Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Passport Renewal Adventure Episode 1

Immigration Office Kelana Jaya: Standing Room Only

So, it's that time again --- time to renew my passport. Having had a great passport renewal experience five years ago when the Immigration Office in Damansara was still in service and when I could literally get my passport renewed in one hour from the point of putting all of my documents and payment into the machine, I was sad to learn that the Damansara office is no longer in service :(

And so, off to the Internet I went, in search of another Immigration Dept to go to. I finally settled on going to the Kelana Jaya branch since I figured that it would be convenient since it was near my office.

As Monday was the eve of Diwali, I thought that nobody would be renewing their passports. Boy, was I in for a surprise!

As it turned out, it took me TWO HOURS to get to the Kelana Jaya office as I just could not figure out how to get from one side of Kelana Jaya to the other and I kept going around in circles and burning fuel! Frustrating as it was, I decided to persevere and finally stopped at the police station in Kelana Jaya to get some directions.

It was around noon when I finally got there and guess what --- the WHOLE WORLD was there too! It was a mad house with standing room only and there was some pushing going on, I kid you not.

Many people were irritable and the male officer who was tasked with giving out the numbers had an attitude, wasn't very polite or helpful. It was hot in there (what do you expect, small space, loads of people, go figure!).

About half an hour later, there was a announcement over the PA system about them facing "technical difficulties" and that they were only going to give out numbers to applicants under 12 years of age.

Although I had already got a number by then, I decided to forget about it since it seemed like a long ordeal. I figured that I would come back (or not, as the case may be) and give it a try another day.

I went back to the office, looked up for the location of the KL office and on the way home from work, I decided to check out the location of the Immigration Dept in KL and guess what I discovered --- it's pretty near my home!!!

Well, at least, I learned how to get to the the Kelana Jaya Immigration Office today!

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