[This is my rough guide / bitch rant on renewing your Malaysian chip based passport at the Damansara immigration office - if anyone found this remotely useful, please let me know in the comments - thanks]
Dragged myself out of bed at 6.45 a.m.... well, 7 a.m., but I can assure you that it's waay earlier than my usual wake up time. Dropped Gran off and was on my way by 7.30 a.m. Thankfully there wasn't a traffic JAM going there so I was there before 8 a.m. Back on my old stomping grounds again, six years since I last renewed. Heard that there's the passport renewal kiosks available, so I thought I try that and blog/bitch about it...
The KiPPas (Kiosk Pembaharuan Pasport) room.... notice the uber long line out the door...
I can tell you that it's MUDAH and CEPAT, but EFEKTIF... not so much.
4 machines, very long lines - damn stuffy inside because the A/C wasn't working, FAN also don't have... Ironic, right - no KIPAS in the KiPPas room? Don't worry if you were as clueless as I was - there's a few officers standing by, ready to help. (This one was taken after I was done - for illustration purposes)
They should update this stupid thing properly instead of cancelling stuff out with marker pen.
The checklist - if you can't read the addendum, it says, "ONE PHOTOCOPY OF IC (BOTH SIDES)" - which I didn't know and had to pay RM0.40 for it (WTF - I could've saved that money if I KNEW ABOUT IT and could've made my own copy). Don't worry, there are plenty of people who could help you with your passport renewal needs.
You need one of THESE (which are available there, no big deal) - fill it up details on the outside and it's for your old passport, photo and the photocopy IC.
Easily understood enough, no? You have to like how "2 JAM" is red, bold and in quotation marks.
The kiosk in use - (this guy asked me if I was gonna blog about it when we were first outside; I told him maybe, look what happened now).
The top of the KiPPas - kinda looks like an ATM, no? This is the top half.
The bottom half - the part which seperates this kiosk from the run of the mill ATM: passport chip reader, MyKad slot and thumbprint reader.
It got to my turn and JUST MY LUCK - the stupid machine CRASHED on me just as I was done feeding in the money. The officer had to take out the money storage inside the machine and returned me my money and I HAD TO LINE UP ALL OVER AGAIN. WTF. Didn't help that they're ACTUALLY Windows XP running on ASUS hardware. FUCK.
So I got my receipt...
Went upstairs to see where I needed to be at later...
Killed most of the 2 hours at McDonalds with OJ and a hash brown, and went back up again....
Supposed to be this area lah - Counters 16 and 17.
I don't know if I could just go ahead and tried to get a number first, so I tried. Got snapped at by this rude young Malay woman (so much for being nice during Ramadhan - I hope her puasa today doesn't count) who told me to wait another 10 minutes (to the time stated on the receipt). I'm already pretty grumpy from the heat and stuffiness (and menses) and now I have to deal with grumpy civil servants. Damnit.
ANYWAY - turns out I was a "KIVcase" BECAUSE I didn't include a RECENT photo (they didn't say must have recent photo mah, they just say they needed A PASSPORT SIZED PICTURE) so I had to get that done ASAP or they won't process it (so I was rudely told by this Malay guy behind Counter 15). Decided to go with the photo booth right outside the area, by the stairs. I knew this was gonna come back and bite me in the ass, and it has. WTF.
Got it done in a few minutes and gave that one measly mug shot to the nice middle aged Malay woman behind the counter, who told me to sit and wait another 20 minutes. Now I know it only really takes 20 minutes - and we're stuck waiting for TWO hours BECAUSE...?!
Came back up (you didn't think I was gonna sit there and wait the 20 minutes, did you?) again 20 minutes later and I ran into another hump: they had problems capturing my thumbprints for the biometric measure and after going back and forth between both thumbs on the damn thumb reader, I finally get a reading and I was FINALLY DONE. I was home about noon-ish.
Man am I glad that I don't have to do this often.
In summary, here's what you need to use the KiPPas:
In summary, here's what you need to use the KiPPas:
- Old passport (you need the chip based one for this to work, otherwise you're stuck with doing it manually)
- ONE RECENT passport sized photograph of yourself
- Money (RM300 cash)
- Photocopy of own IC (both sides)
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