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This image pretty much summarizes the last two or three weeks. It's been a wild a joyful blur. Between supervising ICAO low-income tax clinics, hitting multiple deadlines with aplomb and celebrating Canada's Gold, there's barely enough time to go skiing. Last chance for me is likely today. The one big downside I have to admit is that it's not exactly easy to just disappear in the middle of the week to go replicate the feats of snow sports excellence we got to enjoy last month. Unless you plan for a winter vacation. Maybe next year. When I see a car perfectly painted the colours of our great land, I wonder, "did they specifically pick those colours knowing one day they'd be parading up and down Yonge St. after a stunningly perfect Canadian hockey victory?"
One of the many fun things about travelling around the world is finding out the rather different way people do common tasks. Surprises abound, even with something as prosaic as saying "Back in 5 Minutes." At least, that's what I assume this meant in a Chinese mall. Similarly, the sales staff embrace different sales tactics, particularly depending on where you find yourself. There were three examples which stood out. Hard ball haggling At most markets and stores were haggling can happen, it's traditional for salespeople to lower their last price if you're walking away after a bit of haggling. How odd to have the staff who will play hardball. You try and get a better price, but they don't want to budge. So you leave - and they call after you twice, each time saying, "no, I'm not lowering the price any lower." Sure, well thanks. Your sales pitch adds nothing to the conversation, bye. You walk away a third time only to get called again. "Ok, fine...
Is triggered by Junior Deputy Accountant, who seemed to enjoy my Bernanke photo - awesome . I've just returned from a three week adventure in Hong Kong, including trips to mainland China and Macau, which explains why I've been so quiet lately. As usual, I took tons of photos which tell the stories better than I could in most cases - I mean, how else can you explain Crispy Whitebait to someone? Perhaps I should've actually bought it but I didn't really feel like eating chips that day. I did write a bit of a micro-journal documenting my observations since I didn't feel like dragging my laptop along with me when I crossed the border. China's ridiculously fast transformation into some sort of capitalist-ish economy under a one-party state is obvious to anyone who sees the construction of high speed rail lines and the rapid development of formerly sleepy towns into bustling cities - I'll share more of that soon. Looking at this through the eyes of a CA which means...
As I mentioned earlier, I was slow in checking results this year as I'm far from home - but Ontario candidates can find the ICAO's UFE 2009 results on this page . [Edit - summary of all Canadian UFE 2009 results is up here. ] Congratulations to all those who passed. The ICAO has stopped disclosing the pass rates since I suppose they don't like the statistic viewed in isolation - but I never minded whether Ontario had a higher or lower rate. It's a tougher program to pass on your first shot because you get to write the exam much faster than in most other provinces - the CASB process may prepare you for a longer period of time, but if you're like me, you just want to go and write as soon as you're done the CKE and SOA. You can read details regarding the ICAO's logic on this page and you'll see that 15% more people passed than last year in Ontario. If you're really clever you can probably deduce the actual pass rate. My company did fairly well yet again...
The summer of road trip adventures and weddings continues - a week ago sending ACS to a wedding in Waterloo, with a stop on the way at Kitchener's Golden Hearth Baking Company . I've been out there many times for audits, but this weekend had nothing to do with auditing anyone, unless witnessing people get married is a form of auditing. Damnit, this work nevers escapes me. Oh well, at least we make it fun. And delicious, as I explain below. Although the wedding was a fun way to fill up on said deliciousness, it only lasted one night, so I loaded up on some of the wonderful baked goods for Sunday by stopping there on the way. Read a little about them, courtesy of their own website : "They have been at it ever since. The bakery makes everything from scratch including the croissants. They use only the finest quality local and organic ingredients. They do not use preservatives or artificial ingredients. They bake the old fashioned way with butter, fresh milled flour, farm eggs...
I'm finally back from vacation while city staff continue to clean up after their labour action . Posting was sporadic lately due to real life intruding, and the next week is going to be quite busy. In AuditLand the current crop of interns are going to be winding down their summer terms and the brave crop of 2009 fall hires will be showing up in an accounting firm office near you in a matter of mere weeks. Enjoy summer while you can, and dodge the spam - last month's count was 437 which tells me that either the filters are getting better, or I wasn't the only person both on holiday and too usy to write .
Hot on the heels of my discussion of when people choose to leave , comes news from LYF - he has resigned from his current firm and has done so with style . Go read all about it . It's a very good breakdown explaining how to pick the timing, how to plan the departure - starting 4 months in advance is advised, and factors to keep in mind, including the potential requirement to pay back exam fees the firm may have paid on your behalf. I like the idea pointed out to get the new employer to cover such fees for you, along with a smart breakdown on how to share the news. And I most of all like how it allows him to enjoy a summer-long vacation. Well played, and good luck at your next job and during the summer adventures!
