The Peak

In general, the best time to spot an auditor is during the so-called Audit Season which runs from January to April. Auditors with their distinctive pin-stripe plumage will be present in large numbers in all major offices, factories and places of work. If you think you have seen an auditor, approach with caution. Avoid making eye contact, as this may be viewed as antagonistic. Should the auditor begin to behave aggressively towards you, asking what proportion of your contingent liabilities you consider probable, the best advice is to shout "Enron!" and run very fast in the opposite direction. This will make the auditor in question shrivel up and die. (Retrieved from "http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Auditor")

Well well, it's now the peakest period in audit firms... In Viet Nam, the reporting deadlines for most companies falls on 31 March. I haven't been blogging much lately tho there are much I wan to say about life here.

Audit packs have their own dens, known as home offices. The pack visits the office on average once a month, in order to refuel on stationery. Auditors can survive several days and nights without water, sex or sunlight but are liable to fall seriously ill if deprived of paper clips and yellow post-its.

I wake up at approximately 7 am daily... take a hot shower. This hot shower keeps me awake for the morning. I put on my jacket, scarf and a full face helmet and leave the house with Bryan on his bike at 7.45 am. I enjoy the morning air... but not the horns and traffic we have to go through. I still get 'heart attacks' on the way. I wonder I will ever ride a bike here.

.. reach the office at about 8am.. gather my team... and we head on to client's office by taxi. As most of my clients are manufacturing companies, they are mostly at industrial zones or provinces. Unlike in Msia, they serve us lunch here. Some good, some eatable, some makes u hungry by 3pm. At my current client, well, I have to say the food sucks... On the 2nd day, all of us brought biscuits, chips, sausages and made sure we ate breakfast for the day.

Unlike Msia as well, it is the practice of the staffs to leave the clients premise at 5pm. I like this practice. I get tired by 5pm and time for a break, have some chats before finishing what I have to finish. I have to say, some of my junior staffs have been very helpful and smart as well. I've learnt a lot of Vietnamese from them and more to come I hope. The A1s I work with have been good and I appreciate the help that they offer voluntarily. Tho communicating in English may not be as fluent, I learnt to be patient and understanding. (But today, man I wanted to ask my intern to just shutup and listen to me... this doesnt happen all the time la... but sometimes yea.. i do get fethup as well... sometimes I turn to my A1s and say... 'can you pls help me to explain to her'... and I leave the spot to get some fresh air... sometimes i'd just say...'ok ok .. em hieu (i understand)... no need to continue, I'll do it myself''...) There have been good helpful people as well as people who are irresponsible and doesn't give a damn on what they produce. I thank God that most of my team members have been nice to work with... even the bad ones... I enjoyed playing blackjack with one very irresponsible staff of mine... ahha... after working with me on 3 jobs, he finally resigned! haha.

The peak season here has been tiring as in KL... leaving my house at 7am and reaching home at 11pm... going back to office on both Saturdays and Sundays. One client each week... different location each week...it's tiring to manage... Next week, I'll be going to Hai Duong province, about an hour drive away from Ha Noi, for 2 weeks on 2 different clients... It has basically nothing there. The last time we were there, for the whole week, we went from the clients office and back to the hotel and back to clients the next day and it goes on for a week. And that's when we started to play blackjack... ahaha.

The culture here is rather people oriented compared to KL. You feel that the partners and directors do care about the employees. We have staff parties quite often and recently my director treated us for a karaoke session for us to destress during the peak period. She even went along with us. The partners and directors take turns to stay up till 10pm to make sure that staffs are not over worked unncessarily.

ok... its 1am now... i'll continue nx time... :) till then... oh yea.. the weather has been better these days.. not so cold as the previous weeks... it was like 6 degrees before and after CNY... its now about averagely 15 - 18 degrees.

Brian, me and Dennis taking a break on the roof top of our office building on a Sunday afternoon...