The Musings of Wazit Sneak Peek into Wazit's Mind

Preparing documents for study overseas can be such a hassle, especially when the damned offer letter from the university haven't arrived yet. Jesus, what's taking them so long? And I thought Westerners are generally more efficient than the government here =.= So anyway, documents... documents... have a lot to prepare namely:

4) Letter of Good Conduct

And to apply for these documents you need even more documents! Well anyway, since one of the requirements of the letter of good conduct as well as the visa is the passport, it makes sense to renew my passport first. In fact, I just got mine renewed just a few days ago. Being the Internet-dependent person that I am, I decided to Google for information on renewing my passport before actually renewing it. And from there, I hopped on to the Malaysian Immigration Department website. It defintely need more work in appearance but after some digging, I found out some pretty useful information that gave me a sweet surprise.

First, I found out that students who intend to go overseas to study can get a 50% discount on their passport application/renewal fee. A normal Malaysian passport cost about RM 300, but students can get it for RM 150. That's right.... RM 300 to RM 150. A bargain, don'tcha think? Catch is that we need to procure the offer letter to be eligible for such a discount. And since I don't have the offer letter yet, I am not eligible for such a discount *grumble grumble*

Now my family usually renews their passport at the Immigration Department branch near the Subang Airport. And when I went there to collect the form required for the passport renewal on Monday, I was greeted with a big crowd. It took me one hour just to get the form. So I didn't get to renew my passport there.

Ok, the crowd was not as much as the picture showed. But, it was close enough. So, you can imagine the waiting line. Oh, and if it isn't obvious enough, the picture is borrowed from another blog, which link you can clearly see from the picture. Just treat this like a disclaimer or something.

So on the next surprise. Not wanting to repeat the experience of braving a huge crowd, I tried to find other branches in Selangor. Turns out the Subang branch is the smallest branch in Selangor as well as the most utilised. There are two more branches in Selangor, namely the Damansara branch and the Shah Alam branch. These branches are way bigger than the one in Subang. Plus, I found out that those branches are open on weekends. Yes, both Saturday and Sunday, from 8am to 1pm. Yeah, at this point, many of you might be thinking: OMG, can this be true?!!! Well, both these info can be found here.

So, like I said earlier, I went to the Shah Alam branch at about 8.30 am and there's the amount of people is only about 1/4 the crowd in Subang and they have way more counters. Got my passport renewed in only 30 minutes (not including waiting for it to be renewed), with a big grin on my face.