As to date, it has been a year and 1 month since En Muddy reached Q8 and as for me, this May will marked my 1st year here. Not much change I must say. We gained a lot of friends in this past one year, we created so many sweet memories and we've been to numerous places. Unfortunately, we still haven't got our Civil ID ( some sort of Q8 IC, iqamah )j ust yet. Without it, we're practically handicapped. Everything needs civil id here just like we need IC back home. Errrr actually everything need money here and then comes civil id. You don't need civil ID to buy food or to shop. All they require was dinar and a lotsss of dinar. However, for most important matters in life, from buying cars, renting a cars, registering school for Alis to subscribing private sattelite cable channel required Civil ID.

I wanted to story about how painful is it for us( and for most of my friends ) in order to get our civil id.

My visit visa expired on 10 March. I had returned ticket to Malaysia on 7 th Mac hence months prior to that mostly we would start planning for my renewal visa. Our choices are either go back to Malaysia or to other neighbouring GCC countries like Qatar, Dubai, Egypt and such. With recent protest issues in Egypt and Bahrain, both definitely out of picture.

Recently, the company informed that En Muddy's temporary work visa had been granted which means he can proceed to next step which is medical checkup...... to Bahrain as per normal company procedure. Why Bahrain? Do not ask me why they need to do medical checkup at Bahrain while they actually applying Q8's Civil ID because I failed to understand this myself.

En Muddy try to argue and requested to re-route to Malaysia given Bahrain's current unstable political condition but was rejected by the company as per them, the protestor was just represent minority group of Bahraini and the protest only took place at certain spot in Bahrain while other places remained peaceful and business runs as usual. So, as a safe precaution, En Muddy sent an email to Malaysian Embassy to Bahrain and getting replied as per below :







As you can see in the email, it is rather major relieved when we actually given assurance by the insider itself that it is okay to travel to Bahrain, plus some insider tips about do's and donts. Anyhow, there's one point we can't afford to comply to.. which is Movenpick as the hotel costs RM 2200 per night. Totally wayyyyy above our budget..

So next step is to extend my returned ticket to Malaysia which is dated 7th Mac to some later date in May. En Muddy called up Gulf Call Center with the regards and was told that in order to get our ticket extended, we need to pay around KD 200 +\-. After converted, it will cost us a whopping RM 2200, almost as equal as new ticket. Given no choice, we proceed still, went to their HQ at Kuwait City and was told to pay KD 43 instead of KD 200 and we were happily obliged.

Phewwww cannot trust this call centre one !!!

Settled one thing.

Now all we have to do is wait for the company's confirmation on En Muddy's air ticket to Bahrain, so that we can purchase ours, but to no avail.

From the date we sent the mail which is immediately after we were given instruction to go Bahrain, until yesterday, En Muddy haven't heard anything. Few phone calls were made, from medium tone to rather harsh tone involved then only we were told that agent at Bahrain refused to take risks by bringing anyone inside Bahrain in current situation.

From what I recalled, this so called protests had been happening way before En Muddy received his work permit and yet he were still instructed to go Bahrain, and suddenly only now they realised that it is rather unsafe to bring staffs to Bahrain?

Pffffttttttt... WTF ! ( please excused my language here, I am so pissed off )

As a result, En Muddy were instructed to re-route to Malaysia for his medical checkup. If my mind served me correctly, this is our exactly first request and got denied!

The implications of this unnecessary small matters turned big ( it is small matters indeed if our request granted in the first place), are ...

1) we need to purchased 3 new tickets that ripped us almost RM 4000 because we already extended our returned ticket that costed us RM 500.

2) we also need to pay fine for overstay in Q8 starting tomorrow 11 March because we were told to wait for green light to Bahrain. KD 2 per head per day. We planned to go back on 12 Mac to minimised our fine but was again instructed to postponed to 14 Mac because En Muddy's paperwork was on the way back from Bahrain to Kuwait and we need to wait for its arrival. Despite our suggestion to courier the paperwork to Malaysia directly, we were given thousand lame excuses. Pffftttttt again! So, KD 2x3x4 = KD 24 .. To some, they may say.. Alaaa dua ratus lebih jek... But to me.. Sebab dua ratus lebih je kan, ko bayar kan boleyyyy ???

3) since as our actual schedule is to go back Malaysia on May for my sister in law's wedding, I had extra returned ticket on Q8-KUL. If En Muddy's medical checkup matters took more than 2 weeks, looks like I'll be staying at MYS until May, hence we need to get a refund for those returned tickets, if only the airline company agree to refund. If they refused to refund, then we had to purchased new one way ticket for me and girls KUL-Q8 and we're talking about another RM4000 here, else we can say goodbye to our returned ticket. We're not that rich yet to throw few thousand bucks just like that !

For now.. The outcome is we will be going back to Malaysia on 14th Mac, exactly En Muddy's birthday. We will be using Etihad so there'll be 6 hours transit at Abu Dhabi, maybe we can celebrate his birthday there.

Only those who have had to go through this experience will understand my frustration. No matter how thorough your plan is, no matter how many months earlier you take, trust me there are always unexpected unnecessary obstacles you need to face. This isn't anymore about how good planner you are, this is more than that. This is about something beyond your control and do expect for the worst cause that's the only way you'll be prepared.

For those who have been experiencing this, my hats off to you for your patience to endure all this and to those who about to go through this, or have plan in future, you had my best wishes and good luck, coz you definitely need luck in this.

I am certainly not blaming everything on the company because I believed certain things are beyond their control either. However, there's few loopholes and windows can be improved to better state since this is definitely not their first time handling visa matters. They should understand the systems better and they definitely should see it coming...

Disclaimer : this hair-pulling, backbreaking, mingboggling experience unfortunately only applicable to those who working under same consultant with En Muddy. Apparently, other Malaysian under others company have it much much easier way, within shorter time. They're such lucky dudes !

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