Letters

While going to university can be exciting, caring for a messy home and preparing food can be quite daunting too. The teens are back from university for their December break and this is when they have finally realised that they can’t rely on living off of fast food joints and dorm food. I had a set of enthusiastic youngsters who wanted to learn how to cook and how to be more self-reliant. These youths are Apurva Sethuraman, Aakash Sethuraman, Aarti Rangarajan and Aditi Rangarajan.

This time I conducted cooking classes for the university students. Their interest and attention to details was impressive. We made burritos, mango mousse, spicy hummus, Southwestern bean salad, mushroom risotto and apple crumble. It was fun with this team @akash @aditi @aarti and @apurva. Thanks kiddos for giving me this opportunity. Good luck for the year ahead.

Founder of the Cook to Impress class

Shobha Ravishankar

Editor’s note: If interested in preparing your teens for university, contact Shobha on 39289789.

The last Friday of 2018 saw the annual Watson Salver Bogey competition, sponsored by Ismail Khonji Associates, being played by 75 members in extremely favourable conditions.

With its own unique scoring system going back to the early sixties, many players spent much of their time on the course puzzling over how many points they had or had not amassed.

Fortunately for all, the computer kept everyone right at the end of the day. Once again it was a very keenly fought contest with three players finishing with ‘4 UP’….However, as always, there can only be one winner and so taking first place on Friday was Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed Rashed, second place was James Shine and third place went to Onny Martin.

This Friday, we will kick off 2019 with the Mohammed Sharif Stableford competition.

For information regarding all competitions, or for that matter anything that is going on in the golf club, you can look online at www.awaligolfclub.com.

Philip Morrison

Bahrain Institute of Banking & Finance (BIBF), in collaboration with MMJS Tax Consultancy, recently held an awareness seminar at its premises, to ensure that companies and business owners will be ready for the implementation of the first phase of VAT for the New Year on companies with sales exceeding five million Bahraini dinars annually.

More than 50 senior executives from the kingdom’s business community attended the seminar to discuss the recently published VAT Law, its implications to Bahrain and its implementation challenges across the main economic sectors.

The main aim of the training session was to discuss all related implementation guidelines issued along with learnings from the regional VAT implementation experience, specifically form KSA and UAE.

The BIBF’s head of banking, accounting and finance, Burhanu Deen Jayah, highlighted the importance of understanding the tax laws in its implications on business processes. The training session provided practical steps companies must take in the next few days to be VAT ready in time. Lessons to be learnt were shared from the UAE and Saudi Arabian experience as well as specific actions required in the context of the Bahrain environment and system.

The BIBF is committed to educational and trainings needs in this emerging field of taxation and uses its resources to help manage the impact. In keeping with taxation training requirements, the BIBF recently launched its Tax Academy to provide knowledge, skills and Tax Management competencies by offering a flexible and comprehensive portfolio of training courses.

For further information, please contact Amal AlSorani from the BIBF Marketing & Communications Department on 17815533 or email bibfmedia@bibf.com