Finally

Dear Me,

After almost a month of waiting, I already got my father's verified copy of birth certificate.

It was early August when I filed requests of copies of my folks' birth and marriage certificates. In two (2) weeks' time, I got a positive response from E-Census about their marriage certificate (got it via 2go). Unfortunately, I had to wait for quite a while for the delivery of their birth certificates to my office.

A few days later, came my mom's bc (via 2go, too). The search yielded negative because her bc is still rotting in her hometown's municipal/registrar office. I called up their hotline and inquired what would be the next step since I paid twice the amount of the supposed value of requesting for one. I was told to contact mom's hometown's municipal office and request that her bc be endorsed to the Central Office here in Manila. I was just wondering what was the logic of centralizing their system when requesters (like me) in that same situation be the one to contact the local office. See, it's like this. If you want to centralize your system, say for E-Census, why just NSO Main issue a mandate or order to all their local or provincial offices to forward all their data (okay, I also think that local offices should have copies of their own) to NSO Main? I know that it will be such a tedious job but (please enlighten me if I am wrong) that is what exactly they are doing, right? Anyway, I already told mother to contact her relatives back in Quezon and assist her in the process.

As for Papa's bc, well, it came in just now via Air21. I was expecting this one to be delivered to me the earliest. Well, NSO emailed me and said that they would have to re-validate since the copy that they had in the Central Office contained illegible entries. I asked what re-validating meant and according to them, it meant counter-checking the entries from the provincial archives back in Pampanga. Nyak. I asked how long it would take to get the requested copy and nobody replied anymore. And so I waited.

Well, I have it now. To my Tita M in the First World, copies of papa's bc and the mc will be on its way to you within this week.