Leng Leng's travel diary

Leng Leng's travel diary from 1 Jan 2006 continued at............
http://misswhynot2006.blogspot.com

31 December 2005 (Saturday) – Home (New Year’s Eve)

I spent the whole day sleeping and doing nothing at all. Some of Pam’s friends (An Li, Patsy and her cousin’s friend who just came over to work in London) came over to our place for dinner.

They were all playing games into the morning and also went out to watch the fireworks at around 11pm. It was too cold out there and as I was also very sleepy and not in the festive mood, I stayed in my room the whole day and really slept throughout other than waking up to have dinner, drink water or go to the toilet.

30 December 2005 (Friday) – Work

I spent the whole day reading up on UK corporate taxes again and very importantly, trying not to fall asleep! Haha

Around lunch time, the partner came over and told Hannah (one of the supervisors) that she can go home once she has finished that task she was doing…but he didn’t mention about the rest of us and in the end, most of us just went off during lunch time.

When I got home, I took a nap before waking up for dinner and then going back to sleep again.

28 & 29 December 2005 (Thursday & Friday) – Work

Went back to work after 2 days of bank holidays.

A lot of the people were still on leave and so there isn’t a lot of people in the office and there’s no one I could ask for jobs and so I spent the whole 2 days doing nothing in the office other than to read up more on UK corporate taxes and learning more about the alphatax.

On Thursday, things were very slow in the office and one of the partners came over and told us that we could go home and I went off at 4pm.

27 December 2005 (Tuesday) – Home (Bank Holiday)

Today is also bank holiday and I also spent the whole day at home doing nothing, not even updating my blog (I think!).

26 December 2005 (Monday) – Home (Boxing Day – Bank Holiday)

It is public holiday (in UK, they used the term ‘Bank Holiday’ instead of public holiday) and again I did nothing at home…other than to update my blog.

It was also the start of the post-Christmas sale in UK and from the news, there were loads of people queuing up way before the shops were opened just for the sale and there were people who started queuing in the middle of the night – talk about kiasuism, can fight against the Singaporeans queuing up for Hello Kitty soft toys man!!! And not to mention that it’s during winter, standing and queuing in the cold. Crazy people!

25 December 2005 (Sunday) – Home (Christmas Day)

It’s Christmas Day today and I did NOTHING AT HOME!!!

Anyway, there are no public transport during Christmas and so there’s nowhere we can go as well.

In the afternoon, I was very tired and so took a nap – this is the first time I took a nap ever since coming to London. I used to sleep throughout my whole weekend back home.

24 December 2005 (Saturday) – shopping at Bluewater, Home

Meiling wanted to go shopping for Christmas presents before her dinner with her friend tomorrow and we went along with her to Bluewater, a very big shopping mall and about 1 hour away from London.

Around 6pm, we went back home to London.

I also received my first pay slip for the December pay and it really made me happy and finally I am earning some income!

23 December 2005 (Friday) – Work

Work is very slow today because a lot of people were already on leave and luckily it’s half day today.

After work, I went down to the bank to sort out the final details and information on my bank account and then went to run some errands before heading home and by the time I got home, it’s pretty late.

I tried my hand at making tiramisu today so that it would be ready by tomorrow for me and Sze Mei to eat. Pam won’t be at home as ultimately, she decided to get out of London and so there’s only me and Sze Mei at home.

At night, there was a phone call from some guy from Marks & Spencer saying that they are giving away free socks and asked us what colour we liked and they would send some over…when Sze Mei told me about it, I was like, huh why dun you just tell him any colour and then we can get free socks. But from the tone of the guy, Sze Mei dun even dare to talk to him any further and just slammed down the phone.

He called again and this time I went to pick up the phone. I told him black colour and then after that he asked if what colour of panties I like and they would also be sending it over! With this question, I also freaked out and I can’t remember what I asked him before slamming down the phone!

22 December 2005 (Thursday) – Work, went shopping at Bromley North, dinner with Meiling at Elephant & Castle

Work – spent another day mainly reading my tax notes and doing abit of minor work here and there.

