Be Positive!! That's What My Blood Says to Me!!

Oh, what a tiring week it had been. However, being an exception, the busyness could not be attributed towards my office schedule. Actually, my grandmother got operated last week as she fell outside Golden Temple. After 3-4 days, she got leave from hospital and now she is at our place and I have been helping out my mom to take care of her. So, while earlier office used to keep me busy, now after the busy days at the office are gone, I got busy at home. 

 

And well, due to the blood requirement for the operation, I also donated blood at the blood bank last sunday. The blood was just flowing out from my body and I was still sitting idle. ;-) The doctors got me around half a kg lighter as they took approximately an equivalent amount of blood out of my body. Speaking in actual terms, 350 ml of blood was sucked from my blood vein. Got this figure from the doctor who was attending me. :)

 

I also just confirmed my blood group from them and well, while they tested it, I got my reason for the positive and optimistic vibrations I am often known to pass on to my friends. That's because even my blood says 'Be Positive' (B +ve). Well, that's my blood group. :D Sounds quite filmy na?

 

It was Prakash Gurpurab (Birth Day) of our 4th Guru, Guru Ram Das Ji - on 9th Oct. It was a big celebration at the Golden Temple and a day before, large procession of sangat in the form of Nagar Kirtan was made. The whole Golden Temple was glowing with lights and there was a spectacular fire cracker show (Aatishbaazi) too. For those who missed the celebrations, you can enjoy similar celebrations on Diwali day which comes on 17.10.2009. Diwali is also celebrated in Amritsar with great enthusiasm.

 

On Sunday, the gurpurab was also celebrated in our area and it was a nice and soul soothing program. I enjoyed katha and kirtan there. :) I expect the photographs of the procession that took place in our area too on Sunday to reach me sooner and would try uploading the same to share with.

 

For now, its time to close the office and this post.

So, bye all. Sayonara.

God Bless.

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Hectic September Ends!!

Hi Friends!!

   First of all, I wish to express my heartiest thanks to all who liked my presentation on Shaheed Bhagat Singh and another thanks to all who cared to shared their comments on the presentation through the mail.

Well, as you might have been noticing through my posts all this September, the month had been going pretty hectic for me. However, it gave me immense delight and satisfaction to see that while majority of my friends were busy cracking nuts to finish off their work, we had already completed our job by the sunset of 29th and were quite relaxed on the last day of the month. :-) It had been a great learning time as we were ourselves better equipped with more professional knowledge. Though we had to sacrifice our Sundays and other holidays for the office work, but at the end, I surely feel the sacrifice was worth of it. 

And for all the hard work done in the September, we were given a couple of days off from the office. I had thought to relax and rest in these two days but that remained in my thoughts only as our relatives from Sirsa made a visit to our city and stayed at our place. It was quite a fun though with the kids and meeting them. 

However, I got some time to watch a couple of new releases - Wanted & Dil Bole Hadippa. Reviewing these movies, I would recommend 'Wanted' to all the fans of Salman and if ANY fan of Ayesha Takia is going to watch movie for her, you can lookout for any other movie of hers. :P You'll not get to see much Ayesha in the movie. Coming to Dil Bole Hadippa, it was a disappointing one from Yash Raj. Really found nothing to even comment upon in the movie. ;)

Within all these days, there was Gandhi Jayanti too and United Nations have declared it as 'International Day of Non-Violence.' I surely second this noble idea as the need of the hour is to discourage any kinds of violence and propogate non-violence in the world. Friends, its the time to do Gandhigiri.

Non-Violence does make some sense, :-) 

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A Tribute to Shaheed Bhagat Singh!!

Hi Friends!!

Today is the birth anniversary of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, and on this occassion, I just thought to share a powerpoint presentation made by me about Shaheed Bhagat Singh, one of the real heroes on Indian Struggle of Independence. You can download the presentation file from http://www.4shared.com/file/135793193/5480e1f4/Shaheed_Bhagat_Singh.html.

