Atrocious Tuesday


Hi Friends! I hope you all had a great Tuesday, but obviously I didn't. It was pretty terrible. It wasn't because it was the last day of vacation for me, but it was because I went to renew my passport in the morning.

I reached the Immigration Department at about 9am, and there were hundreds of people there. What in the world? Don't these people have to work??? I guess they are like me, still off on this day.

ANYWAYS... here's the stressful and frustrating part of my "beautiful" Tuesday.

I started by queuing at Counter One, since that is the place I went last time, the previous time I renewed my passport almost 5 years ago. It wasn't expired yet, the actual date is Oct 13, 2009 but since I had time, I thought of doing it earlier, since I will need to renew it anyway before going to the States.

Ok, so it took about 30 minutes before the queue was cleared and I told the officer that I wanted to renew my passport. He said I didn't have to queue here, but there is a kiosk at the end of the hall that can renew your passport.

Great! So I happily went to that kiosk and voila... the queue was horrendous, all because of? There's only one machine. It's AMAZING! The kiosk is supposed to make things faster, but they only had one of it.

Nevermind... patience, I told myself. I joined the queue at 9:37am.

Have you ever been in a queue that hardly seemed to move? Well, that's what happened to me. It hardly seemed to move. Thank God no one fainted. And guess what time was it when I reached the machine? Close to 12 noon.

BRAVO? Wait... so I took out my ID and passport and slotted both into the machine, and the most miraculous thing happened!!!












The machine can't read either my passport or my ID.

The people behind me were saying, "Poor thing" for a good reason, because they were in that horrible queue too, and then, for me, it was for nothing.

The officer next to the machine said, "You have to go to Counter One to renew your passport."

That's it? Not even a sorry? Sigh... amazing people...

Ok, so I thought I already came this far, so I might as well go back to Counter One to do this.

And LO AND BEHOLD, a long queue at Counter One. It must had been at least an hour before I reached the same officer again.

After explaining to him my predicament, he just passed me a form, and said, "One ringgit, and pass it back to me when you had filled it up."

That's it? Not even a sympathetic word, or sorry? What's wrong with these people? And not a single offer of giving me an express service, to compensate me for all the lost time.

So I went somewhere to fill up the form, and perhaps because the Immigration Department didn't get sufficient allocation from the government, they didn't provide any pen, so I had to purchase it at the nearby store. RM1.20 for a very ordinary pen that only costs 40 sen in the supermarket. Great! I think they really needed the money.

After filling it, I went back to Counter One, and tell me why I should be surprised to see another long queue? Hmmm... and it took another hour or so before I reached him.

He checked it, and passed me a queue ticket.

The lucky number on it was 1217. And they are currently serving 1092. If you do your maths, (sorry I can't, because my mind refused to cooperate) that's NOT many people ahead of me, right? Please tell me I am right???

I was having quite a headache at that moment, due to the queuing and amazing service they are providing. So I decided to head back home first, and then come back to do it. Even if they are so efficient that it takes only ONE MINUTE to process each application, it will still take more than an hour to reach me. And what if they took TWO MINUTES OR MORE for each applicant? Sigh...

When I reached home at about 3 something, my head was throwing a rock concert on its own without my consent. I couldn't stop it, so I took a nap. And after an hour, I woke up with the pain still there. I contemplated going back to that hellish place again, but I just couldn't motivate myself enough to even get up from the bed. Who knows maybe they DID become very efficient, and probably missed my number already... and then what? Queue again?


THAT'S IT. ENOUGH. GAME OVER.

ZZZZZZZZZZ......