wahlau's online hut

one reason i need to get back to Malaysia this round, is to get my malaysian passport renewed. It was not really a process everyone would like to go through here in Malaysia, since it was pretty troublesome and expensive last i did it 5 years ago. You need to queue up long b4 8am, and get your forms ready, and wait there for hours b4 you need to wait for a week or two til you finally have a passport to travel. It is a normal process after all, and i think most of us here were used to this sort of process all this while.

this round i went to the immigration the next day after touched down in Malaysia. Normally i should be there 7am to do the usual things i did 5 years ago, but i woke up late (blame it on the jet lag ) and am only there around 1030am. Guess what? filing up forms were easy (only Rm1 for the form) and upon submitting i got a number requiring me to come back in the afternoon to process my application.

being me, i fully utilized my time and went to Taman Melawati with Kiawin to pick up his new handphone.  Result? i got back to the immigration office late. now now, just 30 minutes late and i am already 16 person late. Now i think that is real efficiency. so went to counter, and got a new number - 25 persons later, pfft!

waiting can only be a small punishment for being late. Nevertheless, it only took around 1.5 hours b4 it was my turn. And after submitting my form, i made my payment within another 30 minutes. All i needed to do now is to wait for the completion of my new passport. And guess when i should pick it up? 2pm the next day!

This improvement is something positive. Some processes are usually non-complicated and should not take weeks. So getting passport in 24 hours is really great improvement, since processing such application should not be so complicated that weeks are needed.

TzeYing and i also renewed our driving license the next day before i went to pick up my passport, and we got it done within 10 minutes. TzeYing was pretty impressed with the simplicity and speed, since our impression of such procedures were not really that positive all the while.

Kudos to the move to computerize and centralize citizen database and improvement made for faster and more efficient processes. Despite all the different issues that took place in Malaysia in 2005, i think Malaysia is still moving on well.