Paul's Fulfilling Life

Firstly, I would like to thank all my friends, colleagues and my boss who have given me the support that I need. Special thanks to Jas, Karyne & Cynthia for letting me know that Subordinate Court is able to issue a court order straight away without the need of a lawyer. My boss, my senior colleague & Wai Ling for letting me know a thing about black magic, which they think I may be under during that period of time Andrina, Lance & Alex for the advice and how to break the news to my family Qiqi, Gonnie, Keith, Corrine for their sms of consolation, Finally my friends on Facebook who read my blog post, and gave me advice. You know who are. Thanks for the advice and messages. I was in office early today, just to check if I was able to gather some evidence and witnesses. I am glad to say that there is some positive outcome. Some of my friends will know what is that, but I won’t reveal it here as who knows, the swindler may be reading my blog and he may take precautions. A...

I was working late on Friday. I managed to leave the office at only at 8pm. I decided to go to 7-11 store to grab a copy of the Chinese evening paper before calling a cab to head home. Just as I was walking out of the store, about to take out my handphone to call for a cab when an Indian guy, named Peter, who appeared to be around his 40s approached me. He must have drank a fair bit of beer as his breath reeked of alcohol. He started his story by saying that his ATM card was stuck in the ATM machine. He then said that he needed $30 for cab fare to KK Hospital as his wife was in labour. He said he would contact me and return the money the next day. I was a little apprehensive about giving him the money at first but seeing the beer in his hand & fearing for my safety, I gave to him. I thought that was the end of it. I exchanged my number with him. He also claimed that he worked at a law firm on the floor above my office. Just then, he claimed that his wife called again and said t...

Yesterday was a hectic day for me, but I still decided to go ahead with the ktv session as I didn’t want to disappoint my group members, even though I was not in the right frame of mind yesterday. I met up with the group, one of the smallest outings I have conducted since Jonathan & I took over the organising in Oct 2008. We had 17 people altogether yesterday, split into 3 rooms at Partyworld Vivo City. I hope the newbies, Chin Long, Chin Teck & Henry enjoyed the session yesterday. Special thanks to the chairman of the group, Lawrence & my JC schoolmate, David for helping me to collect the money yesterday as Jonathan was not here yesterday. I was in the same room as Lance, Andrina, Jas, Alex & Henry. We sang some songs before Andrina suggested we play theme songs, where each of us had to come up with a theme for the rest to sing. I had a chance to sing some new songs before Andrina suggested the theme.   Sang this with Jas as she requested for me to ...

You met by a person who claimed that his ATM card was eaten up by the ATM machine. He said that his wife is in labour and needs some money. What will you do?

I was rather angry at work just now. My Accounts Department Partner (aka the son’s wife or my bosses’ daughter in law) had gave me a task which I thought it was supposed to be the job of her department. She had asked me to call up the GST Department of IRAS to enquire if one of our client can be exempted from attending the GST course that is compulsory for voluntary registrants of GST. I know that GST Department of IRAS is quite hard to get through most of the time, but I certainly do not have the time to help you to call as I am busy with all the tax provisions. I have since cleared about 40 in my 3 weeks of OT and it is still coming through. I have to be fair to my department colleagues as they are busy handling the personal tax cases that was given only short extensions. I consulted my manager and senior about this. They are of the view that we should help them in the quiet by not letting our bosses know as by letting them know, we may just shoot ourselves in the foot by putti...

Today was the last day of the  volunteer e-filing session. As usual, taxpayers arrived in droves. It looks like these people really waited till the last minute. Together, Harris & I served a total of 50 taxpayers today. Also I had to do 2 partnership returns as there were 2 taxpayers who insisted that I do for them despite the fact that we were advised not to.   My Certificate of Appreciation for 2010 My gift voucher from IRAS in token of appreciation for our service. Its a $20 voucher from Polar Puffs & Cakes We also took some photos today :-) Me with Eric, one of the staff at the CC. I had helped him e-file his return today. Me with Haris, Samira & Angie, our Liaison Officer for the Serangoon CC for this exercise. This photo was taken at the front desk of the CC. Till the next year in 2011

The weather was unbearably hot in the morning. Decided to give myself a haircut before today’s session. I was quite sure that there was to be a crowd today, but to my surprise, the rain really brought the number of people who came by to the CC today to the 1st day numbers of about 40. After the session, we had a photograph taking session at the CC’s office. Thanks Moon for her camera. :-) Me with Harris, Samira, Moon & Zhi Hao, the volunteers for this year’s exercise at the Serangoon Group photo with Mr. Edward Tan, our Liaison Officer for last Sunday’s and today’s session Group photo with Ms Zarifah, our Liason Officer for the March weekend After that, we went for dinner at a Indian coffeeshop near my house. Moon and I paid for Zhi Hao’s share for the dinner as his birthday was approaching and he had treated us dinner last week. Tomorrow is the last day of the e-filing session. I really enjoyed this year’s session, except for the teething problems with the Sin...

I know that the readers who are reading my blog are wondering why Paul has not been updating his blog as much recently. The reason is that besides his study of the ACCA Paper P1, he has been working late recently due to the personal tax filing deadline. For most days for about 3 weeks now, I have been starting earlier than the official hours and ending about close to 8pm. The sad part is I didn’t get to do much personal tax as the auditors keep throwing in their audit for us to work on the companies’ tax provision since March. Since the rest are busy with personal tax, my tax partner has designated me to handle all tax provisions. At the same time, my manager and other colleague feel that I can e-file quite fast and accurately, so they also asked me to help them with that too, while they do all the ground work. I think I must thank the Volunteer E-Filing Service Exercise for getting me up to speed. The workload and study has put quite a fair bit of stress on me as I always wake up la...

