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.
