god i'm turning into a government servant. sorry kimi i know you're not for taking the almighty's name in vain, but there are times gosh just sounds like a disney cartoon character. right now i just want to be struck by lightning.

i have come to realise (ever since another pharmacist got pulled into our so-called mtac and is now handling diabetes which means 3/4 of my work is cut out) that warfarin patients only come at 10-11, then 3-3.30 and that is all at one go. so i run around like crazy for about half an hour and the rest i sit around reading pamphlets (the thyroid treatment book was pretty enlightening). doing queries, well, i mean, i could find out the price of one vial of rituximab (rm3500 thereabouts) or i could guess my way through as the resident translator (but oh, bless these little upm medical students who are probably older than me).

so anyway. today i was handed my first three warfarin referrals for the day and in between filling in my forms and calling them out, i went to have coffee.

in the middle of running from patient to doctor to patient (inr 1.12, previously 4.51, now to increase dose again) regarding how she lives 5 hours and 3 cross-your-fingers-hope-they-come bus rides away + some walking and how well you can prescribe 2 weeks medication for me but i sure am only gonna come in 3 months for the next inr check, and back to dr who didnt want the responsibility of a bleeding/stroke patient on his hands, and i just decided, screw this shit and just write, dear opd colleagues, kindly supply 3 months medication for this noncompliant patient who stays in ulu.

then again i didnt come up with that myself. to quote dr s, alright then just give her tca 3/12, and we all pray nothing happens to her in between, woo hoo! now please go away i want to finish the cards quick quick.

and then i happily forgot about it and was mildly annoyed when opd called to query. what, you dont trust my judgement?

when i see an inr squeezing into the little range of 2-3 (i also accept 3.04's) i call them out, ask them for bleeding tendencies, and tell them to go collect their medication.

all i wanna do nowadays is sit down and stare blankly into space. should get the t4/tsh checked. the presence of the new mtac girl is making me feel slightly bashful about the underperforming but ultimately i cant be half-arsed. it's hard to be when your u44 (pemangku) tells you that she doesnt want to key in your QAP cos she doesnt trust the data. whatever. sorry for spoiling your beautiful statistics.

actually i should have taken that as a challenge and worked harder to prove her wrong. but malaslah. god i'm becoming this country. i'm wasting taxpayer's money. and this rant is absolutely all over the place i have no skill.

ok. let's do this. (right i know i have cardiac arrest to do but you see jaybeep, ini padahnya sik nak set deadline)

let's say you want to work in aus. ok i know at least 2 people who want to stay behind and work in guardian / open a big healthcare one-stop centre, but let's say you just want to cabut. i'm offering you my ops cabut: australia. (if u want ops cabut: uk i can also give you the winzip file of dizzying info.)

there's a lovely flowchart here but i cant seem to cut and paste it here (re: noob) but ok, the reason i'm doing this, seriously, is to arrange it properly in my head enough to act upon it (gosh knows i've been talking no actioning for the past couple of months).

there's either a stream a or stream b process to doing this, stream b being the faster route, but as it always happens i think we fall into stream a. you'll be streamed in when you send in a form for 500 aussie.

once they've said ok, then you go take ielts. again. bloody thing expires after 2 yrs. subang here i come.

then the stage one exam. 2 mcq papers of 2 hours and 100 questions each. these will encompass pretty much everything we learnt over the 4 years... from chemistry to pharmacology to calculations. twice yearly, in march and september, only in london, auckland and all australia. $1400 for aus-based, $1600 for the rest.

you fail, unlimited tries. if you fail one, you just have to resit that one within 2 yrs, if not then you gotta take the two again.

you pass, you can start prepping for migration. 5 years grace to do this.

now for stage 2. you'll be interviewed after you've settled down in aus. so you've to get your pr by this point, or at least a visa. (note to self: read up on immigration later). then supervised practice starts, basically pre-reg all over again. about 2000 hours but may go down slightly depending on your interview. minimum hours: 20/week; max 45/week. so different from what i just did over labour weekend...

better to do community to boost chances of passing stage 2.

about a quarter into this pre-reg, you sit for the national forensics, ethics and calculations (fuck.) exam. only in australia, $150.

about 3 quarters, til the end of pre-reg, you can sit for stage 2. this is like the big bang. 3 parts. practical, oral and written ($1950). apparently oral is the killer. something about a lot of aus-grad-and-trained malaysians couldnt get through this. let's hope our english speaking background makes the difference...

unlimited tries, again, but if we dont manage this within the 5 years of passing stage 1, we'll have to start from the very beginning, again.

and then pass = apc certificate. license to practise. start thinking about the uk if you decide aus is not ultimately what you want.

apc website

immigration help

and a little pop quiz


i dont know, really. for one thing, i remember being so naively happy when i sat for (?) drug delivery systems. this is the last paper i am ever going to sit. in my entire life. no more studying. you dont know how exhilirating that thought was. and now i'm going to put myself through this all over again. i really, pathologically, do hate exams. and this is going to be much harder than malaysian prp.

which brings me to the next thing. pharmacy is easy in this country. you can just sit and drink coffee and still be a pharmacist. and i was never the go getter of the class. but i cant stand this anymore, this stagnancy, this lack of meaning. but am i tough enough to go?

the pay is getting shite. i need financial freedom to do the things i really want, and i need to sever myself from roots to find out who i really am. as it is i'm letting myself be defined by parents and circumstances, i'm not defying gravity here.

so how. skip the 3 yrs, or wait it out?

march or september. next march seems like too soon, next sept seems like too long (if you dont want to wait out the 3 years). and this requires a lot of tightening of the purse strings, and time...

and this means i'm really forsaking malaysia. am i ready?

i want to go because i want to be free of parents. and chinese expectations. but do i want to do this as a pharmacist? can i do this as a pharmacist?