Paul's Fulfilling Life

Chasing the Euro 2008 without cable vision meant that I only got to hear this song yesterday as I was about to catch the Euro 2008 final. I am impressed by this song and the closing ceremony moments, especially the part where the 16 participating countries' flags were done up using balloons, and showing how Germany & Spain got to the final. As for the match itself, I was impressed by Spain's playing style, but unhappy with the "rough house tactics", especially shown to the fore by the German captain, Michael Ballack. I was never a fan of his & never will after his performance last night. The good thing is that Spain won in what I felt was a one sided match that should have been finished long ago if only Spain was more clinical with their shooting. Congrats to Spain once again!!!

This cake is specially for Michelle, one of my Malaysian net friends, whose birthday is approaching in about an hour time. Just hope that she is enjoying her wedded bliss with Marvin in Malaysia and hope she stays happy & cheerful always! From your friend: Paul

This birthday cake is dedicated to my old secondary school friend, Lian Fern,  who managed to locate me through Google   last year . We have lost touch since she graduated in 1995. Since then, I have managed to contact with about 8 old classmates thru Facebook & Friendster. It is good to know that I am being remembered. I knew that I caught her off guard today when I sms her "Happy birthday" today. My message to her: - Hope that she stays happy & cheerful always and enjoy her newly wedded bliss with her hubby.

I went shopping with my mum after my weekly prayer session at SSA Tampines Centre. We went to Sim Siang Choon at Changi South to have a look at the toilet bowl as the toilet bowl in one of my house toilets is spoiled. Found out that choosing a toilet bowl is also an art as you need to know the measurement of your toilet area & pipes in order to ensure that the toilet bowl fits into your toilet. I have to thank the professionals at Sim Siang Choon for sharing with us this piece of knowledge. Next, we went to AMK Hub to get a house phone as my house phone had no ringing tone. After installing the old phone at my upstairs phone socket, my bro was not able to hear any dial tone. It seems like the phone socket is faulty. I have told my dad to get that replaced soon. My mum and I discovered an interesting gadget on the new single deck wheelchair accessible bus today when we travelled on Service 24 today. There is a seat belt attached to one of the seats located at the ...

I thought that this song is very nice when I heard on air today.

    Pictures courtesy of Soccernet This Euro 2008 tournament has been churning out results that I didn't expect, as a result, my predicted teams all did not qualify for the final. This coming Sunday, will be the final between Germany & Spain. I am hoping that Spain will win, & give Michael Ballack & Jens Lehmman a kick on their backside. The German defence has not been good with them conceeding goals in each match, whereas Spain has been attacking freely. Maybe Farbegas & Torres will give the Germans a good lesson. It could be a classic final to end in 90 mins!

Heard this song on YES 933 yesterday when Ivy & Peifen played this song on their program yesterday. I thought that the song was nice as it set me on a dancing mood. Heard from my bro that this is a 4 years old song. Enjoy the video.

Picture courtesy of Soccernet Although this team lost to Germany in the semi-finals, I really would like to salute this team for their "never say die" attitude. Their comeback wins against Czech Republic & Croatia has shown that as long as a person never gives up till the last moment, he is still capable of turning the situation around despite the odds against them. For the record and for those people who don't watch soccer, Turkey played the game against Croatia without 6 of their first team players. For the match against Germany, they were without 9 players. Yet, they were able to take the game to penalties & won against Croatia & was able to score first against Germany, despite losing 3-2 in the end. My next hope is for Russia led by this guy, Gus Hiddink to beat Spain in the other semi-final tonight, and beat Germany to win Euro 2008. Germany has not impressed me much in this tournament, while Spain knocked out one of my predicted finalists, ...

Wish to thank Wendy mei for designing my new blog header. I like the header very much. Thanks mei.

  Just want to wish my godsis cum fellow blogger, Wendy a happy 27th birthday in advance for tomorrow. I hope what she wishes for come true for her!!! Hope that she stay happy & cheerful always. Hope that she is able to stay happy on her job. From: Your brother Paul

Just want to wish my brother a happy 20th birthday tomorrow. Hope that he will be more 听话 and all the best for his vacation training & school.

