Paul's Fulfilling Life

I had a long day yesterday, as I woke up at 9am to prepare myself to go to my fellow KTV group’s member, Belinda’s place at Bukit Batok for his dad’s funeral wake. I was there with my KTV group’s fellow organiser, Jonathan Teo. Belinda has been a long time member of the group, having joined the group 2 years back, so as a mark of respect, and the length of the friendship we had, I felt that we had to be there. After visiting the wake, I went to the KTV session organised by Raymond at Jas. Jonathan did not join me for this, as he was suffering from singing fatigue. It was great to see Jas & Alex Lee at the KTV session as it has been a while since I saw them. I was grouped with Jas, John & Andrina for this session. These are some of songs that we sang yesterday. But I guessed my friends really enjoyed the second half of the event as after the dinner, we really opened up and talked almost everything under the sun from my life story to the people that have c

As my colleagues from Indonesia, Ayu & Juleoria will be heading home after their tour of duty here next week. Therefore,I decided to have a farewell dinner with them on Friday. Had wanted to have dinner with them at THE RICE TABLE at International Building but it was fully reserved, so it was lucky that I had a back up plan to bring them to Royal Plaza on Scotts for international buffet. I was a little worried that they would mind the high cost of the buffet dinner, but to my surprise, they didn’t mind and said that one should learn to indulge once a while, rather than work work work. I was hoping that my audit colleagues would have joined us, but sad to say, they were too busy with their work, and Ayu & Juleoria was afraid to ask them along. We shared a lot of about our work, interests, our life and the cultural differences between Singapore & Indonesia. It was good that they enjoyed the food at Royal Plaza On Scotts. I have invited them to Singapore for a fun tr

Picture courtesy of EMI Cakes I just wish to take this opportunity to wish my long time net friend cum blogger friend, a Happy birthday today. May what she wishes for come true for her & may our friendship last for as long as we are around. He is one of her favourite singers!!!!

I got this email from the Singapore Institute of Accredited Tax Professionals last night. We are pleased to inform you that your application to join the Singapore Institute of Accredited Tax Professionals Limited (SIATP) has been approved. Kindly find appended below your login details: We will inform you to collect your certificate of accreditation in due course. Please do not hesitate to call us at Tel: 6749 8060 or email enquiry@siatp.org.sg if you have further queries. Welcome to SIATP! Be Accredited, ! Be Recognised ! Thank you. Regards, SIATP I have been waiting for this for quite a while. I was a little worried that the application would not be approved. I would like to thank my friends for their congrats through Facebook, MSN & SMS. Paul Lee just received an email that my application to Singapore Institute of Accredited Tax Professionals as a Accredited Tax Practitioner has been approved. :) Carolyn Nang Ooi L

The new specs that I have been waiting for was finally ready for collection today, which was a day earlier than promised. The new specs is somehow similar to what I used to wear, with transition lenses. The frame is silver in colour. Let’s hope the new specs will serve me well.

Paul with the couple for the evening, Desmond & Yvonne I was invited this wedding dinner by Yvonne, who was my poly mate in my days at Ngee Ann Polytechnic. I had been looking forward to it, since I received her Facebook mail to respond to her invite in late July. The dinner was held at Bliss Restaurant at Singapore Expo. I was glad to be seated with Sherry & Kelvin, whom I last met about 2 years ago at their baby shower. This dinner was a great platform to catch up with them. I would like to thank Kelvin for his concern about my search for my Ms Right. I would like to thank Kelvin for the ride home. I feel so bad as the couple stays in Pasir Ris and went out of their way to send me home. We promised to meet up at around my birthday with some of our common friends. I hereby wish Desmond & Yvonne have a happy & blissful marriage!!! 祝你们白头偕老，早生贵子！！！

Picture courtesy of Angie The Choice This month is an eventful birthday month for some of my friends and my colleagues. Oct 1 – Paul Tseng Oct 6 – Yan Ling Oct 14 – Keith Ong Oct 16 - CK Oct 19 – Stella Wong Oct 21 – Kian How Oct 22 – Lena Chua, Evelyn Ang & Yun Fah Oct 23 – Rene Oct 26 – Malcolm & Tracey Oct 28 – Wai Ling & Peggy Just want to wish these friends of mine, a happy birthday, may whatever they wish for come true for them.

