Monday, July 23, 2007

what a hassle!

the university asked us to do some stuff back here in Malaysia, but the instructions kept getting confusing eventhough it was actually not that complex.all they asked was 2 or 3 things,

1. the original SPM certificate, stamped by

a) ministry of foreign affairs and

b) the russian Embassy in KL

and then translated into English, then Russian, and a few certified photocopies of these..



2. NOC (no objection certificate) from our ministry of higher education

for students with only SPM and no A-level certs



3. Maybe a certificate of completed secondary education, which more and more sounds like SPM to me, (Pn wan munirah from MARA seems to think so), or maybe a cert from INTEC , according to Ms Roline (who's doing it for private students for a fee), and Pn Azliza (who's doing EVERYTHING for JPA students- lucky them)

anyway the question about this third thing keeps going back and forth, in my head and around...funny thing is, the list i got from the embassy didnt mention anything about it, eventhough what i understood from my seniors and the university was that it was supposed to be legalized in the embassy too (making the process exactly like SPM). the letter from my university also makes the "document for completed 2ndary education" sound more and more like SPM..i even got scoffed at for getting this done



what i did (i followed kakak aida's instructions)..



1. i(or rather, my parents) asked LPM for a translated SPM before i came back to Malaysia, i also asked for the NOC beforehand.

2. in Malaysia- i translated my school-leaving cert anyway, and got all 3 documents certified by Wisma putra.

3. at the embassy I asked for legalization stamps but found out they werent cheap, so i got 3 stamps- 1 for NOC (which might have not been needed in the first place) and 2 for copies of my english SPM (since both my SPM certs are laminated)



and i couldnt find anything about the complete 2ndary edu cert stuff,so i left it at that

something very fishy was the really expensive stuff at the embassy. why is that? 1 stamp costs a whopping rm128 per stamp. in comparison the stamps at wisma putra costs rm10 per certficate..who gets the money?some malaysian individuals 'helping out'?the officials there?

my own personal guess..the costs were in roubles but someone didnt take the trouble to see the exchange rates, and instead changed just the symbols..

all together, you'll need rm1000++++, and I'm not kidding..

here's the list