On the 28th of September, we went to the Q&R Pharmaceutical Company under the arrangement of Mr Huang, the coordinator for us in the University. However, I didn’t find that the trip was really beneficial to us as we only toured around the perimeter of the company only.
Everyone boarded the bus with our entertainment source as we heard that the trip to the company was only 30 minutes. In the end, the trip to the company only turned out to be 10 minutes. The company was just a few kilometers beside our school.

When we reached the company, the first thing that we saw was a bull ploughing the land. We were definitely curious of was, “What is a bull doing here in a pharmaceutical company?” Anyway, we moved on and an ambassador of the company, Tang Hui Hui, came to receive us. He can be considered as half of our senior as he was from Wuhan University of Science & Technology the pharmaceutical course. Then, we began our touring of the company.

The first stop was the warehouse where they kept their goods in. This was exactly what we were taught in our modules. I still remembered Ms Mrinal mentioning this in her Pharmaceutics lecture about the goods being labeled as Passed in green, Quarantined as yellow or Failed in red after they were being examined after production. The goods that passed and quarantined are stored at the middle of the warehouse whereas the goods that failed are stored in a room at one corner. There is actually a short wall at the entrance of the warehouse, which is around of the height of the temples that we went to on excursions, to prevent any stray animals from entering the place. This is definitely required as the stray animals like cats and dogs; they might urinate at where the goods are which will contaminate the products. I managed to overhear that the warehouse actually doesn’t obey cGMP. After enquiring more from Wen Liang, I managed to know that it doesn’t obey the cGMP due to quite a lot of reasons. The main few will be the corners of the room are 90 degree bended instead of curved; they have things hanging on the ceiling; the device that is used to attract and kill flies is not integrated into the wall.

As we were walking down the perimeters, I saw that they also have the emergency shower area for the workers if anything happens. I believe that this is a basic for every pharmaceutical company. Next, we saw the Ion Exchange Resin room. That was very interesting to me as I have studied this in Pharmaceutics also. However, we were only taught the theory of how the exchange of the ion happened but never seen any pictures of the actual vessel before. This time was indeed an eye opener and the tank was really huge.

We went on with the tour but apparently, we were not allowed into the compounds so we didn’t have a lot of information to know about. So, Mr Tang bought us to the gowning room in the company. When we reached there, what I witnessed was exactly the same as what I saw in Singapore when I went to Sunward Pharmaceutical Company when I was in Year 1.

The air pressure outside of the room is just like what we learnt. It is lower than the air pressure outside. The reason is such that the microbes will be blown out of the compound instead of entering the compound. The changing of the footwear is also done to reduce the amount of microbes on the footwear. As well as changing of clothes is to reduce the amount of microbes. Even though that the procedure of the gowning is rather troublesome, I would believe that if we were allowed to enter the compound of the factory, it would be an eye-opener. This was actually the last part of the visit.

Feeling a little unsatisfied with what we have only saw in the plant, we decided to ask Mr Tang some questions and we managed to find out that their actual R&D is done in Shanghai and the production of vaccines is controlled by government.

With this, we ended the trip and took a group photo with Mr Tang at the entrance of the plant before taking the 10 minute bus trip back to school.

As we reached school like earlier than we have planned, I decided to go to Guang Gu again to shop around and this time my shopping partners are Ying Li and Jehanne.

Definitely, Ying Li being a novice in shopping in Wuhan now introduced us, the amateurs, to a lot of new things to try out. The thing was the bubble tea in Guang Gu and I find that the taste of the bubble tea was so much better than the ones we had in Singapore! The reason is that even though that the drink is sweet, it is not as artificial as the ones we drink in Singapore. The taste that they have here is slightly more oriental and I find that this should be the way how the flavours should be developed as compared to Singapore's where they just put in what they want. The concept of the stall is almost the same as Singapore as the crew will be at the back doing the concoction for the drink with all the flask they had to contain the syrups and tea. The only difference is that their service is way much better as they have a queue system, which they will call for your number when your drink is ready (Yeah, just like how they do it at the doctor's) and they actually help you to open your drink unlike Singapore where everything is almost inconsistent and self serviced.

Then we had the Hong Kong style of waffle which tasted great also. Apparently, China's bread and pastries seemed to be more of the Singaporean's taste as compared to the main courses over here. Again, the flavour of the batter was not that sweet as it is just enough for you to taste it. However, I think that for people who like sweet stuff to be extremely sweet, the taste might be a little weird for them. One of the reasons that I think that it makes the difference for the level of sweetness is the milk that the bakeries will add into the batter for the waffle. I find that it is more easily eaten as compared to the waffle that we had in Singapore as the mould actually creates bite size portions and it makes it easier for us to tear it off bit by bit to eat, especially when it is hot.

The following day, we had another student interaction session with the locals again! This time, it was at the clubhouse and the whole place just simply looks like a disco, which is able to make you go high. As we entered, we were told to draw a number card, which I thought it would be used for lucky draw (I had too much of Toastmasters as we have lucky draws every session), but it turns out to be a lucky draw for the participants for the games they had for us. As the number were being called, we were definitely scared of our number being called. The second round of the game and I was called up to play the drink game which someone had a drink that was spiked with a high amount of salt. So the floor had to guess. Oh well, I went up to play definitely and after that it was Millison's turn to go on the floor to play a bursting balloon game.

The funniest part was that Dr Tan was sabotaged to play musical chair and he was the 4th last to get eliminated! However, the ironical thing is that the winners for the game were needed to do forfeits! All of us were kind of shocked by that. So, not all that glitter is gold yea people.

Overall, I find that the China students really made the whole event very well and all of us enjoyed it totally.

Friday, we went to Guang Gu again for some activities to unwind ourselves. We went to Ajisan for lunch and we were stumped by the variety of food they had on the menu as compared to the one in Singapore. The best thing was that, the price of a bowl of noodles in Ajisan here is the price of one bowl of high standard Ba Chor Mee in Orchard in Singapore! How good can it get! Imagine Singapore having a bowl of Ajisan noodles for around $5, I'd go crazy if there is such deal.

Then we went over to the karaoke in the evening and I love the karaoke here! It is so much better than Singapore in terms of the ambience and system! Even the toilet area looks nicer than any of the high class places I went in China.

Firstly, they do not need to use a remote control to select the songs that they want to sing, but it is replaced by a touch screen system! Within the system, there is a lot of extra functions such as cheering, jeering and applause effect.

Secondly, there is another remote implanted in the walls of the room and you can adjust the volume of the system from there and the television screen is just simply so big! Apparently for Singapore's K Box, the television screen is not as big as this unless you have a room for 8 people and above. But, we only have 4 people!

This weekend, there was no excursions but we went to Shucheng Jie (书城街). At the shopping mall there, the book stall is one of the biggest bookstall you can find in China with all the high standard books just like Kinokuniya in Singapore. Nonetheless to say, we spent 4 hours in the bookstores hunting for our books and buying them like nobody's business as the prices of books in China is way too reasonable. My best harvest for the day was the whole set of The Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre by Jin Yong. I wanted to get the whole series in Singapore but apparently, it was kind of expensive but here, I could just get it without much hesitation.

We went to Pizza Hut for lunch and apparently, we felt that we got scammed by them. The thumbs up for the Pizza Hut in China is that they have more variety and the food SEEMED nicer. Now, I am going to show you what the power of SEEMED can do.

Then, Sunday was whole day stucked in the room preparing for the PBL presentation tomorrow. Hopefully everything will go smoothly!