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lala @ Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Okay, it’s time to blog again. Means that I’ve got nothing much to do now.

I just returned from KL over the vesak day holiday. It was a little let down cos rol fell sick on the 2nd day. Blame it on the bus air con which was blowing directly at rol. Poor rol didn bring his jacket and was sneezing away. And I couldn’t lend him my jacket cos you know, my resistance level is much lower. His temperature shot up on the 2nd night and I got so worried, I thought the fever was going to burn his brain. He didn’t eat anything for more than a day and we skipped breakfast on the 3rd day too. What’s weird was that he miraculously recovered after lunch on the 3rd day. Then he complained of not recovering earlier and missing out on all the good food. But at least we managed to see whatever we planned to see and shopped wherever we wanted to shop.

First day we reached KL at abt 3pm. The first thing that struck me was the heavy pollution and dirty streets of KL. The air was bad with all the smoke from cigarettes and cars’ exhaust fumes. Taxi drivers were calling out at the entrance of our bus offering us taxi rides. The bus terminal was crowded with people pushing around. People were sitting along the streets and stairs waiting for god knows what. Our hotel (Ancasa) was only 2 roads away from the bus terminal, but it seemed like an eternal walk. Okay maybe not that bad, but you get what I mean. After we checked in, we took the LRT to KLCC to shop. It’s as if we stepped into a different world. KLCC is posh and clean and huge, nothing like the dirty streets of Puduraya. We proceeded to Aquaria KLCC, to see KL’s collection of sea creatures and weird animals. Their collection is so much better than our Sentosa, REALLY! Wait til you see the photos I upload onto facebook.
But it’s a high class shopping area, so there isn’t much to buy. Guess what I bought there.. Body shop and Giordano stuff. HAHA.

Second day despite running a fever, rol and I went to Bukit Bintang (smth like Orchard Road) where all the malls are located. We popped by Sungei Wang (smth like Far East Plaza) and Lot 10 (there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in there, PLS AVOID GOING THERE). And of cos Times Square. Did I mention that it’s gigantic, with about 10 levels of shopping area? It’s easily the largest shopping mall in Southeast Asia. Yes I know it still can’t beat Shoe Mart in The Philippines. Bukit Bintang area is where we spent most of our money and I satisfied my A&W craving finally!! I loved their curly fries. Did I also mention that there’s a lot of trans around in KL? They come out early in the day, my goodness. I saw two in Body Shop as sales assistants and a few along the streets of Bukit Bintang and in Sungei Wang. Ultimately GROSS!!!

Third day we just stayed in our hotel room, packed our stuff, checked out at noon and went to walk around Chinatown. Because the weather was scorching hot and humid, we settled ourselves in a Chinese restaurant and spent our remaining money on simple Chinese fare. That is the only Chinese restaurant in Chinatown and it’s fully air conditioned! And the food’s pretty good too.
Then we went back to the hotel to collect our luggage and left for the bus terminal to go home. The worst part was the traffic jam at the MALAYSIAN CUSTOMS. The bus slowed to a crawl at about 1 km or less away from the customs. There we stopped and crawled for about 2.5 hours. It was so heavily congested that many other passengers from other buses couldn’t take it and so they left the buses and walked to the customs. By the time I reached Kovan bus terminal, it was 11 plus already.

Hmm come to think of it, KL wasn’t this bad the last time I went. Rol had lots to complain abt too, like the structure of the LRT, the lack of traffic rules, the pollution, the weather etc. Im so glad Sg is not like that.

Where shall we go the next time? Hong Kong again? Maybe Taiwan.. Japan would be even better.. haha.. dreaminggg

Labels: KL Trip

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------------------------------------------- lala @ Wednesday, May 07, 2008

AGD Staff Meeting (ASM)

Today I attended my first ASM and it wasn’t what I expected at all. Initially I imagined it to be a sharing session attended by all staff to report on what they have done for the past month, important issues to update everyone. It turned out to be presentations by different people about just anything under the sun. Something like case studies in which lessons can be drawn from the cases and applied to our organisation. I feel like I’m back in sch where the AG asks for comments and questions after each presentation. A couple of times I felt like saying something, but I’m not sure I am in any position to make a comment, so I thought I’ll just wait until she calls upon me. I initially thought that I am not permitted/ not required to attend the ASM because I’m not a permanent staff there and I thought they were going to talk about serious and confidential stuff. Until Weiqiang came to ask me to join them.

There were quite a number of presentations today. Here’s a brief summary for each ppt.

