Before monsoon

Itz been a tough summer. This was my first summer this close to the coast, and it was real hot. In any case itz all gonna be over in about a weeks time. It was also lots of work both on my professional front and also at home. Deepu was busy with her studies and I was with my work. With family also visiting us, the evenings were fun. we'd either go to the beaches or some times just video chat on skype with Aravind and Amar. But otherwise, we hardly went out anywhere apart for the evening walks on the beach or for a movie to ADLABS at Mangalore. Our new schedule in the evenings has been the newly developed Manipal University grounds. The lush green grass and the flood lit atmosphere in the evenings is tempting to the extent that I now finish off with my office by 6 and Me and Deepu drive to Manipal for an evening jog on most of the days. The problem is, after about a week it would be difficult to use it during the monsoons.

As with the Udupi Stadium, I had mentioned that we were planning a complete change over, and work has just begun on this. We are now hurriedly trying to complete with the ground leveling work and the storm drains before the rains and probably in August when the first phase of rains are over we'll try to put up the grass part. The stands are all done and it has come up pretty well. The month of May also kept us busy with changes in the City traffic. We have planned out One-Way Traffic on two major roads of Udupi and to get this launched we had to first get a lot of roads widened. Udupi being a historic medieval temple town, the roads are hardly planned for any vehicular traffic. All that we could do was, to get removed all the petty shops and encroachments along the roads that had mushroomed in the years. The work is still progressing and lots of appreciation from road users too. But the plight of the petty shop keepers who have to shift their decades old business, overnight was definitely not something I perhaps wanted to do. We are still trying our best to resettle them as quickly as possible. I'll keep updating on the blogs to come.... hopefully soon.