Welcome to India!

A new day and thoughts of lots of work to get done, with lots that got done, but it was also a day that had its moments.

Sunday in Kochi during Ramzan (Ramadan) should be a day to get lots done. Up at 7am and on to the computer, still eating the fruit basket Freeda left and chatting with Jay and Ria in Ohio about a number of matters. Then it was on to the editorial for the next issue of JMH (Journal of Management History) - late to the publisher (the fabulous Kim Foster) and the pressure was on to come up with a useful piece; finally finished this evening, in between other emails and such (including a visit to the St John Bosco Church in the High Court precinct for mass with Ajith).

The internet contact is a bit frustrating - the "new" technology in India is CDMA, which is just about to be switched off in Australia and the rest of the world - 256kb connection is not too speedy, especially when you're trying to deal with the memory hungry rubbish that accompanies every email page on Bigpond (I've finally given up on it and forwarding all my email to Gmail).

And so to the real fun of today. Keeping an eye on the Liverpool-Spurs game, I nipped across to the Imperial Restaurant to pick up a veg biriyani and bottle of water for dinner. Togged out in my mundu and new sandals and shirt, I was feeling very "local" and pleased with myself, until I had returned to find the lock on the door to the apartment "frozen" and refusing to respond to the key (or my plaintive pleas). While the gateman and I are on "nodding" terms, his English is as good as my Malayalam and so we had the next door neighbour also trying (along with the secretary of the apartment block) until Ajith arrived with a spare key.

As I had suspected, the lock was broken and would not yield to any of the ministrations. Finally the gateman was instructed to jemmy the door open by the secretary on the basis that the lock producer should pay for the door to be fixed because of a shoddy product that is under guarantee (we'll see about this). What I was more staggered by was that all four of my good samaritans went through exactly the same process of interrogating me as to what I had done when I had left the apartment, trying the key to see if it would work (numerous times), looking at the other keys on the chain (even though none of them could possibly be of assistance) and finally saying "I think the lock is not working". As per the title of this blog "welcome to India"!

Back inside an hour later with a door that is only lockable from the inside, I'm reliably informed it will be fixed tomorrow (again we shall see). Ah well - cold biriyani and water: "breakfast of champions"!