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.
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.
posted by miss whynot at 3:52 PM
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