Paul's Fulfilling Life

Today was the day where I had to go to the Subordinate Courts to attend the court mediation session for the cheating case which the guy cheated me of my money. Actually, I have given up hope on the money being recovered. I was prepared to let it go, but my friends and my mum had wanted to see that justice is served. This will also allow myself to have some faith in the Singapore’s judicial system. It also enhance my knowledge about the judicial process. My mum was rather worried about this, that she kept asking me to pray for my safety and advised me how I should handle the judge. She even went to the extent to say that the guy may try to be funny with me and do harm to me. This was indeed rather paranoid of her. I regretted not getting my close friends to accompany me instead. But then again, she is my mum and I am her child. She has every right to be concerned and worried about me. I was late for the appointment, even though I left my office half an hour early than the official...

I was asked to tag along my mum’s birthday celebration yesterday by my cousin, Adel when I met her at AMK MRT Station on Monday. I knew that mum had always enjoyed Japanese food, therefore I suggested that we should have Japanese food for her birthday. But the wish was not granted as the queue was too long. We waited for about half an hour for a table, but could not get any. In the end, we ended up going to Fish & Co. I thought the lobsters 1 for 1 offer was good. The salmon and the strawberry cake were not bad too. The best part, there was a Polaroid photo for keepsake. I felt bad that my cousin treated my mum & I to the meal as I knew she had to contribute a fair bit to her family expenses. Thanks to cousin and Happy Birthday to mum!!!

It has been about 3 months since I last sang with the group. This session was the most unique session that I have done as even though my partner, Jonathan Teo was down with flu, and was not able to make it for today’s session. The reason for its uniqueness is because :- For the 1st time , the manager of the outlet has given me the flexibility of opening up the number of rooms that I need for the session. Maybe  there was really a lack of business since KBox opened another branch at Orchard Parade Hotel. He has told us that he will be offering us more discount if we continued our patronage there. For the 1st time, I used sms to book a room after the manager gave me his handphone number for ease of booking. This meant that I need not go down from my office to the branch to book the room. So for the 1st time, I had the flexibility to choose from 2 rows of KTV rooms at Partyworld International Building. I certainly hope the new members, Chin Yuan, Karyne, Hong Choon...

It was a stressful week for me & my colleagues as a few unexpected things happened at work. Firstly we were left stumped by this question from my new audit partner:- Does preference shares issued by a company is considered as part of the issued paid up capital of the company? The answer is “yes” if the preference shares has voting rights tied to the shares. Thanks to Hilary for saving me with the answer when I called him. Secondly, it was the unexpected taxpayer audit for some of my clients, that left us very surprised as it came at a wrong time. Till now, my boss is still thinking how to deal with it. My week was made worse by a non-audit tax provision made difficult by the company trading in shares. In case some of you may not know, trading in shares are taxable by virtue of FRS 39, if the company has adopted FRS 39 treatment. I had a hard time doing up the spreadsheet. Today is the 3rd day that I am working on the case, and its not completed yet. The only happy...

My friend, Cindy, whom I knew from my ACCA classes had just given birth. She had asked me to help her to get her hubby’s birthday gift on her behalf as she is currently doing her confinement. I think the gift idea struck her after she saw my MSN tagline. Apparently, her hubby is a Manchester United fan, just like me. She wanted to get him the Manchester United new soccer jersey. It was a simple task, since I quickly went to Nike at Wheelock Place to get it for her. The hard part was couriering to her. Since she did not tell me in advance that I could not post it to her. The fortunate thing was Singpost does courier service, but in order to prevent the jersey from being lost in mail, I went to look for the Nike staff, Yani, who had been serving me with her good service, whenever I bought stuff from Nike Wheelock. It is because of her good service and good products that we became friends. Although she is now based at Nike Takashimaya, I went to look for her to help me to wrap the pre...

I was on my way back to office from lunch the other day. As the weather was unbearable, I decided to take a bus back to office. The bus, Service 36 was a Wheelchair-Accessible Bus. There was a wheelchair-bound passenger waiting to board the bus. The female bus captain, helped him to board the bus by lowering the wheelchair accessible ramp for him to board. After helping him to board the bus and pay the fare, she wanted to drive off without putting the ramp back in place. Fortunately, a fellow passenger saw this and alerted the bus captain. Is the female bus captain too tired from her driving? Or is she not being trained well enough to handle wheelchair commuters? Fortunately, the bus was at the middle of the journey and had not started at the airport. Otherwise it would have been an embarrassing sight!

The special thanks is given to the manager of Partyworld International Building, Mr.Andrew Teo, who gave me an option to add in more rooms for the group’s event this Sat. He has asked me to try to think of having Sunday ktv events, in which he will try to give more discounts to us. I will need to discuss this with my group committee before reaching a decision.