I received a call from Bahar, the lady from Lloyds Bank saying that my documents have been approved and that my bank account can go ahead for process and made an appointment to go down see her tomorrow after work...which is around lunch time cos of Christmas holidays, tomorrow is a half day but banks work full day.

After work, I went to the shopping street at Bromley North and did some shopping…halfway through, I received a call from Meiling asking me if I’m interested in going Elephant & Castle for noodles at the “Big Bowl Noodles” (literal translation) for dinner. I said ok and met up with her for dinner before going home and tabao-ing more food for the next few days.

21 December 2005 (Wednesday) – Work

There was nothing for me to do and I spent the whole morning and early afternoon finishing my online course on money laundering, which every staff is required to do. And then I spent the whole late afternoon reading Matt’s (my colleague who is ultra helpful) notes from his tax course.

Matt is from Australia…not sure if he also came over on a working holiday visa. But now, he is married to an English gal and staying put in England.

I went to the bank during lunch to open my bank account. The letter that I got my company to write me didn’t really confirm my address because they can’t do that, from risk management point of view and so the letter is worded as “as far as they know”. I then tried to explain my situation to the lady, Bahar, who understood my situation cos she currently leases one of the rooms at her house to a lady and she had the same problems with me as well – do not have any documents showing proof of address.

Bahar then went out to consult someone more senior who then came into the room and said there’s no way they could do it…I again repeated my situation to her and she tried to think of ways to help me and in the end, she said we could try zapping a copy of my Singapore bank statement and fax it over to the relevant department for their approval…basically trying my luck. But at least, they are willing to try to help and think of solutions for me.

20 December 2005 (Tuesday) – Work

I was late for work again…thanks to London’s transport system. I missed the connecting train at Grove Park to Bromley North and I reached the train station only at 845am and I’m supposed to start work at 845am! Luckily, my office is just next door, less than 5 minutes walk and the bosses there are pretty lenient about this. There are some others who usually come in only at 9am, but then they go off late as well.

In the days to come, I realised that this is very common. Well, London Underground is well-known for its unreliability but the train system is generally quite alright. Quite often, I missed that connecting train. And sometimes I will take the earlier train that reaches the office at 810am and when I does that, so far I have never missed the connecting train. There were also 2 of my colleagues who are also staying in London and take the same train with me everyday. And that was also how I came to get to know them and talk the most to them than any others in my office.

The first one I talked to was the Swedish lady, her name’s Helena, and is currently a Tax Graduate in the company. She is in London because of her English boyfriend and had quit her job etc and came over to London to be with him. And they met while he was in some exchange programme from the UK Inland Revenue to Sweden Inland Revenue (Helena was working at the Inland Revenue in Sweden).

And through Helena, I came to know Marina, who was from Russia and came to London for the main purpose of improving her English and she met her hubby in college. She is also a Tax Graduate in the company.

I noticed that when I take the 810am train…I always see them coming into the office before 845am, which means that they didn’t miss the connecting train in Grove Park. I made that comment before and later on, that is partially true. It seems that whenever the 3 of us take the same train, there is a higher tendency for the train to be late at Grove Park and when one of us is not taking the same train, the train will be on-time!

The accounting profession in UK works slightly differently from the one in Singapore and to be a qualified accountant, it is so much tougher in UK than in Singapore or maybe it’s different. In Singapore, I did all my accounting, auditing, taxation subjects in university. But I’m not sure if they did that while in college here. For anyone who wants to go into the profession, if they are not a qualifed accoutant, they will need to go to college and take the exams after that. And there are a few levels to go to. And at the professional stage, in the tax field, that person will get his/her CTA (Certified Tax Accountant) and will then be a fully qualified accountant. And once you are qualified, the “terminology” to use after that will be “1-year post-qualified, 2-years post-qualified, etc”.

And if you are at some intermediary level of your exams, you will be considered as part-qualified.

There was also this other guy from the same office who takes the same train as the 3 of us. But I have no idea what his name is and which department he is from! Anyway, the results for the tax exams was realised one Friday in January and so that was a hot topic and we found out from him that there was this guy who has failed one of the level 3 times already and if he were to take the 4th time and fail again, then his current status of “part-qualified” will be wiped out totally and he would go back to square one – being a non-qualified accountant!

