Yea.. could have been worse..

I was ready for an adventure with DHA today. We went to ministry of education office to get his diploma an acknowledgment. It had been long time since I had to go thru government office procedure. It scared me. I kept thinking about many desks we had to go thru..

The office was just ten minutes from house. Piece of cake. I could also buy Amway stuff in the same building. Perfect! In the building, DHA missed the lift because it closed so quickly and no censor. It took awhile before we met in fourth floor.

The office was like.. an office. I mean no booth for public service. I went inside the glass door and tried to figure out how things worked. There were some eight men sitting and standing in empty space near the glass door. No clue. People just walked thru the crowd and shouted over the cubicles. Auch!

I approached the nearest desk with a busy lady. She told me that.. the office for us is in other place!! It’s near PS mall, 20 minutes drive in abnormal traffic. Glad the traffic was abnormal (normal in Jakarta = bad).

Getting a place to park was an experience. I drove up eight floors – in a narrow and dark parking building – to get a space. And the office in fifth floor was the same. One glass door had no life inside. One room was full of people but had a meeting. Uh oh.

Having asked someone near restroom, we found that there’s another glass door behind the lifts. Again, it’s the usual office without booth. When I asked a man, he pointed casually There! Where is there? Oh.. We were supposed to wait in a couch like in a living room, full of people, but they insisted us to sit! Being polite, we squeezed them to get two seats. Fun.

The officer handed DHA the form – three pages. Good DHA is old enough to fill in the form, I just supervised. In a few minutes, I handed the completed form and copies of document; he checked and interviewed DHA a bit. Back in one week. Done.

I was so happy. It finished in an hour or so since the wrong building. That’s great! Not bad eh? DHA said.. Yea.. could have been worse..

Photo of congklak -- traditional Javanese game board.