And Hello, 2018!

It's been ages since my last post. (Every post of mine would start with this sentence lol.)

I've been too lazy to blog. I'm blogging now because I'm working night shift at the hospital and there's no patient now. I don't have mood to do anything else and I saw people posting new year posts on FB so I figured why not I visit this pathetic blog of mine 😂.

Well. Frankly speaking, after reading the new year posts by friends, I felt a bit 'empty' inside. It's not an unusual feeling... I feel it nearly everytime I browse FB. It's explainable by some research done on FB whereby they found that browsing FB too much would make people depressed. But I couldn't help but wonder why I feel this way. Is it because my life is really that empty, meaningless and uninteresting?!

I thought I'm all for simple, contented life. Then why do I still care whether my life is interesting or not? Hmm..

Anyway, I've welcomed 2018 at hospital, in a very stressed environment. Coz it's my first time working night shift with a pharmacy assistant, just the two of us, without a senior pharmacist. This means that, there's nobody to ask for help if there's weird prescription by doctors, or if there's unfamiliar situations that I have to tackle. I'm on my own.

I've worked alone with pharmacy assistant before twice but it was an evening shift. I could still call for help if I needed to. But for night shift... I wouldn't want to disturb people while they're sleeping lah...

Haih anyway, I didn't think I would be so 'Jonah' (it means bad luck in medical field). I always​ get so many patients or so many phone calls from doctors. When I worked with another senior pharmacist, most of the time it was okay if not relax.

I know I should be confident and calm since I've already undergone 1 year of training and gonna officially be a registered pharmacist already. But then, I know many senior pharmacists still dread of working shifts alone because you will never know what kind of challenges u will face, what kind of weird medication doses u will encounter, what type of stupid mistakes patients made that make your life miserable.

They said that life's not fun if there's no challenges, right? But Wth how to feel fun if the mistakes you make may cost someone's life? Lol. Is that why I don't really feel happy even though I've survived through the so called hellish 1 year PRP training (though my training was not that stressful compared to those in big hospitals hehe, but still stressful ok)?

I always feel I should be better than this if I want to be a good pharmacist. I should be more hardworking, more passionate to learn, more energetic... But I'm tired most of the time... How to learn and study la like that???

Speaking of this some may think that it's because I'm not passionate enough. Energy comes along with passion. True. But couldn't it be that some people just naturally have low energy levels, or that some people's genetic code makes them more negative minded?

Then, some positive minded folks will say, oh this girl is blaming her negative mind on genes. OK whatever. But who actually can decide that what's right and what's wrong? In this society that favours extroverts, introverts are seen as inferior. But are they really not as good as extroverts?

Similar in this case. Why do people think that negative minded is bad? It's just the way things are. I think it's normal to think negatively just don't too over. But what I don't like is people who think negative minded is bad telling negative minded people that you shouldn't think negatively. In some cases I think negative thoughts are healthy sometimes? Like everything has to be moderate, right? So positive and negative have to be balanced also lah.

Haha enough of my rambling. Let's see what have I achieved in 2017.

To some, it may be a lot. But to me, I felt like what I've achieved is nothing big. I always feel this way. On every one of my graduations, I didn't feel like they're big achievements?

This year might be the most stressful year in my life. I'm someone who rarely deal with stress. Studies hadn't really been tough for me since primary school. I've gotten top 3 in my grade during primary school without even revising for exams. My parents never really gave me pressure in my studies or anything else in that matter. My dad earns enough from his business so we never have to worry about money. Although my parents never spoil us with gifts, they also never let us do too much house chores. OK my point is, we didn't have much experience in dealing with stress. So when me, an introvert, have to learn so much new things in a new environment with all new people and in such a short amount of time, it's first time in my life that I face such a huge amount of stress. The effect of stress is apparent on my body. My dandruff got worse. My period was 1 week late (first time so late). But one good thing is my period pain was not as bad as it was I don't know why lol.

So. In short, I've just been through a really stressful time and although I should feel proud but not really cause I feel like I'm not good enough. But well I'm just gonna keep improving myself at my own pace... Cause after all, my first priority is not my career. I have other things to do as well. I don't want to spend all my time on work.

As for the status of my career now... So after training we're supposed to apply for full registration and after that only we can get posting. Previously PRP would get posting around one month after they finish training, and they might get posted to anywhere in Malaysia. The most dreaded ones are Sabah and Sarawak lah. But for contract PRPs (which we are first batch of), we will continue our second year compulsory service in the same state. This means we will not get Sabah Sarawak for second year, yay! But we could also be posted to Klinik Kesihatan with only one senior pharmacist. And we still don't know when and how will we know that we will be absorbed into government service as permanent civil servant. So far what we know is we are given marks for 'co-curicular activities' like campaigns related to Pharmacy, publishing articles/research, getting professional certification, getting excellence award (previous batch of PRP don't need to do all these, they will become permanent government servant as long as they pass their PRP training). And it's quite ridiculous seeing that most pharmacists with years of experience in government service never even publish any material.. =. = and they expect us to do these in first two years of our service. Even my big boss say 'don't want to give people job just say lah' lol.

But we're quite lucky, really. Because the colleagues here are all kind and friendly. Not like in big hospitals where PRP will get bullied, even by pharmacy assistants who are lower rank than PRP. The pharmacy assistants here are helpful and respectful. Preceptors here are willing to teach and never scold us like mad dogs, actually I think I never see they scold anyone also. They also gave us really high marks because they said they don't want decide whether we get our job or not (to be absorbed into government service, we must get more than 85%).

What this hospital lack is exposure to more complicated cases. Although we can get more exposure in big hospitals but who knows maybe I can't learn much also because i will be too stressed?

I'm also really grateful that I have friends who are willing to listen to my complaints and rambling and negative thoughts when I was at my most stressful times. If they didn't, I might have became depressed or just gave up on my PRP training.

2017 is a year when I've grown up the most, the year that I've first deal with a lot of adult stuffs like, getting my first real salary, first time paying for road tax, insurance, first time applying my own credit cards, investing, filing income tax... First time driving alone to new places with GPS... Signed up for Mount Kinabalu hike which I still haven't really started training for it yet lol...First time buying something more than RM 1000 (my Sony Alpha 5100 which costs RM2000) with my own hard earned money! First time paying for vacation with my own money (trip to HK)!

So many first times :) So this sums up my 2017, huh?

Oh BTW I'm still single lol. Either my 缘分 hasn't arrived yet or I'm more suitable to be forever alone lol.

Hope 2018 will be good to me too :)