I think it is high time to spread the word as the real heroes of the country are getting forgotten by the country's youth especially. Do forward the presentation to all your friends and relatives and make them aware of some glimpses of life of Shaheed Bhagat Singh.

Inquilab Zindabad.

P.S. Just didn't get a better ending to this post than through the slogan popularised by Shaheed Bhagat Singh. :)

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Days Continue to be Busy!!

Hi Friends!!

Just like my last post, I expect this post of mine too dedicated towards my office experiences as the office work is not leaving me enough time for getting involved in something else. I had thought of watching some new movie this Sunday but all my plans came to an end when I was told by my principal that we would have to work on Sunday as well. And while I was at home from office, I just thought to make the best of the rest of the day and give some relaxation to my body, something my body had been really dying to have in the last couple of weeks. :)

 

The last few days of the month have been really busy for me, especially because of the due date for filing of returns for the assessees requiring audit is approaching and the assessees are just getting off from their sleep in fear of getting hefty penalty under the Income Tax Act. 

The clients have really been late this time, but I suppose it would have been easier this time had there been no power cuts in the city during the peak office hours. 5-6 productive hours of a day are not made use of, due to the power cuts and well, there is no alternative available for us. What else can we do other than doing some overtime?

However, in the midst of these days, I am trying my best to make the most of this high learning time.

Anyways, as the end of the month is approaching and the audits are getting on the verge of completion, it gives huge sigh of relief to us.  

Well, I wrote this post last night but I was not able to post it due to some technical failure at Blogger.com. So, I had just saved it to be republished later on. So, presently blogging from, in fact just republishing from office. 

Anyways friends, have good amount of work before me, so bye for now. Would meet you soon, most probably at the month end.

Till then, take care. God Bless All.

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Knowledge Enriching Experiences with Busy Days @ Office!!

Hi Friends!!

How are you?? It has been once again a long time before I am back here to share my life with you. In the last few days, my days at the office have really been busy with some of the audits trying to test all my knowledge before the final accounts and the audit report gets finalised. I finished up two such audits today itself. So, it was a kind of victory day for me as well as our Indian Cricket team which won a One-Dayer against New Zealand in Colombo.

When I made my last post, I got along a very nice feeling on the next day while I met the Vice President of our Institute, CA Amarjit Chopra Ji. He was into our city for a Seminar for CA Professionals and CA Students on Accounting Standards - a topic which has always caught my interest. While just attending the seminar and enriching my knowledge was making me feel nice, I also happened to get replies to some of my curiousities regarding Accounting Standards and also gave a couple of replies when Mr. Vice President sent some questions to students. Overall, it was a nice knowledge enriching session during the seminar and just when it ended, Chopra Ji came near me and passed me a compliment. I felt great that time. :)

Before that seminar ended, we were also informed of the next seminar on Service Tax & VAT which was around 4 days after. While I was coming out of the seminar hall, I was just thinking of whether I would get permission to attend that seminar or not because the timings just clashed with my office timings. I somehow managed to get permission for that too. Mr. J. K. Mittal, a renowned speaker on the subject from Delhi, updated us on the latest amendments in the Service Tax made by Budget 2009. It was another good seminar to attend and the second half of the seminar saw the topic of Refunds in Punjab VAT by CA Ashok Bhatia. While it could be an interesting topic, I personally could not get enjoy much of that speech as I suppose the lack of much practical knowledge in VAT Refund Procedures was the reason. Anyhow, the seminar surely added something to my knowledge.

The month of September, as expected, had been pretty busy due to work pressure in the office. The work pressure in office is expected to increase more so in the later half of the month, just because the accountants have been busy finalising the books of accounts while fighting with the long power cuts.

I also got an opportunity to experience something new in my professional field, the details of which may find a place in my next post, because I just started working on it yesterday.

So, while this post is dedicated to some pretty nice experiences regarding my professional life I came across in the last couple of weeks, I do wish that my learning process goes on.

