Paul's Fulfilling Life

Today was the second day of the e-filing session, and the crowd was unexpectedly huge. Both my partner, Harris and I did a total of 43 taxpayers today. The good thing about today’s session was most of the taxpayers were the regular e-filers who always come to us for help each year. Some of them, I have been doing the e-filing for them since I first started out at Contact 123 IT Centre 7 years ago. One of them, Mr Goh, decided to surprise me, by buying coffee for us in appreciation of our efforts. Not only that my uncle, also popped by and I assisted him and his colleague to file their tax return. The bad thing that happened was the queue jumping that happened before Harris came by. It prompted me to tell the duty officer that we should our queue numbers manually instead of pasting the numbers on the chairs from the next weekend. I tried to clear a fair bit of the crowd by starting a little early. It ended up I didn’t get a chance to have a break at all as most of the crowd are Chin...

It is the time of the year where I will help our fellow citizens e-file their taxes. Today was a good day. The e-filing system was rather co-operative with me and my partner, Harris today. Except for a small hiccup that Harris faced, the system auto log out by itself, the rest of e-filers whom we have e-filed with us faced no problems. I am glad that my suggestion to IRAS has been taken up, which was those e-filers who faced problems when e-filing their taxes. From this year onwards, we will jot down their names and queries and our centre manager would forward all their queries to IRAS for us. This is definitely better than the e-mail template that we have to use last year as some of the e-filers are illiterate and had no knowledge of what is an e-mail account. Therefore we had to use our own email to assist the taxpayers to forward their encountered problems to IRAS. We were a little surprised that one volunteer did not show up despite repeated calls to him by the manager. Becau...

I was up early this morning, even though I went to bed quite late last night, as I was catching Autumn Concerto (下一站，幸福）on Youtube, which a friend had recommended me to watch. The show is a little draggy, which I think is a common feature with all Taiwanese drama. Since I have only caught 6 episodes, I guess it will be better for me to put my comments about the show, after I completed the drama. The reason I was up unusually early was to pray respects to my grandma （外婆）granddad (外公）& Second Uncle （二舅）for Qing Ming Festival. We were early this year as one of my aunts had to work on the weekends where Qing Ming Festival falls on. The good part about praying early is also to avoid the crowd. We went in my uncle’s company lorry. There were 7 of us who went to this year’s praying session. My cousin, Adel was commenting that we used to have about 20 to 25 people joining us every year, and during that time, my uncle, who used to work in SMRT as a bus captain had to charter a bus to tr...

Yesterday was another long day for me as my manager and me as we still have many Form Bs & Form B1s to be cleared. We were stuck with 2 audit jobs, that were on an urgent basis. It meant that we had to work till about 7.30pm. It didn’t help that my senior may be going on leave due to some personal matters at home. But I still found time to meet up with my ex colleague, SC, who resigned abruptly two months ago. We had a good chat for about 4 hours, where he shared with me the reasons about his abrupt resignation. Apparently, it made me felt that I may have played a part in it, but SC was quite positive to say, even if THAT PERSON didn’t make life difficult for him at work, he would have left the job sooner or later as he had problems adapting himself to the environment. He also encouraged me to break away from my shell, and try to interact more with my colleagues so as to make my working at the office smoother. He noted that my colleagues at the audit department may have the mis...

Although I am having a busy week, I still decided to accede the request of Ms Clara Ng to share my experiences in the past 6 years that I have been a volunteer. I just received my duty schedule for the coming VES exercise. I will be on duty for 7 weekends, even though I have volunteered for 8 weekends. Hopefully, there will be not much hiccups like last year.

I went to catch this movie with my friend. People who know me would know that I do not like Fann Wong very much, so I shall reserve my comment on her acting on this show. I would say Richard Low, Marcus Chin & Patrica Mok did well in the show, not forgetting Liu Lingling of 881 fame. This movie is about a compulsive gambler, who continues to gamble after winning a surprise windfall on a wrong number betted by her daughter. As the Chinese saying always goes, “10 times you gamble, 9 times you will lose.” If you are interested to find out how he lose badly, and whether he managed to mend his ways, please catch the movie, which I think is quite funny if you know Hokkien.

Pic courtesy of Emicakes Just wish to wish my long time blogger friend, Shionge, who I got to know through my fellow blogger friend, Dalicia a Happy Birthday today. Just hope that good tidings be with her throughout the year ahead!!!

Recently I had known a new friend from Facebook, who added me. She said that she had seen me in my ACCA classes before, but I don’t remember seeing her before. Maybe the classes were crowded, that’s why. This gal, added me for the purpose to ask me to help her to look for a job. She had planned to look for an accounting job so that she can have the money to do her property agent course later as she has no interest in accounting. I was quite stunned that she actually came over to my place the 1st day I knew her and told me her story about why she needed a job. Although I believed her story, I believed that she was asking for it, judging from what she wore to my place that day. She still said she was conservative. What’s more, she had the cheek to ask me for cab fare to get home. Although my brother had a good impression of her, my dad didn’t, judging from his facial expression. The next few days were a nightmare, as she started to sms me that her boss was still sexually harassing ...

