At the end of a perfect day (with apologies to Chris De Burgh)

And so, dear reader, I come to the end of my first week as a resident of India and, as I look round my Kochi apartment on a Thursday night at about 10.20pm my thoughts are "Yes, I can do this!" That's a yes, I can play a role with my colleagues in establishing a world class management research and education institution in Kochi in time for the first group of students in September 2008, yes, I can live here in India while I do so.

My observations to this point have been fairly evenly distributed between what's happening at the International Business School and the events either side of those activities here at "home" (I put the quotation marks here, not to say that I don't recognise this as home; rather it is a recognition that it is a bit early to use the term in an unqualified sense - for the uninitiated, this is the very annoying habit of an academic (some would say pedant) who tries for accuracy even at the sake of clarity and simplicity).

Anyway, I wanted to take this opportunity, at a time when the Indian Rupee is currently being exchanged at the rate of 35 for every Aussie dollar, to comment on my standard of living (at least in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP)). Earlier in the week, Ajith had kindly taken me to the shops for clothes, sandals and such and that was an interesting mix of incredibly cheap and surprisingly "expensive", although by the time I'd walked away with shirts, trousers, mundus, towels and such, I didn't feel at all burdened by debt.

Day to day living though, continues to stagger me. At the moment, it's Ramzan (Ramadan) and, because my local eatery (The Imperial) is managed by a very welcoming and friendly group of Muslim guys, I haven't been able to impose on them for breakfast (I'm getting up with the sun but, because the sun is up, no food is cooked) and so I've been skipping same (yes, naughty, I know). Lunch has been welcomed then with a delightful vegetarian biryani (basmati rice and vegetables) for about 41 rupees (you do the sums on the exchange rate). By the time I get home for dinner, our friends at the Imperial are waiting for me and so, as I reported last night, I trek across the "road" (I must get a photo of the current state of the space between my side of the "street" and where the Imperial is - well worth a shot) to place my order.

Tonight's dinner was a bit of a splurge, because I added a couple of chocolate coated ice-creams (at 10 rupees apiece) but the basic meal was the same as it has been during the week: vegetable marsala and 4 chappathi (31 rupees) and two 2-litre bottles of water (20 rupees each) (one bottle to drink and one to build up the stocks). Total cost for dinner, 71 rupees. On a normal night when I'm not being naughty with ice-creams, that's 51 rupees. At least it means that, when the time comes to splurge on the bottle of red wine that I haven't been having on the odd occasion, I should have enough rupees to be able to buy a reasonable drop (this is one thing where the PPP formula doesn't appear to operate).

Anyway, all in all a good week, a busy week, a week that augers well for what we want to achieve and how we plan to go about doing so.