MyKad...

I must admit I'm one of the last few Malaysians (~2,000,000) that have not applied for the new and advanced Malaysian identity card (IC) - "MyKad" - a Smart Card based identity card for Malaysians. Despite many publications in the newspaper stated that ~free~ applications has been run from the year 2003 to 2005 (I don't need to be reminded since this was announced in the year 2002 National Budget that application would be free for 3 years), I have been thinking: " Well, this is technology stuff...so it's better later than earlier. Who knows whatever problems they have in the earlier versions of these Smart Card system will be gradually and quietly fixed along the way ." I would think that I am right. Security is always getting tighter yet no matter what you do today, there seems to be some way or another for someone to find a way to break it. So guess what, the government then annouced that the old IC will not be valid from year 2006 onwards for many official transactions! Shucks...there leaves me no choice even though in the year 2002 National Budget announcement, it just implied that application will not be free start in year 2006. I figure that the government isn't telling us something now...

Thus, this morning, my sister and I decided visit the Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara (JPN) office in Putrajaya. We arrived at 8.15am, got a number (1038 and 1039) each, and finished our application at 8.45am! That's a record for any kind of official governmental businesses I've ever dealt with. No bad! So I guess we should be able to collect the card two months later, that's what the officers there told us.

Side thought: I actually won't be surprised that the government will want those early adopters -- people that got their MyKad in the early stage -- to upgrade their identifiy card for added security features pretty soon...agree? Just ~wait and see~