Saturday, June 04, 2005
A Break From The Old Routine
I spent yesterday in London (as, oddly, I also did on the first Friday of June last year) on a course learning about UK life insurance company taxation. And about time too
I've got a sneaking suspicion that nobody truly understands everything about UK life office tax - one of my friends has several times said that learning more about tax only gives you the ability to bluff more people that you understand it. I've never fully got why some of the rules are the way they are, and I was possibly put off from finding out earlier in my career by having to sit next to someone who, while being touted as one of our auditors' top tax experts, laughed frequently and loudly like a hyena, and sounded like a 5-year-old when speaking.
Still, the course was very helpful. I now feel that, while I still don't understand quite a bit about tax, I don't understand it to a much lesser extent than I didn't two days ago.
I also saw Badfriend, and stayed over at his place in the unappealingly-named Isle of Dogs, which really ought to rebrand itself, as the parts I saw (the ones where I could expect to come out alive to tell this story, at least) were pretty decent.
Despite some initial confusion over exactly where Canary Wharf was (on his part, not mine!), we met up and, after advising a woefully-lost person that she was miles away from Heathrow, went out for a very good Thai meal. Badfriend's main course appeared to have been cooked by the same person who invented those candles you get on birthday cakes that won't blow out. Then off into Greenwich, after running across the pitch of a Tunnelball game (all the rage nowadays), and wondering exactly what health and safety issues might be caused by flash photography in an underground environment. A brief but eventful (drinking a J20 imitation, getting frisked for a knife going into Wetherspoon's, having to wait for about 5 minutes while someone ordered 5 Aftershocks (of mixed colours, due to them running out of blue halfway through the order), 2 tequilas, 3 Remy Martin and cokes, an Archers peach schnapps and half a Kronenbourg, and finally being told it was past closing by an apparently lazy barmaid, who, 2 minutes later, rang the last orders bell) pub crawl then ensued.
As well as the bloke on the Tube who was telling his girlfriend about his friend who'd recently suffered from diarrhoea to the extent that he'd had to strip and change his underwear while at the pub last week, there were the usual odd people on the train back up to York.
There was an old lady who wouldn't shut up talking to a student, who'd just arrived back from a year in Nepal, about her son who'd also travelled to all sorts of exciting places all over the world, like Rome, Paris and even Stockholm.
Then there was the young lady who sat next to me, with an accent so incredibly public-school you could have cut diamond with it - first thing she did was ring her dad ("Hello, Daddy!") to ask if he'd managed to find the artwork she'd asked him to look for ("From Salvatore di Modena. No, Daddy, I texted you the spelling. What type of art is it that you've got me then? No, silly, what period? Well is it Renaissance, Impressionist, Dutch School? No, that's not the one I wanted - he was painting in the 14th century. OK, thanks for trying anyway, Daddy"). She also rang her friend, apparently trying to set up a date with one of their friends - "I was most partial to the company of that delightful young man who came out with us last week. I enjoyed the conversation we had greatly. Let's invite him round for tea this weekend. Oh, he doesn't have a mobile phone? That's most disappointing. Perhaps we could arrange it for some other time then."
And finally there was the guy who kept asking everyone if they had a Nokia mobile phone charger he could borrow. I don't think he found one in the end.
I've got a sneaking suspicion that nobody truly understands everything about UK life office tax - one of my friends has several times said that learning more about tax only gives you the ability to bluff more people that you understand it. I've never fully got why some of the rules are the way they are, and I was possibly put off from finding out earlier in my career by having to sit next to someone who, while being touted as one of our auditors' top tax experts, laughed frequently and loudly like a hyena, and sounded like a 5-year-old when speaking.
Still, the course was very helpful. I now feel that, while I still don't understand quite a bit about tax, I don't understand it to a much lesser extent than I didn't two days ago.
I also saw Badfriend, and stayed over at his place in the unappealingly-named Isle of Dogs, which really ought to rebrand itself, as the parts I saw (the ones where I could expect to come out alive to tell this story, at least) were pretty decent.
Despite some initial confusion over exactly where Canary Wharf was (on his part, not mine!), we met up and, after advising a woefully-lost person that she was miles away from Heathrow, went out for a very good Thai meal. Badfriend's main course appeared to have been cooked by the same person who invented those candles you get on birthday cakes that won't blow out. Then off into Greenwich, after running across the pitch of a Tunnelball game (all the rage nowadays), and wondering exactly what health and safety issues might be caused by flash photography in an underground environment. A brief but eventful (drinking a J20 imitation, getting frisked for a knife going into Wetherspoon's, having to wait for about 5 minutes while someone ordered 5 Aftershocks (of mixed colours, due to them running out of blue halfway through the order), 2 tequilas, 3 Remy Martin and cokes, an Archers peach schnapps and half a Kronenbourg, and finally being told it was past closing by an apparently lazy barmaid, who, 2 minutes later, rang the last orders bell) pub crawl then ensued.
As well as the bloke on the Tube who was telling his girlfriend about his friend who'd recently suffered from diarrhoea to the extent that he'd had to strip and change his underwear while at the pub last week, there were the usual odd people on the train back up to York.
There was an old lady who wouldn't shut up talking to a student, who'd just arrived back from a year in Nepal, about her son who'd also travelled to all sorts of exciting places all over the world, like Rome, Paris and even Stockholm.
Then there was the young lady who sat next to me, with an accent so incredibly public-school you could have cut diamond with it - first thing she did was ring her dad ("Hello, Daddy!") to ask if he'd managed to find the artwork she'd asked him to look for ("From Salvatore di Modena. No, Daddy, I texted you the spelling. What type of art is it that you've got me then? No, silly, what period? Well is it Renaissance, Impressionist, Dutch School? No, that's not the one I wanted - he was painting in the 14th century. OK, thanks for trying anyway, Daddy"). She also rang her friend, apparently trying to set up a date with one of their friends - "I was most partial to the company of that delightful young man who came out with us last week. I enjoyed the conversation we had greatly. Let's invite him round for tea this weekend. Oh, he doesn't have a mobile phone? That's most disappointing. Perhaps we could arrange it for some other time then."
And finally there was the guy who kept asking everyone if they had a Nokia mobile phone charger he could borrow. I don't think he found one in the end.
posted by Chip : 18:18
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