I am using the latest Live Writer Version 2011 to blog this entry. Recently my msn account was hacked. I have since undertaken the necessary security measures and just upgraded to Windows Live Essentials, to counter this problem. Thanks Keith for the suggestion. I just completed the drama serial, displayed in the video above. The serial, starring HK TVB A listers, Raymond Lam, Bosco Wong & Liu Song Ren is a great drama about infighting in the family over the family business. I feel that it is a good show and I recommend all of you to watch it.

I was asked by my optician, Edward to have a look at my revamped spectacles today. Though it has been gold plated, the faded parts were still visible if you looked at it closely. Therefore, I had already decided to do a new pair when I knew that the problem could not be resolved. The new pair of glasses would be quite similar to my old pair. The frame will be in silver, and you guys should be able to see it by 27 Oct. :-)

I had received a call from my regular optician, Edward about the status of my glasses. The news was bad. The gold plating of the spectacle frame did not work. The lucky part was I had selected 2 frames just in case the gold plating didn’t work. Those who had seen me last two weekends would now know why I look a little different the past 2 weeks or so. I had been using my old glasses, so I look different!

I was asked by my dad to join him for this concert. It is performed by several choir groups & members of music interest groups. 2 of the groups are actually from my alma mater, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, NP Voice & NP Chinese Orchestra. Since my dad is involved in the one of the group performances, as he is from 海峡合唱团，our tickets were obtained at a subsided price of $13 each person. The performance was held at the Esplanade Concert Hall. My family had missed the 1st & 2nd performance as mum had wanted to save the cost of eating out. It ended up the cost savings was translated to be our cab fare. My dad & my 2 alma mater groups, together with 4 other choir groups performed these 2 songs, which was a surprise, as I had thought that the concert was mostly about 中国名歌。I guessed these two songs were put in to keep the students & youngsters like us awake, in case those songs really put us to sleep. Overall it was a good & enjoyable performance which I enjoyed

I had not wanted to go for the weekly prayer session as the weather was so hot yesterday, and I had a mini ktv session with Jonathan Teo, Rachel, Ivy, Ann, Evelyn, Lanny & Wong at the middle of the afternoon. I knew it will be a mad rush since I left the house with my mum at about 11.30am. We took a cab there and prayed for an hour and had lunch at Bedok Interchange Hawker Centre. By the time, I finished my lunch, it was close to 2pm. I hurried to the bus interchange, and saw the Service 16 bus moving out of the bus berth. I glanced and saw that it was my long time bus captain friend, Ricky who used to take me when he drove Service 74 to Ngee Ann Poly. It has been about 3 years since I last met him. He drove the bus back to the berth and allowed me to board the bus. I had a nice time catching up with him about his family. At the same time, I took the opportunity to learn the newly amended route of Service 16, which does not serve the National Stadium & Singapore Indoor Stadiu

I received a call from my optician on Tuesday. He told me that he was unable to remove the faded colour to let it become silver colour, and has decided to try to goldplate the faded rim and the frames. If it is not successful, he will replace a frame for me at a discounted cost. I guessed that is the good part of staying loyal to an optician that provided me with good customer service for about 12 years. I hope the specs will be in good condition after it is repaired or replaced. Hopefully, I can get it done by next Sat, in time for Desmond & Yvonne’s wedding dinner. 

This week was a light week at the office as the boss’ son was overseas attending a seminar with his wife. This meant that the office would only stay open for only an hour past the official closing time. It meant that I was able to be home early this week. :) There was not much work in the office this week. I ended up being my boss’ PA as I helped her to:- Update her course records for the year, so that she can ensure that she fulfills the requirement of 40 hours per year so that she can renew her practising certificate. If she has no certificate, we will lose our job. I was asked to record some shows for her and her grandsons over the week. Although this is outside my job scope, I am enjoying it as she appreciates my sacrifices at work.

