Surprise From The Mailbox

I thought that I was not going to get the award after my stunning act at this year’s exercise. I was shocked and surprised when I received this email today

Dear Lee Bing Fong (Paul),
Congratulations on being awarded the 2012 e-Filing Volunteer – Outstanding Volunteer Award!
We are pleased to share that you were being nominated by your Volunteering Centre for this award in recognition of your commitment, service and leadership qualities, and good understanding of the e-Filing system.
We would like to invite you to the IRAS e-Filing Service @ the Community Appreciation Ceremony to receive the Certificate of Commendation and plaque from Our Commissioner, Mr Moses Lee on 23 June 2012. You can also invite two guests to attend the ceremony with you to share in your achievement!
At the same time, please advise us on the following before 23 May 2012 (Wed).

1. Name to be printed on the certificate and plaque

2. Confirm your attendance,

3. and the number of accompanying guest(s) together with their NRIC no.

This will be my 8th award in 9 years of volunteering in this exercise. =)

 

Mothers’ Day & Dad’s Birthday Celebration

Dad had wanted the dinner to be held at the Sheng Siong Supermarket Food Court, but my brother felt that it was too cheapo to do a birthday cum Mothers’ Day celebration at a Food Court so he suggested doing at a Thai Restaurant that was located at my old neighbourhood that I previously stayed.

Dad had wanted to foot the bill, but I thought it was stated to be a Mothers’ Day Celebration cum Dad’s birthday celebration, my dad should not have paid. I was a a little surprised that my brother offered to share the cost since he is not working.

I believed dad & mum enjoyed the dinner very much.

Busy Month Ahead

Although I will be going on my long awaited family holiday at the month, but I did not expect myself to be so busy after my trip ends on 6 June.

I would have the following events that would require my presence, once I am back in Singapore.

1. 2 birthday celebrations of my KTV group buddies. One of them is holding his housewarming together with his birthday.
2. My RC Fathers’ Day cum Dumpling Festival on 17 June. I am asked by the leader of organising committee to assist in hosting duties for the event. Thanks Jasmine & Jaslin for their faith in me. =)
3. IRAS e-filing Volunteer Appreciation Ceremony on 23 June. For this event, I have not received any confirmation from IRAS, but I happened to know that the event will be on this date as my Liasion Officer, Juncai, has informed me about this. It is likely that he has nominated me for the Outstanding Volunteer Award in recognition for the efforts I put in during the Volunteer e-filing sessions.

This explains why I have to push the group KTV back to July. I feel that it will be better so that I can be more relaxed when organising for the next KTV event.

IRAS Informal Gathering for The Volunteers

I have taken it upon myself to start an Informal Gathering for the IRAS e-filing volunteers this year, since the Facebook Page was started by me last year, but it was only this year that the page became active.

I thought it would be good for fellow volunteers to share their e-filing experiences and problems that they had faced in this year’s e-filing and how we could better communicate the need to file taxes to some people who have the misconception that they do not file their tax as their income is below the required threshold, yet they are issued income tax return.

I felt that the 10 of us had a good time giving our inputs on the various issues raised. Some of us felt that it was a good start even though there was only so few of us from the various CCs who joined this event yesterday.

On behalf of the volunteers who attended the gathering, we would like to thank IRAS for supporting the event. I hope this will be a regular affair as one of the volunteers put it, it is always good to catch up as friends, as well as catch up on the new tax measures.

Photos for the Memories

 

 

Jalan Kayu Zone 4 RC Dumpling Festival

I feel obliged to advertise this event for my Residents’ Committee as I have been asked to host my Residents’ Committee’s Dumpling Festival by my fellow member, Jasmine Ong.

The event, which will be held on 24 June (Sunday) from 9am to 12 noon at Jalan Kayu Zone 4 RC Event Hall, will be my 3rd hosting gig for RC events since becoming a RC member in last Jan.

I hope I will not disappoint Jasmine’s faith in me in putting me to host the event. I will put up further details as soon as I receive them. =)

New Job Posting For A Friend

I am happy for a long time poly mate as she will have a new job posting to overseas due to her job in the Civil Service.

I wish her all the best in her new overseas posting.

Surprise Reply From SBS Transit

About 2 posts ago, I mentioned in my blog about a rude commuter demanding the bus captain to stop the bus when the bus is not allowed to stop at any of the non-designated stops.

I was surprised to receive a reply from SBS Transit. The reply is as below:-

Dear Mr Lee

Compliment bus captain of Service 128 ( SBS 8459J )

Thank you for your above email.
We appreciate you for taking the time to share with us the incident which you witnessed during your ride on Service 128 on 4 May 12.
We are indeed heartened to learn that you were impressed with the said bus captain who was calm when explaining to the mentioned passenger. Following your feedback, we have since given her the due recognition. Your compliment has certainly motivated and inspired her to perform even better as she knows that there are always customers like you who appreciate her for the manner she handled the said situation.
Indeed, your compliments serve to encourage our staff to greater levels of customer excellence.
We also note your feedback on how we can do better to improve our service and to avoid such situations in future.
Warm regards.
Yours sincerely

I certainly hope SBS Transit will look into improve the bus service.

