The inaugural Apothe-Pourri 2008, organised by the Hospital Chapter, was held on 22 Aug 2008 at the Singapore Polytechnic's Food Haven. The event saw over 100 attendees.

Amidst the yummilicious spread of Chinese cuisine which was also halal, the attendees were seated according to their areas of interests.

The night started a little behind schedule because of the rain and difficulty in locating the place, but it finally got off to a start at 7.20pm when Ms Ang Hui Gek, Chief Pharmacist, and Ms M K Fatimah, President of PSS gave their opening and welcome speeches.

A must-have for any mixer event is table games. It was chaos as the attendees ran around the restaurant to complete their table bingo grid, while shoving spoonfuls of food in between.

The second table game was to guess the identity of the Mystery Pharmacists, a game inspired by the cartoon "Pokemon". A "doctored" picture of each of the 9 Pharmacists, outstanding individuals in their respective field of practice, were featured one at a time while the games master, Hwa Lin of TTSH, gave a corresponding running commentary of what they do. Most of the tables did rather well identifying the Mystery Pharmacists!
 
The Hospital Chapter took this chance to announce networking initiative of discussion groups, and publicised the badge design competition for the Pharmacy Week 2008.

The night drew to a close with the Early Bird lucky draw for the first 50 attendees who arrived at site. Making away with the first prize, a Philips DVD player, was an SGH pharmacist. It serves to remind everyone, the early bird catches the worm!

Finally, tokens of appreciations, in the form of bouquets of beautiful purple flowers arranged courtesy of Kelvin of KKH, were presented to Ms Ang & Ms Fatimah to mark the closing of the event. From the smiles and noise generated, it appears that the attendees enjoyed themselves catching up and making new friends.

I would like to acknowledge The Hospital Chapter committee of 2008 and the PSS secretariat's Edira Chong for their wonderful commitment to make this a success. They are a talented bunch of people who are also highly devoted. Many of them took the pains to switch shifts just so they could report earlier to help set up for the night. It was great teamwork and synergy of the team that enabled us to pull off a feat like this.

Last but not least, on behalf of the Hospital Chapter, I would like to thank every attendee, for without attendees, this night would not have been possible. The Committee hopes you had fun that night, and that the objective of networking was indeed achieved for you.

See you next year at Apothe-Pourri 2009. The best is yet to be.

Doreen Tan Su-Yin
Senior Clinical Pharmacist
BSc (Pharm), BCPS, CGP
Pharmaceutical Society of Singapore (PSS) Council Member