I am sure that almost everyone of you have been talking about it or have read about it. Here are my views about the whole incident. I feel that the whole incident has been blown out of control, just because he is a celebrity and public figure. It is true that he should not have done that, but I believe it takes 2 hands to clap. If the actress had rejected his advances, it will not have escalated to be the hot story in town now.  If he was not a celebrity, I am sure he will just be another short story in the papers. I am pretty elated that my family actually stopped me from going into Mass Communications which I wanted to when I made a choice for my poly course, as they know that Paul may not be able to handle bad publicity when things happened. Just hope that time will allow the bad publicity to blow over.

I was at the E-filing Volunteer Refresher Course just now. People who know me will know why I do not need to go for the course actually, but I decided to sign up and go for it, so that I could keep myself updated to the changes in the tax laws and regulations, changes made to the e-filing system & catching up with my friends, IRAS Corporate Communications Officers, Ms Clara Ng & Ms Rena Soon and fellow volunteer, Harris, whom I have been working with for the past 4 years. There are several changes to the personal reliefs, especially to those with handicapped children, siblings & parents. To encourage people to donate more to approved charities and IPC, the amount of deduction against income is enhanced by 50% to 250% As for the e-filing letters, there is not much change except that there is a letter stating that you need not file your return as your employer is under the auto-inclusion scheme and you have claimed a standard set of reliefs for each year. My advice to thi...

I was asked by Joyce to join her for Sammi’s concert in Singapore on 2 April 2010. I have accepted her invite and will be joining her for the concert. Sammi, here I come.

I was asked to attend the seminar by my bosses today with them. This was the 1st time that the company that I worked with offered to pay for me to attend the Budget Seminar. The talk, chaired by Mr Sum Yee Loong, one of the Big 4 Accounting Firms’ Tax Partner. I really enjoyed his presentation, where he gave his take on the finer points and his insight on Budget 2010. I met my poly mate, Hilary at the seminar too. It must be I have not changed much over the past 10 years, since I graduated from poly. He is now a Tax Executive at one of the accounting firms in Singapore and a proud dad to 3 children. Time really flies. I really feel that I am getting older!!!!

I recently just renewed my SAFRA membership after stopping for about 7 years as I felt that I was not making full use of the membership and I felt that it was quite expensive, considering I don’t earn much money at that time. I have signed up for the 6 year membership, which entitled me for the TIMEX watch that comes free with it. I heard from a friend that the watch does not come cheap, about the cost of the membership renewal. Since I have signed up, I must try to make full use of the facilities at the clubhouses.

I was up quite early, even though it was a Saturday, as I had to do a medical checkup for an insurance plan that I bought recently for my retirement planning.  You must be wondering why I decide to get the plan so early, even though I am only 30 years old. I have made some calculations beforehand and taken note that I needed to have a substantial amount for retirement considering the high cost of living in Singapore now. It can only get more expensive, rather than cheaper, so the decision was taken to buy now, rather than later. The checkup was a long wait for me. I waited for about an hour before I was called up. I hated the repetitive questions that was asked about my existing medical condition. So I just hope that they could take me in without any conditions. The long wait nearly caused me to be late for my group KTV gathering today. Luckily, my insurance agent, Linda gave me a ride to Kovan MRT, so that I could take a connecting train to Harbourfront MRT for my singing sessi...

My manager’s daughter will be getting married on 23 May 2010. The ceremony will be held at Sheraton Towers Hotel Singapore. She has invited everyone of us, together with our immediate families. My mum has accepted the wedding invitation as well, since they have met before at a event organised by  Singapore Soka Association , where my manager, my mum & I are members. The attendance for the wedding invite was also an indication how well-liked my manager is at work, especially having worked in the company for 35 years. The responses threw up some expected & pleasant surprises for my manager. The expected ones are the usual ones involved in the “political games” with our department. As expected, they would not be attending the function. The new colleagues, who joined our company recently, will not be joining us at the function as well. The unexpected responses were from the audit department colleagues. We didn’t expect most of them to agree to come, as we feel that they m...

  Here are more photos from the gathering at my house, courtesy from my new friend, Alex Lee from his EOS camera. Thanks friend!!!

Have you ever been caught in situations that may cause your ethics or morals to be compromised? If your ethics or morals are compromised at work, what would you do?

Last night, I had the chance to try out the individual income tax e-filing system when it was up. The partnership filing was smooth. I was not kicked out by the system abruptly, unlike when I was filing for my parents’ Form B1, I was kicked out twice. Was it due to the heavy internet traffic late at night? I guess IRAS better do something about this before the e-filing crush in April.