Exploring the Hospital

Today for the first time, we saw patients on other wards (ward is the British term for a floor like 6 Long or 14 Moffitt).  Before all the rooms I saw had 6 people with a fairly bad nurse to patient ratio, no air conditioning or TV, and barely any privacy.  On this other ward, the rooms were called suites and they looked very much like a private room in a US hospital.   The difference is the class of the patient.  Apparently here if you have private insurance that will pay for more, you get more so these patients here have fancy modern looking rooms with nearly a 1:1 nurse to patient ratio, whereas the patients I normally see only have basic coverage and can't afford anything like this.  It's a pretty big discrepancy that you wouldn't usually see in a US hospital since it's not PC to do that but, regardless, the class runs from "A class" to "C class" with subdivisions in between.  This really is a case of you get what you pay for.

The National Cancer Centre is actually on the campus of Singapore General Hospital so everyone who doesn't bring lunch usually heads over to the main hospital to eat.  I found out today just how expansive the main hospital is.  There are multiple cafes near just about every entrance to the hospital and in the center atrium, besides the food court I posted earlier, there are additional cafes, a large retail pharmacy and even a 7-eleven!  Yes you can even shop for convenience items while you visit someone in the hospital.  It's kind of like having a mini-mall on the ground level.  I had Mee Siam and something called a Milo Dinosaur:

Milo is a very popular drink here which is almost like a chocolate milk but creamier.  It's usually made from powder sort of like Ovaltine and a Milo Dinosaur is the iced Milo drink itself with several heaping scoops of the Milo powder on top of the ice.  When the powder cools it forms clumps and you eat it with a little bit of the drink.  Very interesting texture, I guess like an airy powder chocolate truffle.