I would like to thank my manager for helping me to pick up brochures for my planned Deepavali trip to Bintan. She just came back from there and she gave me a lot of tips to travel well, rest well and eat well there. Can't wait for October to come sooner.

I would like to thank my brother for recommending me this new web browser, Mozilla Firefox. It has solved my problems of surfing the Internet recently. Problems include, unable to load photos to Slide.Com & unable to play songs from IMMEM. I have used it & the browser seems good and its free.

  I was at Thomson Plaza Tao Yuan Resturant last night to celebrate my grandma's 84th birthday. Almost everyone of my relatives turned up. Two of my cousins even brought their partners to make the gathering a really big gathering of 30 people. Grandma was happy that so many of us turned up. She even asked about my brother who was not there, as he had a church concert to perform. I must say that the food was not bad. I guess my 2nd uncle made a good choice of the resturant. It is always nice to catch up with my relatives, especially my cousins, as it has been about 6 months since I last saw them. Hope u guys enjoy the pics.

伍家辉 - 无家可回 张信哲-残念

I gave mum a piece of my mind last night, as she suggested that I should retry to pursue a past pursuit of a gal as she felt that the gal was a nice person. Personally, I feel that I should not do that, as I am fearful of losing the friendship if I were to bring the topic up again. I do not want to sour the whole thing. I do not want it to come to a point where people are actually avoiding me because of the pursuit. Just can't understand why mum kept harping on this or the fact that I am still single and available at "a grand old age of 28.5 years old". I am quite fearful of entering a relationship now actually. I prefer to let nature takes its course, rather than to make it or force it to come. Currently, I have found the job that I really want and I am trying hard to establish myself at this new company as I felt that I have wasted 2 years in the old firm as I was not able to learn as much as I wanted to. Hopefully, I can achieve my ACCA by 2009 and move to a...

  My colleague was asking me why I always work beyond the official hours as it appears to her that Paul has no time for relationship. Apparently, she is still in her early 30s despite being a mum to 3 children. But I guess the difference is she is a Malaysian living in Malaysia but working in Singapore. I guessed she is just concerned about me. Since joining the firm about 3 months ago, I have been asked this question twice by my dept colleague & manager. Fortunately at both times, my manager helped me to answer the question. She said that my mum is helping me look for one. I guessed she is right in some way as mum has been pestering my friends to introduce gals to me. This has made me pretty embrassed in front of my friends. I guess this job of mine has given me the desired work-life balance, as I am able to reach home by 8pm, rather than last time, where my home was like my hotel room. Sleep, Work, Sleep. I am able to concentrate on my ACCA & other recreational ac...

This is the week immediately after my exam. My manager has gone on leave this week and she and my tax partner has so much faith in my work that they decided that I shall cover the job duties of my manager for this week. For me, this is a huge responsibility. I am quite lucky to have a supportive group of colleagues. I am really glad to have them as my colleagues. In fact, before I was on leave last week, my colleagues actually gave me a reduced amount of workload in view of my exam and actually volunteered to help me clear my outstanding tasks. I am really touched by the gesture. This was something that I never had when I was in my previous firm. I hope that I will not disappoint my bosses & manager in their faith to give me this responsibility.

I decided to send a "Get Well" hamper to my godsis, Rebecca after reading her blog that she had fainted and landed in hospital a few days ago. Just popped by her blog and noticed that she had received the hamper but she wrote that the sender's name was not included. I was quite surprised as I remembered that I didn't check the box to keep my identity a secret as I do not see a need to do so. Maybe the people who processed my order was too tired to include my name, or maybe my memory was failing me. Just hope that she gets well soon.