Information handling and disclosure issues
There has been great public outcry about the loss of public data in the UK and this has brought our attention to the importance of how data is handled and disseminated to the intended end user. Also, in the case of data loss, who should be responsible? The data sender or the company relied upon to make the delivery? Law issues like due diligence and contractual relationships come into play. We also discussed how such cases are applicable to us in that in our daily working lives, do we take care in the information we have, how are important doc transmitted within and outside of this building etc? AG calls some people by names to ask for their comments, and it’s pretty evident that most of them are taken aback. Sounds like smu eh?

WOG-SO (Whole of government – strategic outcomes) based budgeting
Currently, the annual budget is based on each M’s budget for the year compiled and submitted to Parliament. In the near future, prolly in a year or two, such a system will be abolished. In place would be WOG-SO based budgeting, in which different Ms would be allocated a certain strategic outcome and as a team, they come up with a budget for that particular SO. I can’t remember the exact names of the SOs, but I recall them to be along the lines of higher productivity, stronger families, racial harmony etc.

Creativity
The presenter shared with us about the myths of creativity eg time pressure fuels creativity, money motivates creativity, creative comes from creative types etc. Then AG asked for our opinions on the myths, whether we agree or not. Stories about Japanese innovation and culture came up, as well as comparisons between Japan and US etc. AG also asked if accountants are boring people, whether we can be creative, not in the Enron sense, but do the right things creatively. She also brought up an important point about passion. We need to be passionate about the work we do, take things in our stride. The work may be mundane and filled with obstacles, but if we have the passion and determined to achieve the ultimate goal, failures should not deter us from trying again.

The ASM forces people to read up on the articles and slides prior to the presentations to facilitate discussions. Once again, smu style ;) I find the discussions very thought provoking and necessary to make work more interesting and more productive, which I’m sure the private sector simply has no time to conduct. Such is the culture distinct from the private sector. I’m not sure how my other colleagues think about the ASM, but I personally felt empowered and enlightened about life and about my work. I’m not sure if I’ll appreciate such sessions again after I enter the workforce, when there’s piles and piles of work for me to finish, but at this instant, I’m absorbing the information put forth with much enthusiasm and intensity.

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------------------------------------------- lala @ Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Okay, a little update about my work so far.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m in the VFM review section, which deals with looking into the budget expenditure and cost efficiencies of the various processes in Ms and SBs. Last week, I helped my colleague research on data on the topic of uni tuition fee loans. The problem with this is that as the tuition fee increases, the max amt of loan (reflected by the percentage of the tuition fee) has also increased over the past few years. However, the terms and conditions of such loans have not been revised for many years. Some of these requirements include guarantor requirements, max repayment period, min repayment amt etc. So we’re trying to investigate whether the current t&c are up to date and correctly reflect current economic conditions. To write this paper, we need a lot of data and cold hard facts to substantiate the paper. So what I did was to get data on diff types of financial assistance options available to a typical uni student like loans, bursaries and scholarships, the wages of Singaporeans over the past years, tuition fee revisions, how long it takes for graduates to find jobs etc. I feel like a RA (research assistant), more than an accountant. You prolly can’t see how this is audit right? My sentiments exactly.

The next project which I’m currently involved in is about judicature review. For this, we are looking at the different courts in sg and deal with a few issues:

Whether the court fees are under priced/over priced
What the court fees are for
Whether facilities in supreme court are well utilized
Whether there is scope for more collaboration between the 2 courts (supreme and subordinate) to optimize resources

Ah, this sounds more like audit. Internal audit. Something that is more interesting than vouching of documents.
What I did yesterday was to go through the courts’ websites to gather data about court fees. There are quite a lot of fees to pay to the courts: for every document you file, the costs is about 0.80 per page; filing a notice of appeal is few hundred dollars; hearing fees are the most ex, ranging from $2000 to $7000 per day, depending on the type of courts you visit and the no of days of hearing.
I also have to understand all the law jargon and terms they use like writs, affidavits, subpoena, summonses etc. Don’t understand? Check dictionary.com. And I read through the whole statute on the rules of court, which took me the entire day. It’s just like going through companies act again, but much simpler.

Now I’m reading up on some of the publications of supreme court, which has stuff about the sg judiciary structure, the supreme court bench, the law and technological reforms they underwent, the key cases that shaped sg law etc. These cases are really interesting, which include those I read about in company law, like Lim Weng Kee v PP, Show Theatres v Shaw Theatres and Intraco v Multi-Pak.

I see some meaning in the work that I do and although the pay (I should say allowance) is pretty pathetic as compared to those interning in banks, I enjoy my work here very much.

Okay, I’ll try to blog more often now that sch’s over. :)

Labels: work work work

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