Giving credit where credit is due

Last June, during Cheng’s holiday, she had renewed her passport, registered as a voter at the local Post Office and renewed her expired driving licence.

I personally find the location of the new government complex in Jelapang, which houses the National Registration Department and the Immigration Department inconvenient because it is in the outskirts of Ipoh and out of the way for most people. Either one has to have own transport or has to hire a taxi. The renewal of passport within 2 hours is commendable and if the machine for renewal had not been out of order, it would have been impressive to be able to renew without filling in a form.

Coincidently, across the globe in London, her brother BK had his renewed while waiting with his friend, a visitor from Malaysia, who knows the Malaysian High Commissioner’s daughter and they were supposed to go for lunch that day.

Cheng was most impressed with JPJ when she renewed her expired driving licence without having to fill in a form and within 10 minutes!

She had been so used to using bicycle and public transport in Holland that she did not ask to drive. It was by sheer coincidence that I asked if she would like to drive around when she suddenly realised that her driving licence had expired long time ago! It was such a relief when she found that she had time to renew within the stipulated 3 years, after which she would have had to re-sit for the driving test.

Two months later, when Nee was back for holiday, she was almost able to use the state of the art machine for renewing her passport, but had to get out of the queue because of the need to have a photocopy of IC (I think) and by the time she got back, the machine was out of order! So this machine is more like a status symbol for show and not practicable.

Anyway, for renewing her passport too early, she lost six months of its validity for some strange reason. This is not as bad as before when one's passport period of validity upon renewal starts from the date of last expiry! So if your passport expired 3 years ago, your 5-year renewal was good enough for only the remaining 2 years!