Coming To Vancouver BC Canada
Vancouver is spectacularly unreal. A visual sushi bar. Stately white-capped mountains surrounded by lakes and straits - fronting the Pacific. In fall, a canvas of orange,red, green and yellow dazzling the city roads and botanical gardens. In winter, a blanket of white capping rooftops and streets. In spring, an explosion of pink, red, yellow flowers electrifies the city. In summer, the warmth of greenery and sunshine bathes a vibrant community. Black and white Orca whales, bald eagles, salmon of every kind, black bears and grizzlies, tawny cougars and red-breasted robins. Advent Orca.
When I first came to Vancouver in 1993, it was quite a culture shock. Life in the West is quite different from back home in Asia, even though I can say Singapore is one of the more Western of Asian cities. Suffice to say it was a transition period, that first year here. I didn't like some things I saw here, and liked others than I didn't see back home. In the final analysis, coming here expanded my experience of different lifestyles and that alone, was probably worth the plane ticket ride...
Pharmacy school. There's something irresistible about the notion of peddling drugs for a living. There's a certain mystique in having lawyers, dentists, doctors and yes...police officers darken your doorstep for drugs.
Pharmacy has evolved a lot over the past 50 years. Courses that teach the art of dispensing reflect the old druggist days of the field. Courses like pharmacology and pharmaceutical chemistry teach us the exact science of the field it is today. Courses like biotech pharmaceutics teach us about gene therapy ... a likely field that pharmacy will play an important role in the near future. Can we put a corrected gene sequence that could cure genetic diseases in tablet?
In my final year, I took on a directed study at a local hospital in Vancouver which deals with studying trends in hospital care involving statistical analysis and developing problem solving models of health care policies. The project studies the patterns of drug-induced hospital admissions and lays the groundwork for future studies on developing better hospital programs in anti diabetic, anticoagulant and antihypertensive care.
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