Friday, September 19, 2008

Birth Cert is needed for passport renewal

Our main intention to go back to Sabah in August was because Jo needed to renew his passport. I took him to Immigration on Friday (15/8), but he couldn't renew his passport as the reason was i didn't bring along his birth certificate. Lesson has been learned, i have never known that little kids need to attach their birth certificate while renewing their passport. I had always thought that the birth certificate is necessary only when it's the first time for one to apply passport.

The problem was i didn't bring Jo's birth certificate back to Sabah, the piece of paper was still in China. We got no choice that hubby had to courier the birth certificate back to Sabah by using FedEx which it was charged at RMB300. Hubby was told that it needed 3 days for delivery to my house in Sabah. It was fine with 3 days, simply meant that i could receive it by Tuesday if hubby sent it on Saturday morning (16/8). Due to that time was Olympic Games, the date of receival had been delayed due to it being blocked by the China custom, and it was delayed too while the birth certificate reached to Sabah as the FedEx could not read the address properly which was stated on the envelop. The staff gave me a call, and i had to clarify the address with her again, by the time i received the birth certificate, it was already on Wednesday evening.

The address written was pretty funny, the address simply couldn't make sense to me as all the spellings were wrong. Luckily the postcode and the country were correct, otherwise i might lose the birth certificate. I assumed the China staff who works with FedEx was not able to read or write English, and that's why my address looked funny and totally out of meaning!
On Thursday morning (21/8), we went to immigration again, luckily everything turned out smooth and Jo finally had got his new passport. This round, Jo had taken the 64 pages, just hope the passport pages won't be finished that fast, like his previous passport, all the pages had gone even just at 2 1/2 years. Look at the passport application form, Jo was the one who signed it. Even the staff gave Jo a good smile.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Huisia, birth cert is also needed when renewing passport while overseas. I'm in the process of getting my renewed..and they want both my IC and birthcert. Siao boh?!