So at 830, I found myself at the British Council, right across from Gleneagles Hospital and the Botanic Gardens. According to gothere.sg, the easiest way to get to the Philippines Embassy would be to walk from the British Council. It's quite a hard place to find. I dropped off the bus not knowing where to go. I went to gothere.sg, and asked how to go from the British Council to the Philippines Embassy.
It said: Don't be lazy, it's just a short walk!
I cursed at the site, and then proceeded onto Google maps, which was more helpful. It still took me about 20 minutes to get to the Embassy though, by which I was already sweating a crazy amount.
The Philippines Embassy is located at Naseem Road. It's hard to find, and it's not even a proper building. It's more of a shitty old bungalow which they converted into an office. There's not even a sign or anything like that. The only identifying feature? Look for the building with a gajillion Filipinos.
Oh, and it's beside the Japanese Embassy. It's quite embarassing how the two buildings are juxtaposed. The Japanese Embassy looks so much more grand, and isn't as chaotic as the Philippines Embassy.
The Embassy is a chaos when I get there, which is 845am. I see a queue, and join it. A man asks whether anyone was renewing their passport, and I thought to myself, "That's me!", and I went to him, and he gave me a queue number and told me to wait for my number to be flashed. The queue number was 5107.
Like I said, the Embassy is basically one shitty old bungalow. Over there, they offer plenty of services such as renewal of passports, applying for work permits, exit passes, and all that. All this processes are done OUTDOORS, in a mini void-deck.
There were at least 200 people there, I swear.
There was only one queue handling passport renewals. The queue when I got there was at 5005. I'm assuming the queue started at 5000. That means that there are 106 people who got there before me. The Embassy opens only at 9. They probably got there at...7? Who knows. But that's one screwed up system.
I took a seat, strategically underneath a fan. I was in Philippines. Everybody around me was speaking in Tagalog. Even when they spoke English, it was heavily accented.
The queue was moving at a phase of about 13 numbers per 15 minutes. I know because I timed it. I had my book to read, and my phone to tweet on, and my notebook to scribble on, but after awhile I grew really really really bored.
Ahh, I'm getting tired. Long story short, I came at 845, I left at 330, almost 7 hours later. Now, what did I actually have to do? Nothing much really! There were three stations I had to go through. First was to get my forms checked, and signed. Next was to get my photo taken, my fingerprint scanned, and my data keyed into the computer. Last was the payment station.
Those three process put together probably lasts...ten minutes.
I waited 7 hours for those ten minutes. What a fucking waste of time. I actually sacrificed one day's worth of pay just to get this done. I thought I'd be done by lunch, so that I could at least go for half-a-day, but no, the inefficiency had me waste my whole day.
The problem lies mostly with the staff at the Philippines Embassy, I think. They're just not very efficient. They take breaks, chit-chat with each other, and basically behave quite unsatisfactorily. Take for example at the photo-taking session. There was a baby getting his picture taken. All the staff at the photo-taking booth stopped what they were doing and cooed over the baby. What the hell. Just do your job ladies.
And the filipinos are partly at fault too. I think some of them just can't follow instructions well. Some don't bring this, or that, and that causes a huge delay.
At the photo station, there's also a jam because people aren't satisfied with their photo, and keep asking for re-dos. For goodness sake, nobody will judge you if your passport is ugly! Damn it. I took mine, and the lady asked me if I wanted to retake it. My hair was a mess, and I didn't look my best. I've been waiting all day after all. But a photo is a photo.
"Just use it miss, it's just a passport."
The Philippines Embassy will also do well in putting up a list of estimated waiting times. For example, if there are X number of people ahead of you, you'd have to wait an X number of minutes.
Sigh. On a whole, it was an exercise of inefficiency. I'm so glad I only have to do this once every 5 years.
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