It's that time of the year again, and this time, it's not as pleasant. Filing tax returns is already an unrewarding task, and to do it when you know you're not only not getting something back, but you still have to give, is like asking you to sharpen a blade and then consciously poke it right into your heart. Yup, heart pain... but I guess it's a bitter pill to swallow. Was wondering what I could do with an extra 1+ grand... I think this is totally unlike credit card bills where you pay for what you get. You don't get anything when you pay to the govt! Grrr... oh well... It doesn't make much sense to me when you're taxed on gains on your prior losses. Granted, you may be able to deduct capital losses on the prior years' returns, but the standard deductibles may have shadowed that returns from losses. On the other hand, when you finally gain as the market gets better, you have to pay the entire tax for it. That means if you start with $2k investment, you lose 1k last year, but gain 1k back this year. Effectively, because of the standard deductibles, you only get back 1.6k on a 40% tax rate! Oh well, I shall not open this can of worms. But this bitter pill is really distasteful! :( Fortunately, someone helped force it down my throat, so at least the bitterness will go away earlier... with some scoops of honey =)

But what I feel most bad about is all the troubles I had put my bro and my future sis-in-law through. Time spent on traveling and in the end, I chose to use the online version instead, because the quote is a little less. It's all because I was at loss, and because of my indecision, and my slow resignation to the distasteful fact that came without warning. After all, it's my first time having to pay owed tax, instead of getting back any returns, but this first time, seems to be a little too huge to be palatable. That's pretty much 1 mth of my savings gone into fumes.

Oh well. I guess now I know the system a little better. It's just no fun. But I guess, it's really time to go home.

On another note, responsibilities at work have taken on a very different nature and have been a little bothersome. I'm still not sure how I can handle that. Doing it, gives me the usual feeling of learning something totally new for the first time, which isn't bad. I know given sufficient time, I'll get the hang of it. But the question is, am I really up to the task, a task, which I think is incompatible with my current experience? After all, I don't think I'm paid enough for it anyway. Dealing with people, is much harder than dealing with computer code. Oh well, there's much things to be said when you have to deal with people, and I guess I'm kinda stressed by that, especially now that I'm slowly pushed out of my comfort zone which I havent really got warm in it!

Or maybe, the stress comes from my project lead, who's a really intelligent person, thinks really fast, a good orator and has an exceptional ability to multi-task totalyl different things. And I guess the stress comes from having to take over part of his roles because he's being transferred to my old team. Even that thought of taking over stresses me out. Oh well... I only hope I am half as good as he is.