More on my life and the latest assignment I have handling to come in the posts to come.

Sayonara.

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An Evening with Punjabi Virsa!!

Hi Friends!!

I hope you all have been fine. Being late in updating my blog is getting common but keeping my schedule in mind, I try my best to update it as and when possible. However, this time was an exception and my busy schedule was not a reason for non-updation of the blog for 3 weeks. It was more a majboori this time, as my PC was under repairs for around 2 weeks, and it got finally OK yesterday.

Anyways, even though blogging after a long time, nothing really special went through my life except my brother's birthday and yeah, my new phone. My brother was here on vacation to celebrate his birthday @ home and well, we had a small dinner outing a day after with a couple of his friends. Well, his vacation also helped me a bit for the fact that my PC was getting repaired all these days and I used to use his laptop to check out my mails, though I had to postpone replying to them. May be it was a blessing in disguise, that my PC had some problems in that time only. :P

Barring the usual busy weeks and relaxing sundays not mentioning that weekly feature films, I would like to share the two weekend evenings spent by me with you all which really brought me more closer to the rich and diverse Punjabi culture. Last Sunday, firstly, it was party time and we college friends had gathered for a small party, more importantly a get-together party, as it was first time we were meeting after our college ended. It was fun and well, the meet once again reminded us that the college has ended. Anyways, the evening had more for me. After the party, I got informed that my family had gone to see a play 'B.A. Pass' written by the renowned Punjabi Novel Writer S. Nanak Singh and I had to join them. Though I got a bit late inr eaching the venue and the play had already started, I enjoyed watching every bit of it. The play was regarding a B.A. Pass student, who was made to study by his father by facing hard times in life and getting loans from other people for his studies, in a hope that he would support his father and family in his old age. However, the boy, on becoming graduate, feels like getting imprisoned staying in village, just because he is a graduate now. (Being a graduate was a luxury in those times, remember the play was written in 1952). He finally leaves his home and hurts his father's emotions. However, with a degree in hand, but no practical experience/training with him, he finds it difficult to earn his living and finally realises what wrong he has done and finally gets back to his village and home. I may not be able to convey the same emotions I felt like while watching the play, the play surely conveyed a lot more. I also plan to make a reading of the novel, though don't know if that would take an actual shape. At the same time, I also felt a bit happy on the fact that I am doing a course which not only imparts me theoretical training but also helps me equip with practical experiences. :D

And well, this Sunday, or I should say today, I have just returned from being a part of a cultural evening out here , primarily meant to celebrate a typical Punjabi festival 'Teeyan'. It is basically a time of joy for punjabi women where they enjoy swings in the rains (in the month of Saawan). It was a nice cultural program and renowned punjabi folk singer Gurmeet Bawa was also present there. She still sounds too good and unfuses a lot of power into her voice and singing, even though being in 60's of her life. I personally enjoyed being there a lot.

While I am writing this post, I am also sensing that this might have been my last free Sunday for the next 4-5 weeks as we may have to work overtime in office incuding Sundays to complete the audit work by the due dates i.e. September 30.

I also request Rain God to bless our city with some rains through my blog. Rabba Rabba Meenh Varsa. We are really finding it hard to have some downpour in our city. I don't know where Mr. Monsoon is hiding out here.

And yes, before I end up with my post, I wish all of you, a very very Happy Ganesh Chaturthi and Happy Ramzan.

Good Night Friends. It's been a nice day today with a lovely ending.

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Busy Days are Over or Back Again??

Hi Friends!!
Its again been a week or so since our last interaction. The days gone by were a kind of mixed experience for me altogether.