I was invited by my ACCA classmate, Elaine, to her baby boy’s baby shower today. My fellow classmates, Peggy & Tammy were not able to make it, so I was the representative for them. It was indeed quite odd to be there alone. Fortunately, Elaine, her hubby (Sia), her mum & relatives was able to make me feel at home with their friendly conversations. I hereby wish baby Gylan a happy 1st month & hope he grows stronger and healthier each day.

I was invited by Ivy & Betty to join them for this movie, which I thought was an enjoyable movie with beautiful sceneries from Italy and Bali.and I agreed with Rachel that this movie reflects the realities of life. After the movie, we went to Swensens at Plaza Singapura for dinner. I chose that place as there was a 20% discount if we spent a minimum of $50 and paid by HSBC card. The other promotion was topping up $5, you can upgrade your main course to a dinner set that comes with soup & ice-cream. We had a good time chatting with another and called it a night at close to 1am.

I was getting frustrated by the peeling gold paint off the rim of my glasses. The problem has appeared since my glasses reached its 1st year anniversary. As I am going to attend Yvonne’s & Desmond’s wedding 2 Saturdays from now at Singapore Expo, I knew I had to do something about it if I want to look presentable on their big day. I went to see my usual optician, Edward  at Capitol Optical, Northpoint. He said he was sorry that the spectacles turned out like that. He said he was able to change the gold colour to sliver colour in about 3 days. I was worried that the change would not turn out well, therefore I have already chosen a new frame to make a new pair. Hopefully, all turns out well, otherwise it will be another big hole in my pocket this month. Even though I have set money aside for this, I hope I don’t have to touch it.

I nearly lost my temper at a female colleague this week as the audit she did was horrendous, as there were only extracts of GL and there were no details for the renovations added. My senior colleague had passed me this case of hers, as she was busy with 2 cases that had a court hearing date nearing. She thought that with my ability, I was able to finish at a fast pace as the auditor of the case wanted the case to be done on a urgent basis. It was so bad that I really nearly lost my temper. This case was so badly done that I suggested to my boss that the audit department should be charged a service fee as the tax provision should be done by the auditor themselves. This is the practice of most audit firms. I was thinking if people do not know how to do their work well, we should train well, and since people don’t appreciate our efforts, we should make them pay where it hurts, the pockets.

This was my 3rd KTV session in 2 weeks. Fortunately, it was a home session at Jonathan Ya’s place, so we could just select the lighter songs to sing. But after the second hour into the session, Jonathan Teo & I really could not take it anymore. I guessed we actually over sang our quota for the week. Dinner was near Jonathan Ya’s place. I thought the food I had, the sambal dory fish was great. I would like to thank Andrina for giving me a ride back home.

I had wanted to rest at home on a Sat, but was asked by Ivy, Betty & Ann on Friday morning whether I wanted to join them for breakfast or brunch yesterday. I had a feeling that I was not going to a good day at work, so I accepted the invite. True to my gut feelings, the day was not that smooth, as a colleague of mine made an error that I thought which can be spotted if she had cast checked the financial statements before passing to me to work on the tax provision for her. As I have other cases on hand, I just left her case aside. If you know that your case is urgent, all the more you should check your work before passing it to us to do the tax provision, instead of having me to work on it and stopping to intercom you to seek your clarifications about certain figures. If you are not helpful, how would expect me to come up with the tax provision fast? My brunch was at Bugis Junction Shokudo Japanese Coffee House.We were joined by Jonathan as well. This was my 2nd visit there. I tho

The week started slow but it ended up to be quite busy today. On Thursday, I met up with my volunteer friend, Wendy, who has left her job and wanted to destress. We met up at AMK Hub at her request and had MOF, a Japanese Restaurant. The service was not up to our expectations but the food was good and worth the money too. We had a good time chatting together, although I gave her a scare when I fell while trying to get some drinks onto our table. I am glad that the waiters decided to carry the drinks to my table as well. We spent about 2 hours there, before heading home.