I had a happy but busy week. I was happy as I managed to get the new Manchester United home kit. Thanks to the salesperson at Nike Takashimaya, Yani for reserving it for me and letting me use her staff discount to get the jersey. I got to know her when I bought my first Manchester United home kit from her. Since then, she has been informing me of all new stuff whenever there is new merchandise from Manchester United or Nike. I think the reason we could click was because she is a Man U fan too. I was also the talk of the office in this week, as the octopus in Germany which predicted Spain to win is named Paul as well. Therefore I had my bosses and colleagues walking up to me and asking me to make predictions as they felt that my predictions will be right. Haha. :) I was out with mum today to visit my granny, but not before our usual praying session at Tampines Soka Centre and dinner at Jalan Besar Hawker Centre. I must say the noodles I had was great. Mum had enjoyed her dinner to...

I was treated to dinner by one of my former clients of the former audit firm to the Mask Restaurant just now. I must say the food is not bad, especially the salted egg crab and hot plate tofu. What’s more, they are having a 50% promotion now. If you are interested, the restaurant is located at 418 Serangoon Road, next to Farrer Park MRT and City Square Mall.

I was left stumped by some calculations that IRAS had done for one of my clients. A particular income was taxed 3 times. Lucky the income was not a substantial sum, otherwise my client would have tore the whole office down. I was wondering how such an error could have occurred and how it could be prevented. I had to do up a detailed objection letter that was amended thrice by my senior partner. I hope to get a detailed explanation by IRAS too about this, just like how the MAS expects DBS to do for the crippling breakdown of its internet banking and ATMs about 2 weeks ago.

I will be heading for a short vacation trip to KL with some of my friends from the KTV group that I am one of the event  organisers.at the end of Aug. It has been quite a while since I last went on a trip with friends, since I went on one some years back with Jason & Richard. The sad thing is Jason has moved to a better place, while Richard is enjoying his married life now. I am looking forward to the trip. I would like to thank Jas & Jonathan for asking me along. :)

The World Cup has finally ended and we had a new champion. The champion did not come from those that I predicted. But I felt that Holland & Germany had done very well in the tournament. I have ranked them as my second & third favourite team after this tournament. Hopefully 2014 World Cup in Brazil will be better !

Recently, the talk of the town has been about the parrot at Serangoon Road & the Octopus Paul in Germany. Apparently, they seemed to have telepathic power to foretell the scores of certain matches. So far, Paul the Octopus has a perfect record, while the parrot has only made a wrong prediction in the Uruguay vs Holland game. The talk revolves around how were these animals able to make the right predictions. As for me, I have been making my predictions since the Round of 8 and my predictions have been all correct except for the Germany- Spain game. My predictions for the last two matches of this tournament:- 3rd/ 4th place: Germany to win Uruguay (as per Paul the Octopus) Final: Holland to win (as per the parrot, Mani) P.S. : I want to wear the Holland jersey I bought in style!!!

I have the intention to show you the IRAS VES Appreciation Video which I got from Rena, IRAS Corporate Communications Officer, but I cannot seem able to do it on here. Thanks to Wendy, my fellow volunteer friend from Yio Chu Kang CC, for asking me to request a copy of the video on her behalf. She said that she wanted to keep it for memory sake as this was the first time she was featured in a Powerpoint video. Just in case, you are wondering, I am featured on that video too. Just wonder if anyone knows how to upload PowerPoint made videos onto blogger. If you know, please let me know. Thanks in advance. :-)

This has never happened before, but can you imagine that I am getting 3 wedding invites via sms in a day? I think in the next few months, I really got to save hard for these wedding & ROM invites happening in Oct, Nov & Dec. Congrats to Von, Richard & Angela for their most memorable moments of their lives. I am glad to be a part of your celebration. There may be differences or misunderstandings in our friendship sometimes, but I am glad that you have invited me to be part of your celebration. :-)

I have not been able to try out the new distance fares that were implemented since Saturday since I have been using the SBS Transit Season Pass that allows me to take unlimited rides on SBS Transit basic bus services at $98 a month. Usually, I will take whatever bus that comes along and allows me to reach my workplace or destination at the fastest speed. I had a chance to try out how distance fares are calculated after boarding 2 buses that I was not able to use my Season Pass today. My ride on Service 74e from my place to Marymount Road used to cost $1.55, after converting to distance fare today, the fare was $1.61. I took Service 851, a SMRT service to Thomson Medical Centre. The fare after transfer rebate used to be $0.19, but today, I paid $0.20. As you can see, the fare before the conversion was $1.74, but today I am paying $1.81. The Transport Ministry said that there would be savings, but I am paying $0.07 more just for this transfer trip. “More is savings”, where is it?...