If you want to avoid paying peak summer prices at popular destinations, May is a great time to travel. And although I thought I was going to follow up by saying, "and yet this year I didn't," that's obviously not true. Couple the well timed vacation with an early start to my busy season - yes, while the personal tax people are ready to take a break, I'm getting busy - and I new posts fell on hold. So thank you to the student who wrote to ask me a few good questions, including the following: If you leave your CA firm to work in industry, when is the best time to jump ship? I've heard people say "as soon as you have your hours and can use your CA," to "as high as stick around until you're a manager." I like questions like this because they're easy to answer and are also popular fodder for discussion. You'll find your dream job, somewhere. Maybe it'll even have an In-N-Out Burger location and will be outside the LAX flightpath...
Somewhere over the Rockies Someone out there must be wishing me luck. And it’s working. Flying to California for a short vacation, I tried to do online check-in only to find that the website declared this sort of thing forbidden. Perhaps due to the fact I was using frequent flier points - or, more likely - it could've been because of my connection on an American partner airline - I would have to check in at the airport. Okay, fair enough. Arriving at the airport the check-in computer reported a rather full plane - the only empty seats were singles, and my row was full with three people. Oh nuts. Well someone must’ve decided they’re scared of H1N1 - or perhaps they just moved to another spot on the plane.Whatever the reason, I found myself enjoying one and a half seats. I can easily fit in one, but it’s nice to stretch your legs laterally. Of course, me being me, I somehow crashed the in-flight entertainment system. I guess the system does a soft reboot while it’s on the ground. Before...
Ah, the American dollar. Speaking ill of it, will, in some circles, earn you a sterner response than outright blasphemy against Jesus. Or maybe it's because the banks arguably own the government . Americans are sensitive about their currency, which should be yet another obvious revelation to anyone paying attention to the ennui gripping the US as the federal deficit climbs to ever-greater levels . The observation arose not while studying a macroeconomic treatise, but while sorting out a pile of coins: I'm taking a short trip to the US today and after my last adventure in March, I'm taking a lesson to heart: you don't mess with their money. In Canada we treat coins from Canada or the US at par. The 10-20% difference in currencies is so minor, in Canada only the greatest scold would care where your penny, dime or nickel came from. The line is often drawn at quarters, as vending machines usually reject the foreign coin, but up to ten cents, it's generally fair game. Not...
Well Happy Easter to older CAs and everyone else for that matter. One could come up with some clever analogy about rebirth, and emerging from the tomb of busy season too, but that's a bit too trite. Hopefully you get to enjoy the weekend with family and have time to celebrate the Resurrection; T1s and other rituals for the taxman that can wait until later. Though if you're paying American taxes the three business days remaning until the deadline are nothing to laugh at - good luck.
KPMG UK made headlines today by announcing it's offering - encouraging? - it's staff to either take a 4-day week or 4 to 12 weeks off at 30% pay - a semi-paid-leave-of-absence. Interestingly, even some top partners are offering to lead by example, including the head of the Bristol UK office . This follows the mandatory vacation that KPMG Canada staff had to take during the past Christmas break. A move like that is extremely important if the firm is serious about this policy for all staff but wants to stave off the idea that Damian Wild suggests , that taking the offer could be a career limiting move. It's definitely true that you need top as well as other senior and middle management to demonstrate that the company is serious about its policy, whatever they're trying to accomplish. In less drastic scenarios, this is also true in the case of flexible work arrangements - either in the case of ultra-temporary working from home arrangements, to actual 60%/80% workloads. If...
Layoffs are a popular topic - whether you're at KPMG, Deloitte, E&Y or PwC, or any of the other smaller regional or local CA firms, you want to know whether your job is safe. Although some firms are improving communications with their employees, in many cases people often don't know what's going on until the last minute - so Francine's blog serves as, among other things, a clearing house for news, primarily for the USA. In Canada layoffs have been creeping up everywhere, as the recession takes hold, but at a slower pace and lower overall rate than in the US, similar to how the recession has been relatively less severe, so far. Whether your job is safe depends much on who your firm audits, and whether you have lost clients in the area that you're working in - and I mean that both in the sense of local city, and industry specialization as well. If your client ceased to exist due to bankruptcy or buyouts, hopefully you can pull of a transfer to a more successful arm...
I'm on vacation at the moment, so is technically nothing I do at this time actually a real act of procrastination? According to this video, no, it still can be. And that's okay - thanks Videosift.
Seriously - check this site out - many more examples there. The above is from that site. It's the lolcatz meme applied to the financial meltdown. Nice. It reminds me of the lolcactus I saw on vacation a year ago in Europe. I knew I would upload it one day. The cactus doesn't make the market tragedy hilarious, of course, but I might as well share it now rather than later.
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