Citizenship registration
So today mum and I went to ICA for citizenship registration. Needlessly to say it was very boring, consisting entirely of a series of waiting from one counter to another. Actually like I told some of my friends, I dont really feel much going from PR to citizen, and sorry if this sounds offensive, this thing doesnt mean anything to me, at most serving little more than a ticket which, ironically, I need to get me out of sg.
Yea, so as I was saying, throughout this process my feelings were quite neutral. However, I heard that my mum and a close friend Dan, who has also gotten her citizenship approval recently, were quite depressed having to renounce their Chinese citizenships. I also dint have to take part in any oath taking, which would be non-committal since none of the values were true anyway. For my mum and Dan's benefit, I felt a bit bad for them, but I think even if I were to renounce my Chinese citizenship as well, my feelings wouldnt have been very different. I guess the main attractions that China held for me were my relatives, and my old memories. Now that everyone has moved to entirely new places, and my cousins and I have all drifted apart, there's very little reason left for sentimentality of any kind. And since I'm on my cousin, let me digress just a bit. My elder cousin on my mother's side, who used to be so close to me that we were like siblings, is having her "gao kao" (a level like exam, only a thousand times more intense) now, wish her all the best! She's going to study art in uni, so she's aiming for an arts college which is highly competitive, hope she gets in!
On the process itself, it's pretty tedious as expected. We all had photos prepared the day before, but all our photos were rejected. For my mum, reason was photo was too glossy, and for me, initially the counter gave an okay, and later another person rejected it because my fringe touched my eyebrow. So fair enough, for the 2 hours we spent there, 1 and half was spent queuing up to take photos. Considering the crowd, I must say the photo booth there is an extremely lucrative business with very low overheads, but I digress. So 3/4 more day before I get my passport, and maybe a few months more before I get my IC. Btw, my current IC now had a hole in it invalidated by just a normal hole puncher. That's quite dangerous actually, imagine next time someone pisses you off, you shout: Give me your IC, person hands over said IC cheekily, and crunch there goes 50 bucks.
Yea, so as I was saying, throughout this process my feelings were quite neutral. However, I heard that my mum and a close friend Dan, who has also gotten her citizenship approval recently, were quite depressed having to renounce their Chinese citizenships. I also dint have to take part in any oath taking, which would be non-committal since none of the values were true anyway. For my mum and Dan's benefit, I felt a bit bad for them, but I think even if I were to renounce my Chinese citizenship as well, my feelings wouldnt have been very different. I guess the main attractions that China held for me were my relatives, and my old memories. Now that everyone has moved to entirely new places, and my cousins and I have all drifted apart, there's very little reason left for sentimentality of any kind. And since I'm on my cousin, let me digress just a bit. My elder cousin on my mother's side, who used to be so close to me that we were like siblings, is having her "gao kao" (a level like exam, only a thousand times more intense) now, wish her all the best! She's going to study art in uni, so she's aiming for an arts college which is highly competitive, hope she gets in!
On the process itself, it's pretty tedious as expected. We all had photos prepared the day before, but all our photos were rejected. For my mum, reason was photo was too glossy, and for me, initially the counter gave an okay, and later another person rejected it because my fringe touched my eyebrow. So fair enough, for the 2 hours we spent there, 1 and half was spent queuing up to take photos. Considering the crowd, I must say the photo booth there is an extremely lucrative business with very low overheads, but I digress. So 3/4 more day before I get my passport, and maybe a few months more before I get my IC. Btw, my current IC now had a hole in it invalidated by just a normal hole puncher. That's quite dangerous actually, imagine next time someone pisses you off, you shout: Give me your IC, person hands over said IC cheekily, and crunch there goes 50 bucks.