This weekend, the taxpayers who came by The Serangoon CC to e-file their taxes was huge. We had close to 100 taxpayers who came by the community centre to e-file their taxes. Fortunately, the 2 new volunteers, Zhihao & Moon were able to help us deal with the crowd control matters and the 4-line statement for taxi drivers and hawkers. There were some cases which encountered problems that were beyond our control. The only thing that we could do was to jot down the problems encountered and enclose all the necessary documents of the e-filers who could not e-file and forward to IRAS by fax. The problems include:- Taxpayer’s employer is under the “Auto-Inclusion Scheme”, which means the employer will file the taxpayer’s salary details to IRAS directly. But the salary shown on the IDRS (Income, Deductions, Reliefs Statement is totally different from his Form IR8E issued by his employer and given to him. The figures were so different that it also left me rather stunned. I man...

I had been busy this week. In fact, I have been staying back late in office to clear my company’s personal tax clients almost everyday for the past two weeks. My boss has been asking me to help out the colleague who would be living us. I heard from my manager that my boss is thinking to ask me to take over her post when she leaves. She is afraid that she may not be able to find a person to replace her. The reason why I am not really keen to take up the post if offered, is because the portfolio does not offer a challenge to me as it is quite small. Seeing the way how my boss is treating her recently also makes me wonder if I would be subjected to the same treatment should I can’t handle the pressure. The already heavy workload is showing no signs of easing as the secretarial department has decided that they need the staff that we have specially trained to be helping them out with some mundane filing work or asking her to do some despatch work. If she was able to be with us, we may n...

For the 2nd year in a row, I have faced problems when e-filing for my fellow citizens. It is certainly problems beyond my control. I certainly hope IRAS can solve the technical problems at their end soon as the e-filing crush is coming soon. For those who have not filed your taxes, please do so soon. You still have 14 days if you are using the e-filing mode, and 11 days if you are using the paper filing mode. My advice is to e-file early to avoid the crush at the last minute. I started earlier than usual at the centre today, as I went for a praying session with my mum & aunt at Tampines Soka Centre in the morning. I headed to the Serangoon CC right after my lunch. I started at about half an hour before the official time at 2pm and ended about 7pm today, thanks to the system problems and the huge crowd. Both Harris and I did 49 cases together. This was a new record for the centre. Just a point to highlight, taxpayers are required to declare their income based on the salary infor...

Today was my 3rd day of duty for the Volunteer e-filing session. I am glad that the queue was quite well maintained today. Thanks to the instructions from Ms Angie Lim, the CC Executive Officer, who is the person in charge of this yearly event at the Serangoon for stating to her colleagues that they had to be firm to those people who are cutting the queue from today, after I reported the queue jumping fiasco last week. I also would like to thank fellow volunteer, Zhihao, who is doing this for the 1st time, for helping us to maintain the order of the queue control and helping us to do up the 4 line statement for the taxi drivers, thus helping us to save some time, having to ask the taxi drivers the standard questions to fill up the information needed for the 4 line statement. We had a coffee treat again today. Thanks to a e-filer, Mr. Hon, who gave us $5, telling us to buy coffee with that. It was his 1st visit to the centre, and I am glad that he was happy with my service. I face...

I was at the Sammi Cheng’s concert with my new friend, Joyce last night. We had met up for dinner at Crystal Jade Restaurant at ION Orchard, before heading to the concert by cab as it was raining quite heavily. The concert was great, but I felt that she could have done more with Chinese songs. The majority of the songs she sung yesterday were Cantonese and English songs. Another drawback was her concert was a little short in our opinion. It started from 8.45pm to 10.45pm. Maybe her health is not that good, so that was the reason the concert was so much shorter than the Ah Mei’s concert I went early this year. But I must say I enjoyed her costume changes and effects she put up for her concert. Overall I would give her 7/10 for her concert.

Friends who know me well will know that I try not to get involved in office politics, especially since I left my last job due to office politics 2 years ago. Recently, office politics claimed 2 of my colleagues. One of them  had just joined us for about a month. I thought that this colleague, who was in the audit department was very helpful and rather clear and concise in her work, from what I can see in her audit working papers. I wondered what caused her to resign, as before this happened, she asked me was the person before her, sacked by the boss in front of everyone? I was surprised that she asked the question, and I just asked her from whom she heard the story from? I also told her that some things are best left unknown. If she really wishes to know, I will let her know in due course. Too bad, she has made the choice to go. I just wish her all the best.  I think I know who is the one spreading the rumours, but I believe keeping quiet will be better, as it is not my prob...

I had received a phone call from my KTV group female friend on Saturday. Apparently she was a little worried that she was being stalked on Facebook so she wanted to take down some of her photos on Facebook profile, but she was not able to do it.  I have since asked her to put her profile in private mode since Facebook does not seem to have the feature to remove the profile album. She was worried that her photo may be transposed onto some naked girls’ photos. I had a similar experience recently that actually scared the wits out of me. A “used to be my friend” for quite some time, for about 6 years added a substantial number of my KTV group friends after I introduced the group to her. This nearly caused some tension between me and my KTV group friends, as some people guard their privacy strongly. I tried talking to this friend of mine about why she did this and actually asked her to join my group’s gatherings if she was really interested to know my KTV group friends, but she just c...