Guess which idiot left their passport in the laundry. Yes it is I.
The past 1 day has been incredibly stressful for me. It’s been awhile since what I felt was my inferior Te and tetiary Si spiraling me down towards a terrible place. I started becoming angry myself, broken links on the ICA and embassy websites and unclear messages on their FAQs. I started blaming myself for the past me, thinking about how could I possibly not put the passport into the bag like I usually do. I almost blamed my wife for not checking, but interestingly the thought was deflected away quickly…I guess that’s how much I love her?
I was very down. I doomscrolled reddit, googled endlessly for answer but obviously to no avail. Of course there’s no solution. My situation was, after all, pretty unique. I need to travel on the 30th November back to Singapore, which was around 5 weeks away. At first, I have the choice of winging it at customs or declaring the damage online, in which I can’t use the passport anymore. I figured that the winging route has a concrete chance of failure. Declaring the damage online has a better out, which is at the worst case scenario, I can apply for a Document of Identity (DOI) at the Embassy and use it as a single-use passport to return home.
It took a while of a series of second guessing myself, no thanks to big scary popups saying “YOU CANNOT USE YOUR PASSPORT AFTER REPORTING IT DAMAGED”, but I did report it in the end. Then I started to apply for a new passport to be sent here, then doomscrolled about how to expediate overseas applications (to no avail), and just decided that I should just email ICA to explain my situation.
Not going to lie, this was all in one day but it felt like forever. I KNEW logically that only it was literally only a couple of hours since I reported but it felt like a few days has already passed. I started to plan an alternative plan, which is to wait a couple of weeks and if there is little to no progress, I will apply for the DOI, travel back to Singapore and do my passport there. It was a good plan, but I kept thinking about things like how is the re-entry application going to work on a temporary passport (they typically staple it to your passport), will my VISA be invalidated, how does my booked flight work with the new passport, what if my passport photo is no good, etc. It was so stressful, I prayed that I will just feel emotionally better after a night’s rest.
The next day, I did feel better. I woke up and called ICA and they were very nice about it though they said they can’t really do much other than wait, which is of course reasonable since I only sent the email the day before. I called the Embassy here in Tokyo and they were also really nice, giving me some suggestions including suggesting that I CC them the email I sent to ICA. I have no idea where our government find these people but holy crap they were such angels and I did feel a lot better talking to them!
Then that night, a miracle! ICA replied that my passport has been expediated AND they have already sent it to Tokyo via diplomatic parcel. THAT IS INSANE. After ALL my weight has lifted from my shoulders, I felt so stupid really. There was really nothing to be worried about because I have already figured out what to do with the worst case scenario (althought Scoot had me panicking because they couldn’t answer me if they could let me board if I have a DOI and gave me stupid templated answers).
I don’t really know how to deal with this…weakness of mine. I recognize these chain of emotions very well and I haven’t felt it this strongly for maybe a decade. It kind of means to me that I haven’t really gotten stronger when dealing with the situation. Rather, the long decade means that I’m better preventing it. It makes sense I guess. The only way to get stronger is to encounter these types of situations more and I don’t think that is a good idea.
I should practice more meditation techniques though, hmm…