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Isn’t it amazing that we, as distinct individuals have the ability to live our lives the way we want?

We all have 24 hours in a day, and with this time, we can choose to build six-pack abs, score As for all our exams, get the girl of your hearts desire.

We can choose to sleep less in a day to get more work done. We can take up part-time jobs to build some start-up capital to own our own businesses. We can read books to build our knowledge and make our lives better.

We are in charge of our own lives. We can live a simple life in the village or become a high-powered executive in the corporate world. We can choose to go to poor countries to be a volunteer worker. We can choose to be a doctor, astronaut, lawyer, pharmacist. Money is not an issue because if there is a will, there is a way. Don’t know enough? Buy books, read more. No money? Get a part time job and start a small business. Don’t know how to start a business? buy books, read more.

The sky’s the limit, and all the worlds a stage.

So i’ve been wrong all the while.

I used to think that to achieve happiness in life, you must have a balance in Health, Wealth and Relationships.

Unfornately, I discovered that “balance” is just another excuse for mediocrity.

How am I suppose to excel in life if by thinking that if I focus too much on “Wealth”, for example, other compartments of my life will suffer? If this is the case, i’m also telling myself that I DON’T want to excel in my career because it would cause my health and relationships to detiorate. Thus, as much as I want to excel in my career, subconsciously I would be preventing myself from succeeding! No wonder my year hasn’t been productive

Luckily I finally realised that. It is not impossible to excel in certain parts of life without neglecting others.

Today’s CPE (Continuous Pharmacy Education) Session was somewhat different from other days. Eli Lily, the company who founded Zypyrexa (aka Olanzapine, an anti-psychotic drug) invited Dr. Vincent Wong, the head of the Psychiatry department of my hospital to come and give a talk about Schizophrenia.

I’ve always known Dr.Vincent as a nice person, recalling back the time he came to take some medicines from me at the pharmacy on a sunny weekend afternoon. From the way he talked to me I could tell he was a friendly, humble person who even asked me what to write in his prescription for a flu drug. We had a light chat and we got to know a little more about each other, which gave me a very good impression of him.

The first slide of his presentation was simple, yet portrayed how he respected the pharmacy profession. “Pharmacists – Our partners in mental health care”. He recognizes that we are facing a tight budget, which makes it difficult for us to buy many expensive drugs for the patients.

You and I might think – “Why do we even bother wasting our money on these psychos?!” But for Dr.Vincent, treating patients with mental illnesses is not an easy job for him. The fact is this – when their illnesses are not well controlled, lives are endangered. Many patients attempt suicide or harm their loved ones because they aren’t thinking like normal people do. And its not their fault at all. Why? Because they can’t think properly due to a chemical imbalance in their brains. Mental illnesses are essentially brain diseases. It’s not because they had a painful breakup or they are “bad guys”, they are born like that. Sometimes stress induced by the physical environment triggers this chemical imbalance which they are born with which causes them to be like this.

I feel ashamed of myself as a pharmacist. We say we want to save lives. Yes, admittedly, we are having trouble with our finances. But we complain whenever the doctor decides to start a patient on an expensive drug, or insists that we give branded drugs over generic, despite both drugs having the same efficacy. But one thing I learnt from this session – is that the most effective drug to treat a mentally ill patient is not the most expensive drug, it is the drug which the patient is most willing to take consistently throughout his life. Patients normally don’t take their drugs because the drug might not be causing any effect, or has excessive side effects. Also, because they don’t think that well, it is more difficult for them to understand that there is not much difference between a branded and generic drug. I feel ashamed of myself because I only see what’s on the surface, that they’re crazy. I get very annoyed whenever they stand in front of the counter demanding that they get their drugs served immediately, with branded labels and also the right colour and right amount of tablets. (Yes, some even count the number of tablets supplied in front of me). But I’ve come to realized, it’s not their fault. I should show empathy towards these patients because they’ve been socially neglected, their families have stopped caring and they cannot function in life.

My call to all pharmacists out there is this: Even if we can’t buy more drugs for the patients, let us treat them with more love and care. Be patient with them and do everything in our power to make their lives better. Find ways to provide them with the medications they need to help them take back control over their lives. Give them a chance at life.

Special thanks to Dr.Vincent for sharing his insights on mental healthcare with us.

Is Food poisoning a valid excuse for lying in bed consecutively for 72 hours? You bet it is! But its all not all a walk in the park. With your stomach making unearthly noises all the time and having to rush to the loo every few minutes, i’d pretty much rather be filling in medicine in the pharmacy :X Just so you know, I’m feeling a tad better today. I won’t say im much better, don’t wanna jinx it lol.

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While waiting for my bus to go back to KL last friday, I couldnt help but notice a diligent young chap running around trying to sell bus tickets. Dressed in a faded polo Tee and baggy cargos with an oversized pouch hanging across his waist, he works for the competitor of Mayang Sari (Ekspress Maharani), which offers trips back to KL as well. According to the people at Mayang Sari – his father passed away when he was young and although he’s schooling now, he prefers to sell bus tickets.He has successfully bought himself a motorcycle and laptop so far. The people there kept telling him to stay in school, so that he won’t end up like the rest of them, but I know that deep down inside he believes that he will succeed. Who knows, he might be to become a bus operator one day.

It’s time once again for my looooong deserved blog post about my life. Life is so unpredictable. As fate might have it, after stressing for many many months I have decided to come to a stern decision about my career life.

I have decided to continue my job as a Pharmacist. Yes, this might come as a shock to most of you, considering that I have been ranting for months about financial freedom and escaping 9-5. Truth is, I still want it, just that now is not the right time for me to abandon my job. For one, patients need me. Hehe. But besides that, I have decided to keep my options open.