Mandy’s Birthday KTV Session

This hastily arranged KTV session was made possible by me & Evelyn, who whatsapp me at the start of the holiday week and told me that she had plans to celebrate Mandy’s birthday. With our efforts, we managed to gather Ah Liang, Ann, Janet, Raymond, Weng Kiat and settled the birthday cake, the KTV room for the KTV session  & her requested birthday gift for a Grasshopper Concert Ticket within the week. This was my 1st time working together with someone to celebrate a friend’s birthday & I am glad that it turned out well.

The birthday KTV for Mandy was held at Liang Court, Partyworld. Raymond got his friend, Desmond to join us as well. We were surprised that the KTV was rather quiet for a public holiday. All of us commented that it could be due to the steep increase which put people who love singing off.

I thought this song was pretty well sung by Evelyn & Weng Kiat. It is a pretty nice song too !!

Our birthday cake for Mandy, shared by us & Alex

Group pic with the ladies

Group pic with the guys

After the extended session (thanks to Carol & David for granting us the 20 min extension secretly), our dinner was at the foodcourt at Liang Court before we proceeded to TCC @ Clarke Quay for our drink session before heading home.

We hope that Mandy enjoyed what we have planned for her birthday and liked her birthday gift. We hope she would enjoy the Grasshopper concert at RWS on 30 June.

A Rude Bus Commuter

It has been a while since I met by a rude bus commuter, which made me witness the use of the communicator located on our SBS Transit bus for help by the bus captain for the 1st time. I must say I am still stunned by the bus commuter’s rude attitude, as she is from Europe, from the way she looked.

This incident prompted me to write an e-mail to SBS Transit a while ago. The email is as follows:-

I am one of a frequent commuter by bus as due to me being physically challenged and I hate squeezing with the crowd on the MRT. I had boarded this Service 128, as it was the bus approaching the bus stop at that time. I do know that the service does not stop at Novena, Toa Payoh, Braddell MRT stations, but I have seen passengers who boarded this bus, misunderstanding that it runs a similar route to Service 162 or Service 54.

Today, a Caucasian lady must have mistaken the bus as Service 162. When this Service 128 did not stop at Newton Road, when she pressed the stop bell, she was rather angry and yelled at the bus captain as to why she did not stop the bus at the Newton Road bus stop, which was the non-stop sector of Service 128.

I thought that the Malay lady bus captain was rather calm and she tried to explain the passenger the reason of why she cannot stop the bus at any of the bus stops on the non-stop sector of the route. When she failed, she actually approached the Operations Control Centre for help. The Operations Control Centre officer, actually tried to calm down the passenger, but to no avail. A female passenger, who sat beside me, tried to help the bus captain to advise the passenger how to get to where she wanted to go, but she refused to take the advice. I think this angered another female passenger who shouted at her to go back to her own country and stop putting our lives at risk by quarreling with the bus captain. I personally feel that the bus captain was rather calm in handling the situation.

This incident also brought up points for SBS Transit to ponder.

1. For services that run parallel or is an express service that is running parallel to a normal service, a sign should be put up on the bus that says which are the stops that the express service or parallel service do not stop. This would reduce misunderstandings, like the one described above.

2. When a bus captain contacts the OCC for help, shouldn't it have advised the bus captain to stop the bus so that the bus captain would not be distracted by driving and communicating with the OCC at the same time?

On this note, I would like to compliment the Malay lady bus captain for her calmness in handling the situation.

Based on what I have shared in my blog, a few days ago about The Madness Of MRT Delays, I mentioned Service 128 was a service that runs parallel to the North-South Line from Yio Chu Kang MRT to Shenton Way Terminal, I did not know I have to come back to this post so quickly. =)

New Blog Theme For Paul

It has been a while since I last changed the blog theme for my blog. I felt that this theme would describe my mood for now.

I was at my granny’s place just now and she is very weak. My aunt was commenting that maybe of her old age, she is just waiting for the time for Heaven to let her go. I personally feel that one should not be so pessimistic about life, but then again, she is 2 years shy of 90 years old, and seeing her suffering like that it’s a pain to all of us.

I could only coax her to eat more as my aunt had been saying that she was eating lesser and lesser each day.

Another change is the media player that I use to play music on this blog. As it seems that Mixpod player does not support Youtube videos anymore. Therefore, I have changed my player to a Youtube Playlist since Blogger & Youtube are under the same roof as Google.

Do keep your feedback coming for my blog.