This happened sometime in December last year.
I had just left the office and was browsing for Christmas gifts in a nearby shop. I found a bunch of stuff I liked and brought them to the cashier where I discovered that my wallet was missing.
So I left the stuff and headed back to the office, thinking that I had left my wallet in my drawer. I turned all my drawers inside out and even retraced my steps to the pantry and the toilet but turned up nothing.
I thought hard about when was the last time I remember having it, and it was during lunch, when I had placed the wallet inside a wristlet, where I also kept my roaming cellphone, my passport, and my employment pass.
OMG, I suddenly realized. My entire wristlet is missing!
When one of my officemates learned of my predicament, she offered to lend her EZ link card so that I could ride home. Mine had also been in the missing wallet. She also offered to lend me some money, but I declined. I did not need to spend on anything on the way home.
I tried calling my cellphone, and it rang the first few times, but later it could no longer be reached.
So I called my bank to report my missing ATM card and to get a replacement.
Then I called my employer to ask about how to get my employment pass replaced. They said MOM (Ministry of Manpower) required a police report, my passport, and a letter from the employer.
But I had also lost my passport! So how?
I thought I’d deal with that issue later after I had gotten my police report.
I found out that there was a police station near where I live, so off I went. A police officer asked me to state where I had lost my stuff and asked me to describe each one in detail, typing it out on a computer then printing out copies for me to sign. One was for me.
I submitted the police report to my employer and they submitted it to MOM so I can be issued a new employment pass, but they were told that a passport was really needed for that, even if it too was missing.
So I went to the embassy to get a new passport first, where they told me that I needed an employment pass to do so.
See the predicament here. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I felt like a volleyball.
I called MOM myself to explain my predicament. The guy I talked to said that they could issue a pass if I had a letter from my embassy stating that my new passport was in process.
So I marched back to the embassy to let them know what MOM told me. Super unhelpful guy in window 5 crossly informed me that still they couldn’t let me apply for a passport, that I needed to get a temporary pass from MOM and submit that to them.
I called MOM again, and asked if such a thing exists and what is needed in order to get one if I don’t have a passport. They said I could ask my employer to issue a letter stating that my embassy required a temporary pass in order to process a new passport.
That Saturday, I headed to MOM armed with said letter and the police report.
When I presented them to the girl, she coldly informed me that they could not issue me a temporary pass without a passport, that I needed to get that replaced first.
I explained that it was my embassy’s requirement. She said that my embassy had a very strange rule. I couldn’t agree with her more.
I was so frustrated at this point that tears slid down my cheeks.
She said she would talk to her supervisor. While she was gone, I hastily wiped my eyes dry, thinking that maybe she hadn’t noticed them.
When she came back, she was speaking to me in softer tones, saying that her supervisor had said she could issue a one week temporary pass for me.
Then she said, “Don’t cry. We will try to help.”
Oops. So she had seen the waterworks. How embarrassing.
The next day I headed to the embassy and coolly submitted the temporary pass along with the police report, filled up application form, and pictures that I had taken in the photo booth right inside the embassy’s walls.
I was told that my picture showed only one ear and that I needed to redo it. For the love of man, what is wrong with you people??
I marched back to the booth and coughed up another 6 bucks to get a picture of me with blue background, bare forehead and both ears visible.
Anyway, I had to pay some 200 bucks for the new machine-readable passport and the affidavit of loss. It felt like I had lost my wristlet all over again.
Six weeks later, I went back to collect the maroon-colored passport to replace my lost green one.
Once I had that, I forwarded it to my employer and they got my employment pass replaced.
Then I was formally legal again!
