Back to my passport story.
An officemate told me the "personal appearance" won't take long. More or less, around 15 minutes. My schedule was 3 PM to 4 PM, so after our meeting (and with the consent of my wonderful boss, kasi actually may sabit pa kami) I headed off to DFA via MRT.
Anyway, I got there around 3:20. There was a long line sa holding area. Tapos at the signal of the guard, we all entered this big hall with windows for our personal appearance. It was relatively fast. The DFA guy just checked if I looked like the person in my photo. He also checked my name from a list and wrote stuff. I asked what's the next step. He said-- well, what I heard him say was: "Magbayad ka sa auditorium."
But bingi that I am, it turns out that I was supposed to pay sa cashier which was in the same hall and then go to the auditorium (for encoding). There was no line at the cashier (thank God!). Pero the auditorium was another story. Hanggang labas ang pila at paikot-ikot siya like a neverending story! Betchabygollywow! Tapos, to make things worse, while I wasn't looking there was this 6-footer goon na sumingit pa sa harap ko! The nerve!
The clock ticked on as I waited for my turn... 4:00...4:30...5:00... Nakarating ako sa encoder's desk around 5:40 na. I arranged for a courier service pa and was finally out of DFA before 6 PM... haaay. That makes it 2 1/2 hours (grumble-grumble).
Sabi nila baka napasabay lang ako sa throng who weren't able to renew their passports last December. Maybe. Was it worth the effort? Well, all I paid was P500, plus P100 for my picture, P9 for xerox and P100 for delivery. Sa travel agency, it can cost from P1,300 to P1,700, wala pa yung photo and photocopy. Kung nagtitipid ka, not bad yung savings huh?
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