Visas. Blech. I dedicated today to getting as many as possible from the countries that demand them, and ended up with zero.

The Vietnamese embassy is up the fourth floor of a featureless office tower. It is a single room, split in half by a metal detector that no one is manning. A single high-speed woman runs the show from behind bulletproof glass, despite a sign showing the hours of the embassy. It closed just barely into afternoon. No one seems to have noticed, cetrainly not the guy who is pleading with the lone functionary. The woman hands you a single page form that takes all of 60 seconds to fill out but which demands extra passport photos attached. After a quick trip to the kinkos around the corner, you hand in the form. The woman looks it over and tells you that you're submitting it too early to be processed. Try again closer to your trip.

The Indian embassy is a house on the border between a business district and a residential slum. It actually closed at the ungodly early hour the sign on the door says. There's a lone window still open where a woman accepts paperwork. You ask her about getting an Indian Visa, and she tells you happily that it's all outsourced and online now.

The Russian Embassy takes up an expensive looking gated house in a nice residential neighborhood. It was open 'til five, which you just missed. A final trickle of balding men in business suits is leaving it.