waiting at LIPI

Well, now I'm sitting on the 5th floor of a big building in Jakarta waiting for my paperwork to get done. It looks like I'll have to take the paperwork to the local police station to get signed, then bring it back here, and get some headshots on a red background, etc. There's no way around the bureaucracy, but the folks here at the Indonesian Academy of Sciences (LIPI is the Indonesian acronym) are very nice and helpful. The taxi ride here from the airport took an hour, as all rides basically do in this very congested, sprawling city. It's pouring rain, so lots of big grey towers fading off into the distance - the building boom here seems to be continuing unabated. The taxi ride was comfortable, and this paperwork will probably eat up most of the day today, but that's just par for the course, so I'm just relaxing and going with the flow.