastricht. The poached egg kinda failed, but still the salad looked yummy!

One of the staff, Ans ( i think) was having her 50th birthday. In Holland, 50th birthday is a big thing and they celebrate it with a ‘Sara’, which is a cake in the shape of an old lady to symbolize wisdom. Ans commented a few months back that she’d like to have a particular sara and she worried that nobody will give her one. So the pharmacy decided to surprise her with many ‘Saras’ in the form of posters, flyers, etc and Lee made a Sara for her too. We helped out too Somewhat. haha

The supermarkets here, Albert Heijn, being the biggest chain store here, sells pretty looking cake decorations.

Lee cutting the shape of Sara from the cake she made.

Then put on the icing and decorations to have hair, necklace, skirt and etc.

For the remaining of the cake that was trimmed off, we decorated it with the decorations and icing and we had fun with Mick!

A happy xfen with her master piece.

xfen’s

mine.