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Travelling In My New Company
November 14, 2006
Last June, I joined another pharmaceutical company for another clinical trial project. The company has a Medical and Regulatory Affairs Department. Two other doctors are in the department, the medical director and the medical marketing manager.
The department conducts budget planning sessions regularly and held one last October in Subic, Olongapo (a three-hour ride from Manila). I hate budget planning sessions. We talk about liquidations, accruals and variances. Before, I prepare clinical reports. Now, I do expense reports. Anyway, we watched the sea lions, dolphins and whales at Ocean Adventure in the mornings and conducted the budget sessions in the afternoons. Budgeting is a very important aspect in the operations of a pharmaceutical company. After all, I need to budget my foreign travels which happen regularly in my new company, and my first one took place just recently.
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Roche Philippines - Medical Department taking a break at Subic.
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I have been attending conventions since medical school. But I spend more time visiting the exhibits than listening to the lectures. Right now, the plenary sessions during conventions are more interactive. Actual cases are presented and the audience participate in the discussions. Recently, I had this opportunity to join an international convention abroad. I attended the Roche Asia Oncology Forum in Hong Kong last November 3-5. It was my first so it was a very memorable experience.
I travelled with my boss, the medical director of our pharmaceutical company. We arrived in Hong Kong at 9:00 AM on November 3, Day 1, Friday. You are already in Hong Kong when you see high-rise buildings on mountains, double-decker buses and red taxicabs. Our scheduled meeting for the day was at 12:00-5:00 PM. We had enough time to visit one place. We went to Stanley Market where you can buy T-shirts at a Filipino rate of 4 for HK$100. A number of Filipinos have their own stalls there.
We checked in at Island Shangri-La Hotel. They say it is one of the best hotels in the world. No wonder the rate was HK$2800 per night. Indeed, the facilities and services at the hotel were great. The front desk receptionists were very nice and accommodating. I had a short chat with one of them. Her name was Polly. "Are you Chinese?" I asked. "What do you think?" She asked back with a smile. "I know you speak Cantonese here," I continued, "but do you also speak Mandarin?" She replied with a yes. Then I spoke in Mandarin, "Ni hen mey li (You are beautiful)." She blushed. After she had arranged our room accommodations, I remarked, "Sye sye (Thank you)."
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Our meeting in the afternoon of Day 1 went well. We discussed our study on non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) where Philippines was the top recruiter of patients in Asia. An average of 45 new lung cancer cases is seen every month at the Philippine General Hospital alone. The patients in the study receive oral chemotherapy using erlotinib (a tyrosine kinase inhibitor) in addition to the current standard treatment. After the meeting, we had dinner at the Peak Lookout, an indoor-outdoor restaurant which serves Western and Southeast Asian dishes. My boss ordered sirloin steak and wanted to have lemon to go with it. The Chinese waiter said, "Steak and lemon do not match." My boss remarked, "They match for me." So the waiter brought her slices of lemon to go with the steak. When my order of grilled prawns arrived, it came with slices of lemon. The waiter remarked, "Prawns and lemon match but steak and lemon do not match." We just laughed and enjoyed our food. We went back to the hotel via the Peak Tram, a double reversible funicular railway. The track is 1.4 km long with a gradient of between 4 to 27 degrees, rising from 28m to 396m above sea level. It was like having a breathtaking ride at Enchanted Kingdom or Star City.
We attended the plenary sessions on Day 2, Saturday. In Hong Kong, there is a high prevalence of hepatocellular carcinoma and nasopharyngeal carcinoma, which is commonly referred to as "Cantonese cancer." The different chemotherapeutic drugs mentioned in the discussions like trastuzumab and bevacizumab gave me a headache. I sneaked out at 11:00 AM and visited the gym at the hotel. I worked out on the CrossRamp for 30 minutes working on my gluteals, quadriceps, hamstrings and calves and burning some 200 calories, and went back to the session hall for lunch. At around 3:00 PM, my boss decided to go back to the hotel. So I just spent the rest of the afternoon at the pool of the hotel sight seeing.
The gala dinner took place at the Jumbo Kingdom Floating Restaurant. The restaurant resembles an ancient Chinese imperial palace. It has played host to such celebrities as Tom Cruise and Chow Yun Fat. Chinese arts and culture (lion dance, acrobatic show, rainbow calligraphy, dragon beard candy-making, Chinese musical performance and emperor photo taking) were featured at the dinner. We were treated to a sumptuous multi-course Cantonese seafood banquet. There were twelve of us from the Philippines at that dinner. Most came from the provinces. It was nice to see two consultants from Riverside Medical Center, Bacolod City (Dr. Guancia and Dr. Mallen).
We had another scheduled meeting on Day 3, Sunday. We discussed our cervical cancer study with the Thailand team. I have difficulty memorizing the names of our Thai staff. One is named Vicharn. Another is Prasert. Other names are Pichet, Aeumporn and Phatcharin. It was the first time I got to meet these guys in person. We only coordinate through e-mail. When I was introduced to Pichet, I told him, "I thought you are a female!" He laughed. My previous cervical cancer study involved consolidation chemotherapy with ifosfamide given as an intravenous infusion. Now we give oral chemotherapy using capecitabine in addition to the standard treatment.
We were scheduled to leave for Manila on Day 4, Monday. Our flight was at 4:40 PM via Cathay Pacific. I spent the morning at The Mall located at the lower level floors of the hotel. The place is Hong Kong's premier shopping destination. It has a superb collection of department stores, boutiques and well-known international labels like Ermenegildo Zegna, Gucci, Prada, Salvatore Ferragamo and Versace. The items were just too expensive for me. I went back to my room and spent the rest of the morning in the bathtub listening to music. Our flight departed as scheduled and we arrived in Manila at 6:40 PM.
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Meeting between Philippine, Thai, and Australian doctors in Hongkong.
The author is 1st from right, back row.
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It was back to work the next day, Tuesday, at the office in Manila. Then we had to be in Clark, Pampanga (a two-hour ride from Manila) from Wednesday to Friday for the Good Clinical Practice Workshop we organized for consultants and fellows of the Philippine General Hospital, University of Santo Tomas Hospital and Philippine Orthopedic Center, to be conducted by the University of the Philippines College of Public Health. I had to give a short lecture myself. It was my first time to give one to consultants and fellows. The audience knew about that because my boss said before my lecture, "It is his baptism by fire." Everything went fine. Some of the fellows in the audience were my classmates in B.S. Biology anyway.
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I wrote this article on a Saturday, the day after our three-day workshop at Clark, while I was on my 24-hour duty at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. I took a much needed rest the next day.
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Advanced Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!!!
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Views expressed on this column and any other by-lined articles on this site are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organization or its members.
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