Back to talking about London’s transport system, there was once in the tube where there was some delay and the driver was announcing over the PA system that there was some problem and that this problem dun usually happens. And in my mind, I was thinking “hello, you are talking about London Underground man, anything can happen to cause any kind of delay, what talking you man!” haha

And now this is something peculiar I realised about the people here. When they flip paper, they machiam grandmother kind wan…they will always first wet their fingers from their tongue so that it’s easier to turn the papers! So yucky!!! And we are talking about tax files etc which are kept around for a few years and so many people flipping the pages and its so dirty!

A funny incident happened today. I walked to the town centre during lunch with this colleague, Santhie, from office. She has a really thick accent and I was having a lot of problems understanding her. She is actually of mixed parentage – her dad is Indian and her mum is Chinese from Malaysia. While on the way to the town area in Bromley North, we were talking and suddenly she asked if I mind her asking me about my age! She was shocked when I told her my age cos she thought I am only 19 years old! Hahaha

I went to the bank today trying to set-up a bank account here so that I can receive my salary and pay for my living and travelling expenses from here since I am now earning income. The only documents I have were the 2 employment contracts from my 2 jobs here in London, copies of my Singapore bank statement and my credit card statements from Singapore.

In UK, to open a bank account, the individual must show prove of address to the bank first before they can do anything and usually they require other bank statements or utility bills. Because the gas and electricity bills were already under Pam’s name and since Sze Mei was the one who signed the lease agreement, the telephone line was registered using her name as well. And so I had none of the above, I had to rely on my Singapore bank statement. But the bad news is that, my account is a paperless account and I had to specifically call UOB to print out a copy from their system and indicate my London address and send them over to me.

But this was also not accepted by Natwest because the bank statement is only a copy and not an original bank statement. And my other documents don’t help at all. Luckily, there are a few banks around Bromley North town centre and I pop over to Barclays, which is the next nearest one. Its so troublesome to open a bank account there – I had to take this brochure with instructions on bank account opening and then fill in the relevant information and send in my original documents for them to review! And then they will let me know if they will go ahead with it. I express concern over my documents and the customer service guy was telling me that I can always send in my registered mail! Not to mention that this is very troublesome and time-consuming, I would never do that because I need to send the documents over and that means I have to spend money on it!

Then I pop over to HSBC…I have a bad impression of the bank when I accompany Sze Mei to the bank and I get very bad treatment from the customer service. And Sze Mei also had bad service from the banking staff! But I needed a bank account and so long as I get one, I dun care and with the bank statement, I can always go to another bank and open another account and so I joined the queue at the customer service counter. And I was then ticked off by one of the customer that I had jumped queue! I didn’t even realise that he, who was sitting down, was part of the queue. That was it man, not only the staff is rude, their customers are also rude…so I just went off and pop across the road to Lloyds TSB Bank.

There was this lady (if I remember correctly, her name is Annie) at their customer service who is very nice, friendly and helpful. Once, there was this old lady queuing for the counter and when Annie saw her queuing, she told her to just sit at the chair near the customer service counter and she will come attend to her after she is finished with her current customer! I was so impressed with their service!

The customer service lady went through my documents and said that they are not enough and advised me to get a letter from my employer confirming my address and they could then go ahead to open my bank account. I then made an appointment with them for the next day to see someone to assist me with it.

19 December 2005 (Monday) – First day at work

Today was my first day at work and is supposed to be reporting for work at 930am instead of the usual 845am for normal days.

Because the office is located in Bromley North, Kent which is outside of London, I need to take the train from Charing Cross train station to Bromley North. My travel route is:
1/ Take the underground from Maida Vale to Charing Cross on the Bakerloo line
2/ From Charing Cross, take the train to Orpington and alight at Grove Park
3/ From Grove Park, I need to change to another train to Bromley North
The whole journey will take me around 1 hour.

