Paul's Fulfilling Life

It has been a slow new year for me as this year, we did not do much house visiting. Not much house visiting can be a good thing too as some people can be pesky in asking when it is your turn to get hitched, or why are you not attached. I always tell them I am happy with where I am and prefer to let nature takes its own course. Knowing my own physical limits, I know I can handle, but to others, they may feel that I am not able to handle the strains of a relationship. Like I always say, people are always entitled to their own opinions, we cannot change what people see us sometimes despite what we have done. You may have done well at work, but because of external circumstances or environmental factors, your boss decides that you have to go, put you on enforced leave due to poor business to save costs. I always believe in forging good relationships at school or work, but it takes both hands to clap most of the time. One has to take the first step. Some people feel that playing politics or ...

The recent mishap of Aloysius Phang, who passed away during a training accident in NZ on Wednesday, reminded me of the good and bad days that I had during my NS days, which lasted from Jul 2000 till Jan 2003. The good, was I had met a nice officer, during my days when serving as a clerk in Sembawang Air Base. I was given a lift by him out of camp at one instance. Little did I expect that he actually offered to pick me up from my place to camp every morning, unless he had flying duties. I will always remember his kind deed to me in this lifetime of mine. Next, I was thankful to have met my NS buddy there, who kept a lookout for me when we were in camp during our NS days together. Sadly though, he has since passed away after a battle with illness for about a year 12 years ago. The bad, I prefer not to dwell on it too much, but some of the things that guys will know if they have served NS  that I have faced include, Not able to get early time off to pursue my ACCA qualification at tha...

It has been again a while since I last blogged. It was a busy Dec and Jan for me as some of you who have been reading my blog may have known that it was my birthday in December. I was glad that my friends and family had taken time off their busy schedule to celebrate my birthday for me since the start of Dec. It has been great to catch up with some of them, especially one of my poly mates, whom I have not met in a while. The sad thing was my brother lost his job. Let’s hope he finds another one soon. I know the job market is pretty tough now. My boss has been hinting that there is likely no salary adjustment this year. January has been a unexpected busy month so far as IRAS decided to do away with the IRAS PIN and let tax agent use CorpPass to e-file for their clients without informing the tax agents first. It is fortunate that I am a SIATP member, and managed to get an email that this was going to happen. My manager, who was supposed to be on leave, unexpectedly came back and mana...

Firstly, an apology to the readers of my blog for not updating my blog for quite a while already as had been rather busy for the past few months, in my areas of concern of work, interest group and volunteering, but as always, I feel that there must a time for me to write about and take stock for the year. Work It has been a roller coaster and busy year at work, as my colleague passed away unexpectedly in a traffic accident in June. I was tasked by my boss to hunt for new staff and cover his job scope for close to 2 months. Not that I minded to learn new stuff at work, even at the age of 38 going to 39, but the office politics had been unbearable for quite a while, and to think that I had some thoughts of moving on shows just how bad it is. I am holding back due to the interest for the job, and the fear of not able to find a job due to the slow economy and the social stigma that employers in Singapore have about my disability. The fact that I took only 2 hours of training, just to maste...

It has been a while since I last blogged as I have been busy due to work. My manager has been on long medical leave due to an operation. She is likely to be going on another round of long medical leave as there were some complications. Let’s hope everything will be okay after this. The good thing arising from this is that my boss is delegating more control to handle my work within my job scope, instead of asking me to handle the “dirty jobs”. She says she hopes to train me up to a management post. We shall see how it will pan out as some things have happened at work recently and made me a little pissed. It took me a while to let it go and acknowledged that its part & parcel of work. It makes you wonder why some people do not know how to mind their own business sometimes. I was invited the 2018 Silent Heroes Award Dinner on 29 September as a past winner cum Alumni. It was nice to catch up with some of them since the launch of the alumni early this year. I also met up with my ACCA cl...

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...