Last week, when I tried to get it, the church's staff said they couldn't find my name under December 1983. When I searched into their logbook myself, I found out that my surname there is actually CABURA, not CABRERA (and I knew it's me, wala naman kase sigurong ibang Aleydis na bininyagan din ng Dec 1983, diba). After the lady there explained the process for the name correction -- submit recent NSO birth certificate, get affidavit, have it changed in CAMP AGUINALDO, blah blah.. BASTA HASSLE -- for a split second I hated my parents for having "sulat doctor" handwriting. Coz obviously, cabura is far from cabrera BUT (tried this myself) if you write it in script, with the R having no curve, and with the E having no loop, CABURA will come out. In fact several times I've already seen this Cabura (or sometimes Cabiiii) especially in my dad's handwriting!
More than that, I was frustrated for not having a copy of my baptismal certificate to begin with! Coz if I do have one, things could have been corrected earlier. My mom's excuse was "there's no need to get it that time, and besides the church was just a block away if ever I needed it..." haay.
Of course that ranting was just out of stress - it was hot, it was in the middle of my work day AND worst of all, there's a long process of name change ahead. But anyway, I knew that nothing could be done but to go through it ASAP and so that same day I ordered my birth certificate online.
TODAY, my birth certificate came, so immediately I went to the church to start the affidavit thing. The personnel was different, Some guy there said the lady last week is on leave so he'll handle my case this time. When he checked my record, he said "ay obvious namang cabrera to, Galileo Cabrera ang tatay e. wag na tayo mag affidavit!"
When I looked at the logbook myself, I was surprised that he's looking at a DIFFERENT logbook -- the ACTUAL 1983 logbook with HANDWRITTEN names. And yes, on the first column was my name with the Cabrera that looked like "Cabura". And on the father's name field, was the "Cabrera" clearly written. Apparently it was the handwriting of the church's secretary that time (coz all names had the same handwriting. haha sorry naman sinisi ko pa magulang ko!) then that mano-manong logbook was later on migrated by the church into a computerized list, or the list they checked last week. Sooooo there. Summary:
I now have my baptismal certificate!
...and a useless birth certificate which I ordered online for P315!
I know riiiggghht. Obviously, so many things have gone wrong in that process! but I don't want to rant further. For now what's more important is to psyche myself up for ANOTHER complicated piece of paper - CONFIRMATION CERTIFICATE.
2 comments:
ay talagang baptismal at confirmation certificate ang hiningi sa inyo? Yung sa amin kasi, confirmation certificate lang (since hindi ka naman makukumpilan kung hindi ka nabinyagan)..
but at least, one item uli yung na-cross out mo sa checklist mo :)
that's one thing i hate about the process -- ndi sha uniform across all catholic churches. that's one - others ask for baptismal, others don't. another example - some churches require that the baptismal cert is at most 3 months old, sa iba wlang expiration (like ours, thank God!).
Sa CSA, where I was confirmed, it's a pre-requisite na dapat ipakita yung baptismal cert. which is absurd kase pano ako macoconfirm noon kung di ako baptized? dapat noon palang (nung grade 3 ako) hiningi na yun...
but yeah at the end of the day, at least on item crossed out na! :)
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