July 2, 2025

287 - you can get a passport in a day 🛂✈️

and it only costs you 3 days of high stress levels and adrenaline

Hey there, !

For posterity, here are the steps to attaining the miracles of all miracles – getting a new passport within a day, nay, within 4 hours of applying for it (no guarantees). Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons is…entirely purposeful because it’s about me 🫡.

It's a long one so...here's a cute picture of Gandalf to start you off <3

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DAY 1

Step 1: Forget to check passport requirements for entering the country you’re trying to go to – in this case, Singapore. Specifically, do NOT remember that countries need you to have a passport that has 3 or 6 month validity.

Step 2: Check-in to your flight the night before, and ponder why, instead of receiving your ‘Check-in successful’ notification, you receive a ‘Please come to the counter and check in manually’.

Step 3: At this point, remember that you should fill in your arrival card for the country you’re going to – in this case, Singapore, and put in your passport details. You should feel the beginnings of a pit in your stomach as you see the notification ‘You need to have a valid passport with 6-month validity to enter Singapore’. Which...you do not have, as your passport expires in October.

Step 4: Panic.

Step 5: Message your friend who’s going on your trip with you at 11:30pm the night before the flight, and both start Googling what you can do. Engage your problem solving brain while shouting internally at yourself ‘okay you can fix this you can fix this you can FIX THIS’ - it works, like, 60% of the time, every time.

Step 6: Gain some hope as you read reddit threads that essentially say ‘just lie to Singapore immigration and sometimes they let you through!’. Quickly lose that hope as you remember Singapore still has capital punishment...maybe not for deportation but you never know.

Step 7: Read online that the Australian Government tells you to budget at least SIX WEEKS to get your passport. Hyperventilate. Read online that there’s a priority processing queue that you can join. Breathe out a sigh of relief. Read online that the priority processing queue might take 5 business days to get to you. Hyperventilate. Read online that you can go to a specific Post Office in the city to get it processed within 2 business days. Breathe out, slowly, but still with trepidation, as today is a Saturday and the Post Office you need only opens on Monday.

Step 8: Message your team in Singapore who have already bought non-refundable, non-cancellable accommodation for you that you might be late and omg so sorry and wow I’m such an idiot and oh god what have I done. Try to notice the feeling of the butterflies pick up their shovels and start digging manically at the pit in your stomach, which you didn’t know could get any deeper – by this time, you should be feeling it in your lower intestine at this point.

Step 9: Find the optimal line – go to the Passport RAPID office on Collins St at 8:30am on Monday, and then ask for it to be picked up at the Australian Passport Office on Collins St (in Docklands, a bit down the road), which will reduce your six week wait to TWO BUSINESS DAYS.

Step 10: Go to sleep. Or try to, anyway.

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DAY 2

Now, at this point, you should be feeling the adrenaline coursing through your body. Don’t worry, this is normal. You won’t be able to sleep, but this fire of anxiety will only stoke your efforts to GET THAT PASSPORT :D

Step 11: Wake up early, fill out your passport renewal through the online form, and print out your application form. Go to local Officeworks to get your passport photo. Find out their passport photo machine is broken. Laugh at the absurdity of the universe. Go to the next closest Officeworks 15mins away. Find out their passport photo machine is THANKFULLY working. Wait 15mins as the people in front of you inexplicably need to argue over the size and colour of their forms they need printed, or the photos they need printed (which they don’t understand they do by themselves over at the machines, if that’s okay, thanks), or the printing they need to do which, lmao, is a passport application form.

Step 12: Get your passport photo printed. Be told that you need to sweep your hair behind your ears. Realise your hair is way too long and that you should have gone to get a haircut before this. Resign yourself to another 10 years of a frankly mid photo.

Step 13: Go about your day as if nothing else is awry. Grab lunch, watch a play, see your friend message that they’re off on the plane that you should have been on, feel stupid again, grab dinner, go to sleep.

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DAY 3 - THE FINAL DAY

Phew, okay, now we get to the fun part.

Step 14: Wake up early on Monday, and drive into the city to the Collins St Australia Post Passport RAPID office and arrive at 8:20am. Hear your friend’s voice in your head ‘Just beg the Passport Office and see what you can do’. Call the Passport Office hotline, get connected to a central call centre person, and start laying out why you super need a passport today. Be sure at this point to reaaaaally stretch the truth of why your boss is going to fire you if you don’t get to Singapore TODAY. Contemplate whether you should ask your boss to type something really mean and fiery so that it can work as better evidence for getting your passport in one day.

