Saturday, April 30, 2005

I got my passport

My arm so hurts from yesterday. Actually I was so exhausted, I slept so early even on a Friday night. I took leave yesterday just so I could go to the Isetan members' only presale. How sad, I know. And only a woman would do that. Yeah, so what. I was there at 11am, and didn't leave KLCC till 4. But I left Isetan at around 2 cos I couldn't stand the crowd by then. I was at Kinokuniya after.

Anyway, I discovered something about salespeople. If you go shopping looking your best, for some reason, they layan you more. Yeah. They'll think you're rich and have lots of money to spend. But the fact is everyone has money to spend if they go to a presale on a working day. Please... who'd go to all that trouble, getting suffocated in that big a crowd not to buy anything? It was like an oven in there yesterday! I was sweating in an air-cond room.

For the first half an hour it was fun cos there wasn't much ppl around yet. But then it got unbearable and I stood in line for 45 mins or more just to pay for the 3 things I wanted to buy.

Yesterday was also the day I got my first civilian passport. Not that I wasn't a civilian before... not that before I was military... No but it just felt weird. Cos if you are still a dependent at the age of 21 (which I was) you get to keep your diplomatic passport. But once I graduated and got a job, I had to surrender my diplomatic passport. Which is what I did. And I was passport-less for about 2 years... can you believe that? A passport is your freedom, and I was living without one for that long. Imagine if some bad thing were to happen in Malaysia, like, God forbid, a military coup... you would need a passport to escape, and I didn't have one! You know, stuff like that... it's your freedom ticket.

Other ppl will say that money is freedom. But there are ways to travel without money you know. So a passport is still your freedom.

My face still looks like a clown's in the passport photo. Except fatter. And I was so shy with the auntie who brought me to the special immigration to cancel my previous passport. She had things to say about Chinese ppl that I wasn't very proud to listen to, and I was tempted to tell her that my bf is half Chinese, which would mean that I took offence to the stuff she said (narrow-minded stuff) but then she's really old, and it would make her lose face if I told her. It would be like me telling her straight to her face she's narrow-minded and it would hurt her because she's so much older and experienced in life, and I'm supposed to be so young. But you see, I'm an advocate for making Mandarin a subject in schools. Why not? Kids can learn to understand each other better.

She thought it was rubbish. Sometimes I wonder if they put these ppl in our paths to test us. Like maybe they are spies for the government and they are just there to see what our opinions are really like and report back to their bosses. I'm sure that type of stuff exists. I mean who would suspect an old lady to be a spy? She asked me lots of questions yesterday, and she did antagonize me over certain subjects for no reason. Maybe she wanted to see which political stand I had. I'm pro government. Just that the govt should improve their policies just a little. But anyway, maybe she was a spy. Because she said certain unneccessary things to gain my trust like, "How's your mother? I like your mother, she's a pleasant lady." Okay... no, my mother is not that pleasant, but alright... And she's got no reason to suck up either, she's in a totally different dept than my father. Maybe she is a spy, because sometimes I just refuse to believe that the foreign ministry can have such narrow-minded ppl working in it when they've all been and lived overseas.

See... now I'm the one being narrow-minded, or being stereotypical, or um... making my own conclusions. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with learning different languages. She's so rubbish about that.

1 comment:

khaylis said...

should have taken the day off from work to go to the pre sale as well...next time lah.

i remember feeling so sad to relinquish my diplomatic passport! although, now that i think about it, i dont think i ever really saw any of those so-called-perks from having one for all those years. hmph, diplomatic immunity, my ass.

(well except for this one time on a school trip to myanmar when i got to jump the immigration queue, heh. good times, good times...)