Bureaucracy: The Same Everywhere

Yesterday Dr. Darussalam took me around to look at motorbikes. We learned (from a salesman) the difference between a motorbike and a scooter: The placement of the engine. On a scooter, it's back near the rear tire. On a motorbike, it's farther front, between the rider's ankles, and has a chain drive. Some scooters here have pretty large wheels, unlike the ones at home, and all of these bikes range from 100cc to 125cc.

Well, not having a valid driver's license here, I decided I should make sure I could get one before I laid out the ringgits for a bike. So Daruss kindly drove me to the motor vehicles office, where we learned that a foreigner like me would need to go to the main office in Putrajaya, the administrative capital. We got the proper forms, though, and it was clear that I would need to have my professional visit pass (which is issued by the government) as well as my passport and U.S. driver's license, to get the Malaysian license.

The afternoon being spent, we made a plan to meet this morning and go to the International Office here at UiTM to pick up my pass, or visa, which I expected would be waiting for me.

Ah, that turned out to be over-optimistic. Somehow the International Office neglected to apply for my pass. So there is no way to get the license for possibly many weeks, because there will be no pass, and without that, I am just a tourist here.

So as not to waste my chance to have fun with bureaucracy with Daruss as my amiable guide, I suggested that we see whether I could manage to open a bank account at the local branch of Maybank. Daruss agreed, and thus began a long adventure of waiting, waiting and more waiting. Everyone treated me well, but there were 20 people ahead of me.

The only hitch was that we realized I would need a letter from my employer atesting to my state of employment. Luckily we figured that out at the start of the waiting period, so Daruss phoned the Faculty (what we would call the College) and got a message through that the letter was needed urgently and the dean would need to sign it. In less than an hour, someone had delivered the signed letter to us at the bank. That's efficiency!

Daruss was able to get someone to drive the letter over to us because everyone here knows it is impossible to find parking at this Maybank branch. So Daruss did not want to give up his parking space, even though we would have to wait at least another hour. In fact, we walked down the street and had a Diet Coke (me) and teh tarik (him) in the cafe of a municipal building, then walked back to the bank, and still waited a half hour more.

In the end I filled out about four pages of forms and even gave a thumbprint, deposited my check from MACEE and got a shiny new ATM card. Sweet!

It only took three hours.