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.