My plan was to take the train such that I reached Bromley North at 910am. Before taking the tube, I need to buy my monthly seasonal tickets from the ticket office at Maida Vale tube station where I got held up by this lady who was at the counter buying her ticket and is taking quite some time and so I stood there waiting till there was these 2 people who went over to another counter and bought their tickets. I was stunned! I didn’t even realised that the other counter was opened. It was very fast for me to buy my seasonal tickets and I think I would be able to make it in time to Charing Cross station to catch my train.

But then, the tube broke down and it stopped halfway and I had to take the super long way and change a few tubes in order to get to Charing Cross Station. And needless to say, I missed my train and had to take the next train which arrives at Bromley North at 930am. Luckily, my office is just right beside the train station and so I wouldn’t be very late.

It’s the first day at work and generally, there is nothing much to do. I spent the whole morning with the HR lady going through Lotus Notes and some of the firm’s practices with regard to saving letters, typing letters etc. And after that, I had some tax training on the tax software, Alphatax, and the deferred taxes worksheets from a manager who just came back from maternity leave. That took me almost the whole afternoon and during the late afternoon, I was did some on-the-job exercise on the use of the software and read up some of the firm’s stuffs on the intranet…something which I have to do for all newcomers.

During knock off time, I was dilly dallying and I didn’t even take notice of my train timings and luckily, I got off work on time to take the first train after 5pm (that’s my knock-off time) which is at 525pm. And I am so unlucky again cos the train was delayed for 15 minutes and the next two trains were cancelled! If I had missed that train, I have no idea how long I have to wait for the next train in order for me to get home man!

That is my woes with London transport system for the day! And on my first day at work some more!

18 December 2005 (Sunday) – Home

I stayed home today to rest after 1 week of travelling and also to sort out my Germany photos.

the last pic of the cakes from Schmidt Cafe

more pictures of cakes from Schmidt Cafe

blackforest cake from Schmidt Cafe as recommended by the lady from the hostel...their cakes are very popular. the next day when I went back to ta-bao another slice, there was a long queue and I had to wait quite awhile for my turn, plus I didn't know any German and dunno about the system of ordering there!

Freiburg - took this just outside the Schmidt Cafe (where I had my blackforest cake) and found it to be snowing

I though this is cute...this is on the pavement for pedestrians

missed out these pics just now...this is the main shopping stretch in Freiburg

the 3 wine glasses I bought from the Christmas Markets...Green is from Nuremberg, Blue from Munich and Red from Stuttgart

Germany purchases - the pair of slippers I bought in Stuttgart...just nice for use during winter

view of Freiburg

view of the Munsterplatz taken from the hill of my forest walk

the road up the forest walk

view of Freiburg taken mid-way up the hill for the forest walk

view of Freiburg

17 December 2005 (Saturday) – Germany Freiburg – forest walk – UK London

I had a very good sleep last night and didn’t set any alarm this morning to wake me up…woke up when I am satisfied with my sleep. There wasn’t many people around in the room by the time I woke up and they went to bed later than me!

My initial plan was to take the train from Freiburg to this other place in Black Forest region called Ulm, which is famous for its Munster tower, the highest cathedral spire in Europe and is also the birthplace of Albert Einstein. And then from Ulm, I will take the train to Stuttgart for my flight back to London. The German Rail Pass I bought allows me to take unlimited number of train rides in a day, but is restricted to 5 days travel on the train. This will maximize the usage of the expensive train tickets I bought!

But then, when I looked at my luggage and the thought of carrying them around makes me sianz and in the end, I decided to just take it easy on my last day of travel in Germany (Freiburg) and not rush for once.

In the morning, I went for a forest walk near the hostel. There wasn’t many people around except for a few old men on their daily morning walks and the floors were pretty slippery from the snow and it looks like it’s gonna rain again and so halfway through, I didn’t bother continuing and went down and went into town to get the blackforest cake again for breakfast and this time I take-away instead and bring it back to the hostel to eat. And of course, I tabao another Mc Donald’s €0.99 chicken burger! Haha for this trip alone, I dunno how many burgers I have eaten man!

