Passport

How cool this is, renewing passport only takes 3 days now. 5 years ago, even though they said it takes 6 months, it took almost 9 months in order for them to send home and back to US.
Now, it only takes 3 days!
The ‘kakak’ (sister in Malay) who is a nice Malay lady is still working there. It’s such a pleasure to see her again, she’s always smiling and she gently reminded me, “lain kali datang awal sikit” (next time come early) Hehehe, they stop accepting application at 12:30pm and I was there 10 minutes before 12pm, but they were very efficient, they took my pictures, thumb prints and processed everything pretty fast and gave me a receipt to pick up my passport in 2 days.

It was nice to see so many Malaysian. And ah…. it’s so nice to hear my name being called correctly…LOL..I think this is the only place that can get my name right so far. American just can’t pronounce my last name, “Ng…where’s the vowel?..” ?!!? End up the easiest and it make sense to them to pronounce it as “Eng”, well, I can live with that, after all I’m too lazy to correct every single person. Then, I found out there’s another way people pronounce it, my Filipino colleagues in the hospital pronounce it as “Nang”… what??! No, not Nang, I corrected them. Then some colleagues came out with “N.G” (sounds like Angie) That’s ok, whatever, N.G. is fine too. and because of my last name, I’m famous in the hospital, Ms. N.G.!!!!

Anyway, here’s a conversation I overheard at the consulate between the clerk and a woman who wants to get her passport or some sort of document so she can go back to Malaysia ASAP.

Woman: Aiyo, I mesti balik loh, mau balik tengok doktor.
Kakak: Ini take some time…
Woman: Tak boleh tunggu lah. Perut saya sakit…mau balik tengok doktor, doktor sini tak bagus lah.
Kakak: @_@ oh, ya ke?
Woman : (she turned to us and said in Cantonese) ng dak la, zhoi ng fan hui, shang cancer dim ah? (but she’s smiling while telling us)
Not that she’s not worried but she’s a happy-go-lucky person. She was able to joke around with everyone.

Translation:
Woman: I have to go home to see the doctor
Clerk: This take some time
Woman: No, I cannot wait. My stomach hurt…I have to go home and let the doctor check, the doctors here are not good
Clerk: Oh, really?
Woman: Cannot…if I don’t go home to check, what if I have cancer?

Hmm….it is just pure joy to have my new passport in hand…
I’m coming home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!