The new digitally encoded Malaysian passports are cool when they work. Otherwise, they can become potentially destructive.

I have an old passport and coming through immigration recently at the KLIA, I joined my rightful queue next to the one by those going through the machine-processed ones.

Then, the computers stopped processing. The unfortunate guy whose passport the machine would not read, was led by the immigration officer overlooking those going through that gate to the officer processing those on my queue. He obviously had the officially sanctioned privilege of cutting my queue, but that was all right as I figured it was a one-off thing.

Then the next guy using the "smart" queue had the same problem and he too was guided over to be processed by the officer on my queue. The third guy, who appeared to be a friend of the second guy, who followed, faced the same problem at the gates and his friend signalled him to move over and have his passport manually processed.

By this time it was becoming a little annoying as my queue had stopped moving. We were all silent.

Then the fourth guy on the "smart" queue, without even bothering to test if the machine could read his passport, jumped into the space between the line holding my queue back and the immigration officer's window. That got me steaming. Worse, the fifth guy on the "smart" queue was also looking to jump into the queue ahead of me!

I did not keep quiet. I just turned around and told those behind me that it was about time we ordered dinner as it would seem like the people on the "smart" queue appeared to think that they had priority over our queue.

I repeated this to the fifth guy looking to head me off, sarcastically inviting him over. The fourth guy, whose passport was now being processed by the immigration officer, turned around and had the audacity to suggest that it was only fair that people on both queues should alternate!

The two other immigration officers standing behind the gates at the "smart" queue just watched and did absolutely nothing. I was almost inclined to hold back my queue and allow the rest of the "smart" people through, as I knew my transport from the airport was going to be an hour late so I had to wait anyway. The fourth guy was inviting me to a fight by the tone of his voice. I ignored him as I could not give him that dignity. Besides, those behind me were also getting edgy.

The fifth guy backed off and started looking to the back of my queue and I could see that that was the general direction that the rest on the "smart" queue were looking at, as it should be.

I took my turn at the window. The immigration officer asked me what happened. I told him that it was not his fault, just to be friendly. I told him that if the machines don't work, too bad, those on that queue should just move over and join the back of any other queue and not think they have any right of placing in another queue. He agreed with me and even said that the fourth guy was not exactly exhibiting any friendly attitude.

It was indeed a near fracas. At least some amount of sarcasm was displayed, both by me as well as that fourth guy. After a 10-hour flight, fighting fatigue and jet lag, this is one of the last things we'd need.

The "smart" failures are going to continue to happen. In the absence of directions the unpleasant situation I faced is going to continue to happen. May I suggest that the immigration department immediately place signs over at the "smart" queues that in any failures to read by the machines, that the passenger or even the entire queue immediately backs out and joins the back of the "not so smart" queues.

Let not anyone try to invent new rules about how queues should work in a multiple-queue system whereupon should one queue be closed, the people on it have a preordained right of placing on some other queue. After all we have all at some time or other faced the ignominy of joining the wrong queue only to find out that we have to move over to another one. At which point we join the back of the queue that we move into. Maybe this is one moral lesson that should be part of the school curriculum!