First of all, what kept me busy in the last week was the returns rush in the office, July 31st being the last day for filing of returns for non-corporate & non-audit assessees. Preparing lot of returns in the office while getting lesser lunch break in between at the office turned out to be fun for us as we would turn on our PC's speakers with a lowest possible, yet listenable, voice. :-) In our quest for breaking the monotony of our tasks, I came across a really kool collection of instrumentals on the net. The instrumental collection is among the top played items now in Winamp at my office PC. :)

Now, I suppose, you all must be thinking that why have I chosen such a title since July 31st has already passed away. So, let me clarify on that please first. September 30th is the due date for getting tax audits done by the income tax assessees, so while the current time-bound tasks at hand were successfully accomplished, I can reasonably expect more busy times in the days to come, and as far as I know our different client's accoutants, they all would be coming to our office after Independence Day. So, busy days seem just a week away. Still, I hope I would enjoy those busy times as this time, I seem to fairly understand the audit processes and further, I don't have my exams in November this year to steal my enjoyment from the work, just like what happened last year.

In the last few posts, I have always written over the hot and humid weather over here these days, but my Monsoon tale from the last post seems to continue. Monsoons still don't seem sure enough to pour over here and that leaves us with a sweaty weather.

More fun was waiting for me this week as I had a kind of a relaxing sunday with a small dinner outing in the later half of the day. More enjoyment was there for me this Sunday as I got to watch some pretty nice movies : Luv Aajkal - movie with pretty nice music and I really wanted to watch it and moreover it was one from Imtiaz Ali, Fashion - a movie I can watch anytime and any number of times, PC rox and lastly, it was Saajan - again a great movie with too good songs and yeah, not to forget the weekly feature film Jab We Met. :-) Luv Aajkal turned good fun to watch as Saif & Deepika have done a reasonably good job in the movie. Lot more could have been expected from 'Jab We Met' Director and he didn't really put down the high expectations from him. Music is nice and I would recommend you to listen 'Ye Doorian' and 'Ajj Din Chadheya' songs from the movie. For the other two movies, I don't think I need to make a review of them.

It was a week of days to celebrate with Friendship Day and Raksha Bandhan coming in it, so had lots of meetha to eat this week. But one thought which I definitely would like to share with you all regarding Friendship Day is that do we need a seperate day to show our friends that we care for them. Even though I too sent all my friends the wishes for the day but still, I don't really go with the idea of Friendship Day and for all the supporters of the day, can you please answer the question that do friends get less special on the rest of the days of the year? I had also started tweeting a while ago but the day I joined, I already knew I can't be glued to it for a longer time and well, it turned true and its already 10 days since my last tweet.

Well, besides all the things I've shared with you all right now, one of the most undesirable things once again happened and my PC Operating System once again crashed. So, I ended up installing it once again 2nd Sunday in a row, though the Mission OS didn't prove to be successful as I eventually figured out that my PC was infected with a virus and I needed to format the whole drive. So, these days, am busy arranging for my disk's backup. That has also kept me away from updating my blog.

That's it for now from Simardeep Singh.

Would be back soon.

Sayonara. God bless.

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A Long Wait for the Monsoon Finally Ends!! It Seems Like That :P

Hi All!!
Once again, ut has been a long time since our last interaction but it has really been pretty busy time for me, for the office work due to Income Tax Returns has been keeping me quite busy. And I expect a couple of more busy days as the due date of filing of Income Tax Returns for non-audit assessees is approaching. As it had been quite a time, I just managed to find (I should say 'steal') some time to update my blog. I am using the word 'steal' as I am still having some returns in hand to preapre.
 
Finally, the monsoon has arrived into our state and the temperatures are showing a downslide, though I still don't know that a rain of couple of days can be termed as 'The Arrival of Monsoon.' A meteorological can better do that job for me. Whatever we term that into, I am still enjoying the pouring raindrops and the cool breeze.
 
It has been quite a good time for me in the meanwhile. As I shared with you all in my last post, I went for a small vacation for 2 days to my nanke (Mom's maternal home) along with my mother. It was a great 2-day leave from the office and a good enjoyable time for me out there. Plus, it served as a deviation from my daily routine and hectic schedule.
 
