Paul's Fulfilling Life

It has been a while since I last blogged. My mood have been affected by my work recently. The fortunate thing was that there was singing, JJ Lin’s concert & volunteering to keep me balanced & sane for the time being. The next concert that I will be looking forward to will be the Kenny G concert on 8 Nov, not forgetting my group ktv sessions tomorrow and on 20 Oct. I am also looking forward to 2 birthday celebrations, 2 gatherings & 2 weddings to attend to. Since my colleague’s passing in mid June, my boss seems to have undergone a major change. It did not help the fact that all the stuffs that I am supposed to do had to come at the back of one another. The secondment to the corporate secretarial department was unexpected and I expected the brickbats from my colleagues that I was helping as they do not seem to appreciate the fact that I was helping them. In fact, one of them even remarked that “Don’t be too happy yet, there is more to come” after I had managed to complete my...

It has been a while since I last blogged as I have been busy with the CorpPass migration of my clients at work. It was an exercise that my boss thought it was easy to do, and thought that I was chatting with the IRAS officer too much that she felt that CorpPass migration exercise was taking too much of my work time, and I could not complete my work. The truth is that the process had been a tough one and the system testing was unsuccessful, as a result, the 2 IRAS officers that were assigned to me had been following my progress closely to ensure that my firm was able to e-file for our clients come 1st September. In the process, these two officers became my friends, both of whom I have met in person. In fact, for one of them, I have met her quite a number of times at tax seminars that she conducted and at the CorpPass briefing I attended about 2 months back. Sometimes, I wonder, how I can make friends so easily, despite meeting them only a few times, or for some, I have not even met befo...

In life, we have to make personal choices about how we are going to move on from the various stages of our lives as we reach the crossroads. This post serves to encourage my friends and let me have a chance to read back when I grow old. Singapore is a safe country to live in, but the safety comes with a price, therefore we have high costs of living. We can choose to live within our means, or live simply, spend wisely and get the bang of the buck or we can choose to spend first, worry about it later. For me, I choose the former, as due to my physical disability, I certainly do not wish to burden my parents or brother as I grow old and frail. If I were to get married, I certainly do not want my spouse and children to worry about me and the costs involved to take care of me if I were to be frail and unhealthy. Getting married is a choice. Although I am single and hope to settle down, some people around me are struggling with their marriages, some people just decided to give up their marri...

Hi all, it has been a while since I last blogged again as I had been busy with my work. It has been a shocking June & busy July for me. It was a shock that my colleague & his wife was killed in a traffic accident in Malaysia on Hari Raya Puasa as they were heading back to visit his mother in-law. Although I was not on good terms with him as he always felt that I was my boss’ pet. In fact, he was the one who threw out the audit & compilation co-ordination work to me and my boss had to hire an assistant for me to handle this. I felt sorry for him as his 2 children are still very young, and wonder who would take care of them. I was called into action by my boss on the following morning of his passing, to handle matters relating to his passing, and assist to find a replacement via the relevant Job Portals. She also asked me and my assistant to pick up and learn XBRL from my corporate secretarial colleague as the recruitment of staff ran into some hiccups. Besides this, IRAS mad...

A Happy Mothers’ Day to All Mums Out There It has once again been a while since I last blogged as I was a little busy with my work and other commitments. Since it is Mothers’ Day today, I shall write about my life story as a tribute to my mum, especially after visiting a senior’s family today, while on Silver Generation Ambassador duty as I felt that the jobless son should not feel so defeated about life in Singapore, just because there are many difficulties that the family has to overcome. I was born prematurely at 7 months after my mum had slipped while mopping the floor and was sent to the hospital the next day. When I was born, I stayed in the incubator for 6 months due to my light weight. I was diagnosed with swelling in the brain that affected the movement of my limbs. The doctor was supposed to operate on my brain, but the swelling miraculously subsided after she chanted at the advice of a stranger she met at the hospital. Since then, she became a firm believer of Singapore So...

It has been a busy March & April 2018 for Paul both on the work & volunteer front, as I have been busy to do both tax filing at work and helping the taxi & Grab & Uber drivers to file their taxes, although it has been 3 years since IRAS ceased the programme, but I thought it will be useful for these people to come to me if they want, and instead of queuing at IRAS for a few hours just to get it done when their time can be better spent driving for fares on the road or cooking up more plates of char kway teow as life in SG is tough nowadays. I am thankful for all the support given to me by my friends, the various organisations & people who assisted me in the publicity of this programme,  volunteering their time to help these people file their taxes, the space I got to run this project & of course, the sponsors who gave me funds to run this project. I am also grateful to most people that I have helped contributed some money for this cause upon hearing that I ha...

It has been a while since I last blogged. I would like to take the opportunity to wish my readers a Happy Chinese New Year. It has been a slow 2 months for me as there has not been much work at office. This gives me the opportunity to take 3 breaks, 1 for my birthday, 1 for Christmas & 1 enforced break by boss for CNY, which left some of my colleagues unhappy. To me, I feel that it is good to have one, even though your leave is cut as I will very likely be very busy next month. KTV Group It has hard to imagine that I will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of the group, same time as I will be celebrating my 10th year of service in this company. This is something I did not expect, leading a KTV group for almost 10 years. My love for singing has kept me sane from the work at office. I am always thankful for the support of the participants and my co-organisers for helping me to run the group, giving fresh inputs as I ran out of ideas. Work It is hard to phantom that I will still be w...