Step 15: By the grace of the old gods and the new, get a 10:40am Passport Office booking by telling the person that you’ve got everything ready, you’ve got your photos, you’ve got your form, you just need to go TODAY. Feel the elation of ‘wow you can just ask for things and people give it to you’. Briefly debate whether you should go home and then come back out for your booking, which would take up precious time. Steel yourself against your need to be a rule follower and drive to the Passport Office because what have you got to lose, anyway?

Step 16: Park in a ¼P space and run in because you don’t think you’ll be able to actually skip the line. Be directed to an Enquiries line where two people in front of you are doing…something. 5 minutes tick by. Person 1 is waiting for a form to be complete. Another 5 minutes tick by. Person 2 needs to go to Africa because his cousin died, but he doesn’t have an English translated document that he can use as evidence for this. Another 5 minutes tick by. ¼ P doesn’t really mean ¼ P right? Another 5 minutes tick by. IT’S YOUR TURN.

Step 17: Have EVERYTHING READY – get your form, your photos, your ID’s, your evidence why you need to go. The money you’ve spent, the time you’re losing, the accommodation that’s waiting for you, the team that’s relying on you being in Singapore…let it all well up inside you. And then be surprised when the guy behind the counter is like ‘okay cool – that form’s not gonna work we have to use a different one but we can get that done’. Feel like those cartoons where you’re trying to break down a door and then it inexplicably opens, to raucous laughter.

Step 18: Be told that it should be done same day since you came so early, and to come back at midday to check its progress. Spend 1 minute being dumbfounded, and then say ’thank you’ and run out of the office to check whether your definitely-more-than-1/4-P car waiting outside has got a fine. Breathe another sigh of relief, which you realise you’ve been holding since 8:30am.

Step 19: Drive home, all the while working out what the next flight is out of Melbourne (4pm) and what time would be too late for your passport to arrive (since you should be at airport 2 hours before it, and it takes about half an hour to get from city to airport, so 1:30pm is the latest you need your passport by).

Step 20: Be restless and plan and re-plan your plans because what if you don’t get your passport today and it’s tomorrow so you’ll really only be picking it up on Wednesday because they said online it’s two business days and that’s the QUICKEST they can do and did you remember to tell them you needed to pick it up from the passport office because you’re a rule follower and the rules CLEARLY state that if you don’t do that then they’ll post it out to you which would make it come on Friday which is CLEARLY too late since you were supposed to be there on Sunday and-

Step 21: -receive notification that your passport is ready at 11:20AM!!!! REALISE MIRACLES DO EXIST IN THE WORLD. And that maybe rollercoasters could be fun?

CONGRATS! You have now received your new passport. Enjoy Singapore!

So yeah, there’s the easy-peasy, 21-step plan for getting a passport in less than 4 hours from application.

Chat soon :)

(P.S. If you've got any feedback for the newsletter, just hit the reply button!)

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📋Today's Pause of the Story

Results:

• Employer name: Potato Loop
• Path taken: Y'all wanted to go PURPLE which is great because it's gonna be exciting

HOWEVER, due to my current travel circumstances I'm not going to be able to do it justice 'til I get back to Melbourne. I think there's only about 5 - 7 of you who are following this most strongly, but even then, I wanna do it right for my own storytelling purposes.

So thank you for your continued patronage of The Story - see ya next week :D

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✔️Real Life Recommendations

1. Predator: Killer of Killers - 3.5 stars (but like, in the best way possible) - the Predator franchise is finally moving into the realm of animation just like Tales of the Jedi before it, and I am LOVING IT. There's just something you can do with the storytelling and techniques of animation that you can't really do with live action. Wanna see a dual shield-wielding Viking warrior viciously behead other warriors? Wanna see an amazingly heartfelt samurai story fighting Predators? ALL THIS AND MORE IN AN ANTHOLOGY STYLE MOVIE let's go!!

2. Chagee - another milk tea place like Molly Tea, with similar flavour but hella great packaging and marketing. Insulated bags given for free for your tea (to keep it cold / hot) and sign up offers on their app yes PLEASE. Shoutout to Soph for putting me on to this - it ain't in Melb yet but should be coming soon :D

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🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway

1. OpenAI charges by the minute, so make the minutes shorter - where there's a profit motive, there will be people motivated to reduce that profit as much as possible. Also see: upload an image with your long-ass query to use less tokens than if you had uploaded all of the query as text!

2. CSS Minecraft - niche af but it's Minecraft, but built only with HTML and CSS. WHAT?! Amazing.

3. Mario meets Pareto - with the advent of the new Super Mario World, I thought this again, VERY niche explanation of the Pareto principle using Mario Kart would be fun to dig up.