Keyboards

I surrender, I give in, I give up.
Microsoft wins.
I can no longer tolerate having to constantly change the fracken keyboard setting because Microsoft Vista cannot understand that just because I speak English English, as opposed to American English, that I do still us a US keyboard, and not what Microsoft seems to think is an English keyboard - which Microsoft is adamant has the '@' and '"' signs transposed, so my email addresses always turn out someone"somewhere.
So I have turned the language back to US English since that is the ONLY way to get Vista to keep the keyboard setting as 'US'. Seriously, if my language is set to English (UK, Australian, or Singaporean) the keyboard reading goes stupid. Thank you morons at Redmond. Now I will have to constantly be resetting the dictionary when I use Word.

ACCA v CPA

Google it, see what you get.
I get either English people considering their options 'cos they are moving to Australia, Asian students chatting amongst themselves with no idea of the facts, or USers not understanding how the world works outside their own small universe.

I have been pondering it for a few days and have come to some conclusions.

1) ACCA is a British organisation. Yeah, I know, they 'claim' to be the biggest international accounting association, but that is because they are the only one that accepts international membership per se. ACCA is not recognised anywhere but Britain, if you come to Australia then you will have to join either CPA Australia or ICA Australia. The latter has a relationship with ACCA but is less than half the size of CPA Australia.

2) ACCA offers no real benefits for me vis-a-vis working in the Orient. CPA Australia has a joint membership arrangement with CPA Singapore, and the legislatively mandated body in both Singapore and Hong Kong is called 'CPA'.

3) The total world membership of ACCA is less than the combined memberships of CPA Australia and ICA Australia, so they aren't that big after all.

All of which totals up to ACCA being an irrelevance.

With regards to the snob value. There is a tradition in Australia of CAs thinking that they are better than CPAs. It is based on their requirement for one or two extra subjects when studying, so it limits your choice of electives in your degree, but other than that, no diff. In my experience, having had to clean up after both for twenty years, I find them, in the main, equally incompetent.

ACCA also requires one more subject; the MPA I am doing qualifies for both CPA and CA, but not for ACCA - for that I need to do advanced management accounting. Now given that 'management accounting' in Australia is actually not management accounting, rather it is cost accounting, and given that I do work in that area, I am considering doing that extra subject anyhow. But having done that, I then see no reason to apply for ACCA membership. As I have said, it seems irrelevant, meaningless, of no benefit.

Some of the English lecturers speak highly of it, and say that it is big in Asia, but I cannot find any proof of that, and I strongly suspect their prejudices are due to it being and English body. All I can find is that membership will work for you in Britain, but in any other country you will still need to join the local body.


It is my birthday next week, the day is sandwiched between two exams so I will be spending my birthday studying said management accounting. Not that my birthdays mean anything to me, I gave up on that back in my mid twenties.

I have postponed starting my next contract until after this exam week. They did want me to start earlier, but were having trouble with line managers all going on leave (long weekend coming) and so I pointed out that I had exams and would not mind postponing the start - my consultant at the employment agency called back within ten minutes to say the offer had been accepted.

I just got three assignments back. A distinction for one, a high distinction (well, 100%) for the other economics one, but a strangely low mark for management accounting. Even though the lecturer could only point out one error when we went through it (I did find a second later on my own), still I only got a credit.
Now why is that?


I was checking SG blogs the other day, ones that I have had bookmarked for years and used to regularly check, and noticed that several have gone quite stale, as in the authors are no longer posting. Big names in the SG blogsphere too. I guess people grow, change, and move on.

One of my best friends and his Chinese Malaysian wife and their two children will be visiting SG later this month. I was pondering flying over for a weekend whilst they are there. I have enough points in my KrisFlier account for one leg of the trip. It would be a chance to catch up with friends (my SG friends that is). Funny thing; I have more friends in SG than in AU.