As we all know, in order to achieve financial freedom, its wise to not keep all our eggs in one basket. We have to have multiple streams of passive income. That is why I have decided to obtain my pharmacy license. Meanwhile, I will be focusing on Internet marketing part time and also building the skills I need for me to enter into the business world (offline and online) when the time is right.

However, despite the ups and downs and multiple failures I have gone through in this year, I have learnt so much.

Proud to say that i’ve already received several paychecks from online businesses. The amount is not alot, but now I truly believe that it can be done, even part time. As T Harv Eker says – “How you do anything, is how you do everything”. If I wanted to be rich online I can do it even if im doing part time. So the coming 3 years will be interesting to see if I can really make it happen.

I really don’t know sometimes whether what I do in life is right or wrong. But whatever it is, i’m just going to take the plunge and see what happens. As long as I know i’ve done the best of my ability and i’ve never went against my heart and principles, I have no regrets.

Lets play… The Game Of Life!

Photo From: Flickr (unknown)

Life is like a game. The objective of life is to win it.
There are many levels in life. Each level has its own boss and difficulty level. These are obstacles in life. Our job is to defeat the boss.
Whenever we get stuck in a level, its time to sought help from others. This can be in the form of getting tips of friends who have already passed the level or working together to pass a particular level.

There are many levels. It could be Family Level 1, Friends Level 2, Love Level 3 or Business level 48. Each time we pass a level, we will move on to the next. Sometimes in order to pass a certain level, we need to pass levels from different categories first. Sometimes, we have to revisit earlier levels to re-learn things we forget.

Like all games, the purpose of games is entertainment or enjoyment. Thats why, we must always enjoy the game of life. Don’t get too frustrated over one level. Revisit older levels and remind yourself of your previous achievements. Even if you can’t pass level 10 of Career, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be proud that you are at much higher levels of other categories.

I play the Game Of Life to win.

So… do you wanna play?

I’m glad to have been a participant at Edmund Loh and Elle Wong’s IM Weekend Workshop. The workshop lasted 2 whole days starting from 10am to 6pm.

Despite Malaysia’s wonderful reputation on punctuality, most of the participants were either early or on time. Things started off abit shaky but sooned everyone warmed up to Edmund and Elle’s friendly and humorous personalities. The speakers held nothing back as they guided us step by step through every module that they taught, citing hands-on examples online and engaging participants to do the same through their laptops. Edmund also pointed out many mistakes that he made throughout his internet marketing career and saved us the trouble of having to go through the same pain, anguish and frustration that he did.

Both speakers portrayed different speaking styles which complemented each other throughout the workshop. Edmund inspired the participants through his stories of rags-to-riches and did not hesitate to answer any queires from the crowd. Elle was an excellent public speaker whom portrayed professionalism, confidence and also power in her sessions and gave the participants many useful insights into her expertise.

Things took an interesting turn when Edmund announced a contest among the participants to design the best sales copy page in a given scenario. The participants were fired up and learnt alot from each other when Edmund critiqued the pros and cons of the sales letters one by one. The winning team was given a free PLR membership on one of his sites.

Towards the end of the workshop, Edmund motivated his participants to take action and generously offered free hosting to participants who took immediate action by signing up for a paid domain name. The workshop ended with participants leaving with each others contacts and who knows, they might become the upcoming stars of the internet marketing arena.

In a nutshell, kudos to Edmund and Elle for organising a really helpful and enjoyable Internet Marketing Workshop. If you guys ever decide to hold another workshop, i’ll be sure to be the first to sign up! =)

I was in the “make-money- online” mode on this gloomy Friday afternoon when I stumbled upon a blog of an old friend, Phaik Leng. (Sorry, till now I still can’t spell your name correctly). With today’s cyberspace filled with bimbo blogs, mimbo blogs, emo blogs and money making blogs, very rarely do we come across sincere, heartwarming, down to earth blogs where people communicate their thoughts transparently with such grace and granduer, fearless of intrusion by strangers or what other may think.

Funny story actually, I was never close to her in university days. We occasionally greet with “hi-byes” and small talk but she always had this sincere smile that doesn’t look forced. When I went to the Millionaire Mind Intensive Seminar by T. Harv Eker, I was suprised to see her there, especially when she related a sad story about money she had in front of a 3,000 strong crowd. We chatted for awhile and parted our own ways but that short reunion reminded me that we are not alone in life’s struggles.

Anyway, the reason i’m blogging about this is because I was touched by her post The Sun Is Smiling. Really learnt a valuable lesson from it. Why not you guys go on and have a read and leave a comment – tell me what you think. To PL – Keep up the brilliant posts! I will be reading from afar

2.40 am from the computer of the TDM room at the pharmacy.

I have decided that I am no longer going to apply for the Mdec Preseed Grant for now. Truth be told, i’ve come to realised that dealing with the government is too troublesome and I much prefer to be my own boss so that I get to set the rules.

Therefore, I have decided to go back and focus full time on something I have neglected for quite awhile – Internet Marketing. The truth is, Internet Marketing is just another way to make a living just like Real Estate, MLMs and Selling insurance.

However, I really like Internet Marketing because of the flexibility it allows. You can work from home or anywhere with your laptop and an internet connection. Coupled by the fact that im really fascinated by the Internet and the speed its evolving. Past generations didn’t have the internet and although more and more people are using it to monetize, I believe there’s alot more potential out there to be tapped into.

On a related note, I just want to say i’m really grateful for the people around me who support me no matter what I do. You guys know who you are… Thank you. I promise I won’t let you guys or myself down. =)

P.S I’m going for Edmund and Elle’s Internet Marketing Workshop this weekend. Whoever is interested can check it out here.  Early birds get a 2 for the price of one totalled at RM588. Drop me a shout if you are going as well!