The concepts of country and citizenship

I'm still getting to grips with the concepts of "country" and "citizenship." It appears that though I was born in Salford, my parents are from a distant land called Malaysia. Further, due to my Daddy being a Malaysian, I too am a Malaysian citizen. (But if "citizen" is from the root "city", shouldn't my Dad be a Kuantanite and I a Salfordian?)

Though born a Malaysian, to register my citizenship my family and I made a journey to a far away town called London, which is the capital (I guess the most important place) of the country I'm now in. There, we went to the Malaysian embassy, which is where a group of Malaysians represent the whole of Malaysia in a non-Malaysian piece of land.

In fact, to further complicate things for my wee four-month old head (albeit a rather large one), not only is the Malaysian embassy an embassy but is a High Commission. This seems to be what embassies of Commonwealth countries are called. Commonwealth countries being pieces of land formerly united and controlled by one land. Why anybody would want to occupy more land boggles my mind since I'm not quite yet exploring all the land on my playmat.

But I digress. At the embassy/High Commission, I registered my birth and signed up for a passport, which allows me to pass through the ports of the many different lands not in Salford or London.

Here are some pictures of me on the way to the High Commission, in a queue (I hear there's lot of queueing up in life!), and getting changed while in the queue.