And while walking back to the hostel, it indeed did rain and luckily I brought my umbrella along with me. The rain later turned into heavy snow and the wind in Freiburg is really strong and it blew away my umbrella and it was near the roads and could cause it to be a road hazard and went chasing after my umbrella. Luckily it hasn’t went onto the roads and I can recover it in time.

By the time I reached the hostel, there is already a thick layer of snow on the floor already! I then stayed around in the hostel to eat my cake and burger and read my book before its time for me to take the train to Stuttgart for my flight back to London.

And at the train station, I bought another Mc Donald €0.99 chicken burger and €0.99 small fries again for my dinner. Yes, this is how pathetic I am when you run out of cash! I didn’t see any money changer around to change my pounds into euro and yet I keep walking past this café that has very nice seafood on display and they accept cash only!

At the airport waiting lounge, I saw this lady whom I guess is a teacher cos there was this young boy who came around and chatted with her for awhile…and the reason why I am mentioned her is because I think she is really pretty and has this ‘sey’ or in English term, it’s called ‘charisma’ and I couldn’t help buy keep looking at her! haha

Because of the snow and wind, my flight from Stuttgart was delayed by about half an hour.

Not sure if I have mentioned this earlier, I realized that the Germans are very obedient at traffic lights. They will always wait for the green man to light up before crossing the road. And even when its red lights for the cars and its still red man for the passengers (during the short interval), they will still wait for the green man to light up before crossing! Unbelievable! And that is the same for the drivers as well. I feel so safe when crossing the roads in Germany, unlike in Budapest when I dun feel safe at all even when I am crossing a traffic light!

I am very late in my update and by now, I have also been to another trip to Germany (Lubeck and Hamburg) and that is also the same case over there! When we were crossing a zebra crossing at night, there was a car and upon reaching the zebra crossing, he automatically slows down to check out for pedestrians! Even in Singapore, I doubt I can find such drivers! Heck, I dun even think I will be as nice a driver! haha

When I reached London, both Sze Mei and Pam were at home, which is surprising for Pam on a Saturday night. And I had a shock when I heard that the house has ran out of toilet paper and no one bother to go buy cos since the French gal dun bother, they also didn’t bother to go buy! Unbelievable! Not only was I shocked, I was actually pretty mad as well!

Anyway, I quickly went to have my bath and unpack my stuffs and go to bed and have an early rest, I need to catch up on my sleep as much as possible cos I will be starting work on Monday and will need to wake up very early from then on.

Freiburg Christmas Market - this is the flour thingy I ate in Freiburg

the roasted chestnut I ate again in Freiburg Christmas Market

Freiburg Christmas Market

Freiburg streets - a collage of the symbols that can be found on some of the streets of Freiburg...and some are just outside the shops and represent what the shop is selling...very interesting

Freiburg hostel - recreation area

Feiburg hostel - along the stairways

Freiburg hostel - recreation area

Freiburg hostel - kitchen

one of the 'cubicles' in the shower room...very different hor?

Freiburg hostel - on the door of the ladies' shower room

Freiburg hostel - on the door of the ladies' toilet cubicles

on the door of the men's shower room

Freiburg hostel

Freiburg hostel - this is another corner of the big dorm room

Freiburg hostel - that bed with a lot of things on it is mine! can see the heater right behind the bed and I still feel cold at night!

another one.

haha, I really have too much time to spare...it was too cold outside and since there isn't alot of people in the sports store, I tried on this beanie and took a picture of it! It looks so much cuter on kids...and see lots of kids wearing this but too paiseh to be taking pictures so I just had to try it on myself and take a pic of myself in the mirror...was thinking of getting that but very expensive ah! that beanie cost Euro 40!

another one of the buildings with the year on it

more buildings

this is a close-up pic of the wods

Freiburg streets - see the words on the wall...that's the year the building was first constructed and what it was used for at that time...this piece of information was told to me by the lady at the hostel

Freiburg streets - this huge bear is located outside a kids' store...I always like to take pictures with huge bears, but this time round I was alone and there wasn't alot of people on the streets that I could ask to help me take pictures...