Yesterday, my mum & I made the trip to the PC show after our weekly prayer session, where I purchased the 19 inch Samsung LCD Monitor for my parents' CPU. I got a new Bluetooth headset for my Samsung handphone for free when I bought the monitor, which I thought was a good deal. I also got myself a portable hard disk drive of 350GB at a very very good price. I was attracted by the prices of the notebooks by Fujistu which were going for $1.5k. Mum was suggesting that I should discard the CPU at a later stage when it breaks down, and invest in a notebook as it is pretty space saving too. I was asked by my brother to join him to catch Sex & The City at AMK Hub. Although I didn't have the chance to catch the original series as I was not a SCV subscriber, I must say I enjoyed the movie very much as it was quite touching and realistic. I would give this movie 3.5 out of 5 stars.

I just stopped by Kaka's blog a few moments ago. I was shocked by what I have read. She fainted while she was on the MRT and was sent to hospital before being discharged. I just hope that she takes good care of herself and get the ample rest that she needs.

Tammy, Elaine & I were invited to the Hilton Hotel Checkers' Cafe for a Japanese buffet dinner last nite. The dinner was pre-arranged at our last gathering in Apr, which was to meet after our papers. I wish to congratulate Peggy for obtaining her PR status already. She wanted to pay for the dinner again yesterday, but this time, Tammy & I were smart enough to say that if she were to pay for us again, we would not be stepping into the hotel to have dinner with her again. She relented to let us pay for our share, but I still think it is lower than what she actually paid for, even after the staff discount. It is always nice to catch up with them, and to think that we chatted till 10.30pm before we parted. I always enjoyed their company and I must add the food was really good.

I am glad to be back here to blog after a break for a few days due to my ACCA exams. I managed to finish the entire paper, even though I didn't manage to balance the consolidation question. Therefore, I just hope to pass this round. People who know me should know that Paul is a soccer fan at heart, who supports Manchester United & Italy. I was influenced by my dad during the 1990 World Cup. Since then, I have tried my best to follow every major soccer tournament, even without cable vision. This year, Euro 2008 hosted by Switzerland & Austria looks to be a good one. My picks for this round for the final on 29 July 2008 are as follows:- Portugal Holland Italy Greece Russia The reasons for these choices is Portugal A young and talented team with Luis Felipe Scolari, former Brazil World Cup winning coach at helm. 4th place in World Cup 2006. Holland Another young team with one of the world best goalk...

At first I thought that there was a PC show going on at Suntec City this weekend after remembering seeing a bus ad stating that the PC show was from today. I was greeted by the books at the World Book Fair in the end. It seems like the bus ad gave me the wrong info as I was hoping to get a few things at the PC show this round. I would like to thank Stella for the clarification. The PC show will be on next Thu to Sun at Suntec. Anyway, the trip to the World Book Fair was fruitful as mum managed to get some learning materials for my cousin's baby which is due anytime now at a cheap price of $1 per book. It was so cheap that mum decided to get 10 books at one go for her. Not only that, we managed to get some pillow cases from Jean Perry which were going at $2 each, as well as bedsheets going at $5 each at the warehouse sale on Level 2 of the Convention Centre. The bad part was the lunch at the Food Republic. My mum & I were put off by the insistence of the Vietnamese s...

Just got from Rena the pics that we took from the official photographer last Saturday. Here it is to share with you guys.     Receiving the award from Mrs Quek Bin Hwee With Clara & my bro at the reception

Just want to wish my friends and fellow coursemates who are taking the ACCA exams in these 2 weeks (like me) all the best in the papers that they are taking. Let's hope that ACJC is a good hunting ground for us to ace our papers!!!

Just got to know on Sunday that my ex colleague, SC is expecting a baby, therefore she is skipping her exams. Just wish to congrat her and hope that she has a healthy baby.

I was with mum for our weekly prayer session at Tampines Soka Centre today. As mum did not have her breakfast today, she bought some tapioca cake from a Muslim stall located at Tampines Interchange today. Little did she realise that the cake had a sour taste as she ate it and she decided to go back to the stall to change it. The stallholder kept insisting that it was not her fault that the food had turned bad, and kept saying that she is only in charge of selling the food. She unwillingly let my mum exchange for a chocolate cake later. Just a note for you readers out there not to patronise the stall as the service attitude of the staff is bad and they sell expired food.

Finally managed to upload the pics using Microsoft Powerpoint & Google Documents. Happy viewing!!!