Passport Renewal!

Wah lau, it's slightly more than a week into Q4 of 2007!!! Another 3 more months to go and we will be in 2008. How fast! Lets see what have I been doing. Well as usual busy with work. I have been travelling to to SG twice now in the last 2 weeks. Once on 25th Sept for meeting and came back on 26th Sept. The other was just last Friday, 5th Oct.

This time's trip was a bit of a rush. Worked till almost 1am the night before and still couldn't finish. Plus my presentation charts for the following day has not even been completed. Ended up sleeping around 3+ and had to wake up about 6+ so that I can head on to D'sara Heights to renew my passport. Woke up a bit late of course and reached about 15 mins past 8am as traffic was bad! I got my passport in about 1 1/2 hours which was cool! I supposed I was a bit more pushy since I had to catch my 12pm flight.

Basically renewing passport is very simple now. I wished I could take more pictures to show the steps but anyways, once you google, you will find it on many people's blogs. Please bring along with you your MKAD, RM300 (32 pages)/RM500 (64 pages) and a bit of cash for photo taking. Trust me, it's easy. Basic steps are:

a) Go to Blok I in Damansara Heights. The immigration office is directly opposite Giant. Have your photo taken first before heading to the office. There are 2 ways of renewing, either through KIPPAS (machine based) or the usual manual way (was told that speed is similar as that of machine's)


b) Once you get your digital photos which is really fast, head on to the KIPPAS office (right at the Ground Level) where it currently house 3 machines to handle passport renewal. Unfortunately I couldn't capture it too close, the banner actually states that it starts working from 8:30am onwards but when I called the immigration office, they did advice me to come earlier, say about 7:30am. Up to you at the end of the day. I still got mine pretty fast so do it at your own risk!

c) Check with the officer to see if your current passport is chip based or not. If it is, you may proceed with the KIPPAS method of renewal because it's similar machines that can read MYKAD. If it's not chip based, please proceed I think Level 2 for the manual way. For those who do manual, please check. I collected my passport at Level 2 so I assume that it may be at the same level but I may be wrong.

d) Next you just fill up a simple form that you requires your NAME, NRIC and contact nmber. Put your newly taken photographed (just 1) with that form into an envelope. Then head towards the machine.

e) Place your old passport on the machine. Next followed by MYKAD, fingerprint and subseqently slot in RM300 into the machine and a receipt will be produced. On the receipt, it states that collection is 2 hours after submission time. Mine was 8:50am and was supposed to get mine at 10:50am but I tried my luck to check with the officer and she asked to check at 10am.

f) Collection of new passport is on Level 2. You will have to go to Counter 16, show your receipt and a waiting number will be issued to you. It wasn't a long wait for me. I only had to wait for 1 number and I got my passport the next minute.

Ahhhh....finally something great to shout about Malaysia ;)