Further, in the weekend, I happened to watch a play 'Kuch Baatein... aur Tuchh Raatein" in the city. I got the invitation by virtue of one of my friends who was a part of the acting team. :) My brother was also on weekend tour to home and we went to watch the play for celebrating our weekend. The play was nice and it managed to touch some sensitive issues in the society with great dialogues.
 
And well, one of the reasons mainly contributing to not letting me update my blog for around 2 weeks was that my computer was annoyed with me and hence, the windows refused to start up. :( I had to wait for a free Sunday to repair my PC Operating System as weekdays don't leave me with much free time to do that. What more to ask for, the day came and I formatted my PC and while I was reinstalling Windows on my PC, I just could not get the Windows XP Serial Key. A number of calls and SMSs to friends finally helped me get the serial key after an hour or so. But at last, my computer is once again fine now.
 
Friends, I suppose I should sign off from here now and get back to work.
Sayonara. God Bless.

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Where's Monsoon?? Nothing Official About It!!

Hi Friends!!

I have been writing most of my posts on a Sunday but this time, its a day earlier, a happy reason for it and a reason to cheer about. I am going on a small 2 day vacation to my Mamaji's house in Ludhiana. If you are thinking that a 2-day vacation is bit short, ya it is but I could not have afforded a longer holiday from office, nor could I have had a holiday later this month or in the months to come due to audits coming up till September. So, just thought to write this week's brief before I leave tomorrow morning.

The week started off its Day 1 with the India's Finance Budget and well, now when we understand some provisions of the Income Tax Act and other tax statutes, it was a good experience to interpret the Finance Minister's speech to know what changes he actually meant. For me, it is a good budget in a bad world economy. Moreover, it got some good and some not so good changes which we have been reading the whole week to decipher what Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, our FM has tried to enact.

The week gone has been pretty much relaxed at the office while I completed most of the tasks in hand comfortably. It got a bit tensing for me when one of the important documents got punched by me into the wrong file and I had a bad day searching for it all day. No good luck there and I had to recreate that whole document. :( It took me a whole long day.

But the most important thing not happening this week has been the rains and the monsoons. Indian Meteorological Dept has been saying that monsoon has spread all over the country but if they happen to read this post, can they post something official on it? Monsoons seem nowhere in Punjab, particularly Amritsar and that's why I chose the title for this post. There's nothing official about it. But still a hope, monsoons will come soon.

And frenz, got to catch a train at 7 morning. So, have to get up a bit early.

Good Night!! God Bless!! :-z

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A Busy Yet So Relaxing Week!!

Hi All!!

I could not find any better title than this one as it really depicts the week gone by for me. Busy because of my daily schedule. 6 hours at office and a couple of hours in classes not including a couple of hours spent waiting for the classes to start though.

I would still term the week as a relaxing one, the primary reason being it gave a bit of relief from the heat wave in the city through the pre-monsoon rains, though we are still waiting for some more rain since that day, even when the meteorological scientists say that monsoon has already spread over the country - I don't think so.

It was after a pretty long time that I watched some new movies after stealing time for it. I followed Winston Churchil's quote for it, "If you don't have night in the day, steal it from night." :-)

New York movie starring John Abraham, Katrina Kaif & Neil Nitin Mukesh was good, a great one in fact for me. I liked the story line, though I would have preferred Katrina not dying and marrying Neil in the climax. John particularly has done a great job, not ignoring Katrina & Neil's performances but after the movie, I have a question for Mr. Irfan Khan, "Why does he always end up in a role interrogating someone, first in Slumdog and now in New York?" ;-P

Second one I watched in the week was Kambakht Ishq. The story line was not good, but Akshay and Kareena manage to give me some entertainment. I give New York higher ratings than Kambakht Ishq for sure, both for the story line as well as the music. 

Right now, I am watching IIFA Awards and well, it has been a good show so far watching so many nice performances and nice comparing by Lara Dutta, Riteish Deshmukh & Boman Irani. The award show seems to be finishing up as the Best Director award has already been announced and am planning to fly off to my land of dreams after then. 

Sayonara :-z

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