Paul's Fulfilling Life

My boss handed me a letter from the management office yesterday. Apparently it was a reply from them about the lift trap incident that happened to me twelve days ago. In the letter, Mr Wong, the Centre Manager of the Far East Shopping Centre Management Office stated that being trapped in the lift for 25 minutes is normal, and within the standard rescue timing of 30 mins set by the management. He chose to evade the rest of my questions that I raised in my letter. I was thinking if I should raise the matter to the press. An opportunity struck today. I managed to catch hold of the same lift that I was trapped in breaking down again today. Perhaps, I should really take my mum’s advice and bring this up to the press, since the management office failed to resolve this matter well. Bad press about the shopping centre may help to improve its management staff’s attitude.  

On Good Friday, Jonathan Teo, Jonathan Ya, Lance, Jas & Alex Xu were invited to Andrina’s house for a mini ktv session. It was good to see Jonathan Teo back in Singapore after his European adventure and he actually bought some souvenirs for all of us, which were keychains & chocolates.   It was the 1st time I heard this song on Friday and I thought the song is nice. On Sat, I was asked by mum if I wanted to go for a prayer session and IKEA Tampines to source for new furniture for my home. Reached IKEA Tampines and started researching on the furniture that we could get. In the end, we had a shortlist of what we wanted to get. We managed to get the minimum $200 required for the membership and purchased all the items today as we also discussed with my brother about how he felt about the shortlist before purchasing them. We took a cab home after that.

I mentioned in my blog before that I had received an offer to be featured on the Serangoon Newsletter to share about my volunteer e-filing experience over the years in the Serangoon area. The article is featured here for you guys to read. I know that the surname is typed wrongly and I have highlighted to the editorial team.

I met up with Chloe, Gonnie, Lance & KH last night. The meet up was called by Chloe, as she said that it has been a while since we last met up since Lance’s birthday. The meetup place was at Nex @ Serangoon. Dinner was at a restaurant called Grandma’s place, which serves Chinese food. I thought the dishes were not bad, just that the portions were a little too small for 5 of us.The price was quite alright for the 5 of us. Photos courtesy of Chloe Desert was at a chill place, called Teadot. I felt that the vanilla cupcake I had was great. We discussed with Lance about our singing techniques during the course of the desert session, before heading for our movie session. The movie we caught was Hall Pass which I thought was a funny comedy. I would recommend you guys to catch it.

I was rather pissed off by the explanation given by the building management managing my office that I decided that I should write this complaint letter directly to them, with a copy being given to Far East Organisation, the overall in charge of the Far East Group in Singapore. I refer to the abovementioned incident and my telephone conversations with your Management Office staff, Ms Linda on 14 April 2011 and an unidentified male staff on 18 April 2011. I am one of the staff working for P.C. Lee & Co at Units #10-05/#10-06. I have since worked in this company for about 3 years. During my stay with this company, I have discovered that the 3 passenger lifts at the building would take turns to break down in a month. Sometimes, the lifts would actually break down for a few days. I would like to relate my 2 experiences of being trapped in the lift recently. The 1 slt incident that happened 2 weeks before the abovementioned incident. My lift ride was stopped abruptly on the 6 th ...

In my 3 years plus working in my company at Far East Shopping Centre, this was the 2nd time in 3 weeks that I had been stuck in the office lift. The 1st time, the lift just suddenly stopped but the lift door opened by itself after a short while. But I was not so lucky on Thursday. My colleagues and I were looking forward to our lunch at 12pm. We took the lift down. As we reached the 6th floor, the lift suddenly stopped and the lift door didn’t open. My first instinct, was to press the lift alarm, which my senior and I took turns to do it. We didn’t hear any responses or voices from outside after 5 mins. That was when I decided to give a call back to my office, to get the Management Office’s contact number. I managed to get the contact number from my boss, after I told them we were trapped in the lift. I called the Management Office at 12.07pm. They said that they have heard the alarm but the lift maintenance company, OTIS’ phone lines were busy. A lady, who was in the lift with u...

The volunteers, Paul, Angie (Liasion Officer), Wenjun, Jason, Samira & Haris The above photos are taken by The Serangoon CC staff, Depak who happens to be my poly friend’s hubby’s friend. I was a little surprised that he could still remember my face 3 years after the wedding. The weekend session went on quite smoothly, with the exception for 2 of the customers. One of them came by with a partnership return (Form P) and asked me to help him to e-file. I am glad that I am equipped with the knowledge to assist him, although I knew that I should not have done it. The second one, I would call him Mr. Special. He was very secretive about his Singpass that he was so afraid to let me see his Singpass and used my document file to cover the keyboard as he typed his password. As he typed, he dropped my documents on the floor and messing it up. I had to pick up and rearrange myself and he did not apologise for what he did. In the end, he insisted on keying in his Singpass secretly....

I met up with Lawrence & Jonathan for dinner last Fri. The purpose of this meetup was to catch up with Lawrence as it has been a while since I last caught up with him. The meeting place was at Xin Wang Café at Ion Orchard. I guess it was the only place that I can definitely get seats as I just signed up for their membership card. It was good to catch up with him as Jonathan & I updated him on the various things that happened in the group in his absence. At the same time, we shared some of our knowledge about filing of the income tax return and taught him how to file his tax correctly. He also  shared with us his experiences when he flew to the various countries, such as USA, Denmark, Milan. I thought that the tips were particularly useful, especially for Jonathan, who was embarking on a trip to Western Europe. It was certainly great to catch up with him, and we would like to thank him for his various inputs in the group activities about how to make them better.

I was a little surprised that the crowd that came for e-filing was very much lesser than the first session. Perhaps they could have 6th sense and knew that my regular partner, Haris was not around for these two sessions. A check with the Sengkang CC & Yio Chu Kang CC confirmed that the CC I am at was not the one CC that saw lesser crowd last weekend. I am therefore convinced that the crowd will start streaming in during the last two weeks of the e-filing weekend. I hope that with my exprience in the tax industry, I will be able to handle those difficult customers and/or tax queries, Just a point to note, for those foreigners who have worked in Singapore for 60 days or less in the calendar year, their income will not be subject to Singapore tax.

The gathering with my ACCA classmates was first mooted by Tammy on Facebook about 2 weeks ago and seconded by Elaine. I felt that my Facebook Wall was not an appropriate place to discuss all these. I certainly do not want many people to know where we were going. I agreed with Peggy that Facebook is a dangerous place to post things sometimes. Dinner was at Carousel @ Royal Plaza on Scotts as requested by Elaine. She said that she enjoyed the fresh seafood at the buffet. Therefore, I booked a table a week before through walk in since it was near my office. I did not expect the restaurant to be so crowded on a weekday nite. It was certainly great to see the ladies, since I have not met up with Tammy & Peggy since the last dinner we had before Elaine was due to give birth. Peggy and I chatted for about half an hour while we waited for Elaine and Tammy to arrive and continued eating and chatting till 11pm. The tab was again picked up by Peggy. The three of us felt bad about her pi...

My dad was diagnosed to have a dark area in his neck during his annual medical check. A follow up at the hospital found that the dark area was a growth in the neck and an operation was done to remove the growth. The growth was a lump in the thyroid and it was not cancerous. My dad has now been discharged from the hospital and recuperating at home.