I live here now. Have for 5 months. Some quick observations:

1) the food is incredible and diverse. Best ice cream I have ever had at Natural Ice Cream, a chain. Indian food is obviously good and cheap. But there are great restaurants -- at a third of the price of US restaurants -- everywhere.

2) I belong to a beautiful club now with squash courts, treadmills, restaurants, etc. The tennis courts even have free ball boys. It costs about $2300 a year for my whole family...a pricey club my Mumbai standards, but dirt cheap by US standards. I should add that I am not a club kind of guy, but there is very little public infrastructure here, so without a club, hard to stay in shape and to keep little kids entertained on weekends.

3) there are lots of great schools for kids here...very progressive...and dirt cheap, by US standards.

4) getting around by motorize rickshaws is cheap, fast, and a bit dangerous.

5) traffic is beyond belief bad.

6) the raw poverty and shanty downs don't bother me so much anymore. Guess it's like seeing a lot of violence on TV -- you get so used to it, it doesn't faze you.

7) the insanity of the roads -- with rickshaws, animals, people, cars, buses, you name it -- doesn't faze me anymore, probably for the same reason as number 6 above.

8) culturally, I find Indians (and I realize this is a HUGE generality) different in this way: they take the world as it comes at them. This is a big positive, in that they don't get all stressed about stuff like Americans. And this is a big negative, in that they don't try to fix things like Americans do, which is why this place is still a third world country, at least in part.

9) it really is boom here. That's not just media hype. Buildings and companies are being built all the time, and they are starting to make money and export goods.

That's enough for now. More later.