Wow! Where does the time go? One thing about living in the Philippines … the days never go slow. This is already the (at least) eighth dedicated Questions and Answer session here, in response to reader question and I love it. keep those questions coming, they keep the blog alive. Much more importantly, I learn a lot.
As a little philosophical side note, consider what I just said there for a minute. Many people have told me over the years, “You really know a lot about the Philippines, or you were so smart to know the answer to this or that”. Gee, thanks. But I got news for you all (some already know this 
), I ain’t that smart. I put on a good show, though, because whenever someone asks me a question … and often when I see someone asking someone else a question, I research it.
Research used to be boring and difficult. Now, it’s darn close to dirt simple. Go to www.google.com and type in a query … “keywords” for what you want to see work best. You won’t always find the best answer in one go, but it’s really surprising how many times you will. The big “G” is smart, I just follow along and take credit. let’s use today’s question as an example. A number of readers have asked questions about:
Prescription Drugs … availability, where to buy , what’s the cost and will your health plan pay?
Now of course when I used the “keywords” term in the last paragraph I could almost ‘see’ the eyeballs of a few glazing over. “OMG, he’s launching off into that geek world stuff”. relax, and stay with me. I’m not. “Keywords” as they apply to web searches are nothing more than what seems to you to be the mostly like words that ‘your answer’ might be filed under. Much, much simpler than the Dewy Decimal system or some of the even more arcane roadblocks to learning that 200 years of “Library Science” have thrown up to try to restrict knowledge to the ‘degreed specialists’.
The first thing I thought of when looking at that question was, “Hmm, where do I get my prescriptions filled? At the drug store, of course”. So I typed in “drug stores”. If you just do that and hit return, you’ll get a huge pot load of information, way too much for most people to ever want to wade through. So, since you’re looking for information about the Philippines, just add the keyword, “Philippines” to tell Google how to focus better. Bingo:
Philippine Drug Stores
Here’s the top two “most relevant” pages Google finds for that query, and for many, this is all you need. RxPinoy has a comprehensive list of pharmacies and doctors all over the Philippines, and Mercury Drug is by far the largest and most progressive chin of pharmacies in the country.
Google also features the World Wide Web Virtual Pharmacy. This is a huge portal site that opens to a virtual encyclopedia of drug information, including the addresses of all the major drug companies.
You really need to know these addresses in some cases, because it’s not uncommon to find that a particular drug you are using is not available. Sometimes this means what it seems to mean… it just isn’t available. But often the drug is available in the Philippines but under a different name. For reasons known only to them, major drug companies often sell their particular specialty drugs under as many as three different names around the world. It’s just the way the pharmaceutical business works.
When dealing with drug stores here in the Philippines, keep one last thing in mind. very often email doesn’t get answered. It’s a fact of life and there’s no sense denying it. If you can’t find the information about a particular product, or you need an up-to-date cost … Pick up the Phone and Call … it’s the way business gets done, and if you follow many of the suggested methods I’ve posted here or peruse my advertisers/supporters, it just doesn’t cost that much.
OK, there’s some more tips on living successfully in the Philippines. Be sure to let me know what’s on your mind.
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Hi Dave ~ You know, using google to buy the type of drugs I am looking for is not really a good idea.
Seriously, research on everything in this day in age (of age) is pretty easy. Like you I hated researching because it was very boring based on the difficulty of finding what is needed. I think we both like it now because almost anything we want to know is just a few clicks away, aside from understanding women that is.
@Mike: indeed, it has certianly moved along very nicely in the past 10 or 12 years. I never thought we would be able to attain the levels of success we already do, and in terms of search engibe relevancy I think we are only in the very beginning days. Makes me feel young, that’s for sure. many years ago, before there were any personal computers I read an article by this fellow, Vannevar Bush. It was written in 1945, a few months before I was born, and to me much of it was wilder in concept that Buck Rogers (Showing my age there, srten’t I … there’s people reading this who likely don’t know Buck Rogers
). Today, little of Buck’s fantastic interplanetary galatic “gimmicks” have come to pass, but many of Bush’s certainly have.
Hi Dave ~ If not for the Internet, how it makes researching and the world smaller I would not be writing my own blog about moving moving to the Philippines. Well the blog writing is obvious but moving to the Philippines would not even be considered if not today’s technology. For the last couple of weeks I have been drafting an article about this very thing. It sits in the draft folder waiting to be finished and the publish button to be pressed.
Hi Dave,
I use the Internet a lot too, Unfortunately, when searching for something in a foreign land one doesn’t always know what site is good and what is bad. Your comments about the two Philippine drug store sites makes me want to look at them as you are living in the area. Up here a drug store is an “Apotheke” so looking for “drug stores” wouldn’t help.
Apotheke sounds like in Norwegian – Apotek.
@Ellen and John: There’s a lot of different names for pharmacies. world-wide. In America we tend to call them ‘drug stores’ but the formal name for the person who is licensed to sell the medicines is a pharmacist or in “older speak” an apothecary … clearly the Austrian, Norse, etc. all come from the Latin. I snooped around in Google and they seem to really focus on the most colloquial terms … so that’s an important lesson. If you don’t like the results you see, try a different word. In the UK and many UK-related countries, it’s always a ‘chemist’. Vive le difference