The much awaited Monsoon has hit Kerala today. The met department made an official announcement of the same this afternoon.
Conditions are favorable for further advance monsoon into some parts of central Arabian Sea, coastal & south interior Karnataka and Goa during next 48 hours.
Further advance of monsoon will depend upon the intensity and direction of movement of the low pressure area currently lying over central Arabian Sea at 0830 hours IST of today.
Light pre monsoon showers hit the city at about 7.30 pm. The weather is very cool and people have got respite from the heat.
As of now the monsoon will hit Belgaum anytime between 5 June and 10 June. Which is on time.
If the rains come on time citizens will not have to face any more water scarcity as the Rakaskop reservoir has just 7 feet of water left.
Hope we have a wonderful Rainy season.

A devotee Vinay Kollumath, who hails from Belgaum in north Karnataka and works as software professional in Bangalore, suffered a minor injury as the bullet brushed past his right thigh. He too talked to the media and said he was not sure whether Ravi Shankar had left the complex or not as he was trying to find out what was causing him severe pain suddenly in his thigh. He said he was not near the convoy of the spiritual leader.
An unidentified person shot a bullet after the satsang was over yesterday in Bangalore.

Belgaumite Swati Gambhir and her husband Sunil Laxman Shinde (Pune) were killed in a car crash in USA. The crash happened at about 5:30 p.m. Monday.
The State Patrol said a Lincoln Zephyr entering the freeway struck a Toyota Corolla, causing it to lose control and cross the median. The Lincoln kept going. The Toyota was struck by a Chevy Tahoe and Volkswagen Golf. Then a Kenworth semitrailer struck all three vehicles.
The woman and man in the Toyota died at the scene. They were identified Tuesday as Swati Manohar Gambhir, 32, and Sunil Laxman Shinde, 35. They were from Germantown County of Maryland.

Anyone interested in helping can check Swati and Sunil's profiles on orkut where regular updates are being posted by friends who are trying to handle the legal formalities there.

After some technical hiccups and delays, BSNL has launched its 3 G services in Belgaum and Gokak from Saturday 29 May.
Applications like video telephony, mobile broadband, mobile television and video-on-demand will be offered to consumers with immediate effect. The 3G services will bring high quality voice services along with high-speed data and video services. The data speed is expected to go up to 2 Mbps or higher.
Source: Advertisement of BSNL

The date is out Inox Chandan will open its doors Belgaum cine goers from June 4^th.
The INOX Chandan will have THREE SCREENs and total capacity of 897 persons.

Disclaimer: opening date has been told to us by our sources and some technical snags could take the launch forward.

Belgaum: In the city today Gold soared to a high of Rs.19100 for 10 grams and Silver touched Rs.288 for 10 grams.
In the recent past Gold has become dearer thanks to the Marriage season.

From a bulky box at the center of family life to a gizmo for the iFirst generation, the radio has shrunk in size. The memories haven’t.
Then one has to have a license from the Director General P&T to operate the radio.
The bulky radios of the 1960s that came with valves, aerial wiring and earthing and took long minutes to warm up before the first cackle came through are now the stuff of reminiscences and mostly a Murphy.
Here is a journey back to the 1960's after one sees that Radio License issued on 6-3-1968 to Smt.Deshpande of Hindwadi. The license fees were Rs.15 for a new one and Rs.3 for renewal every year. An additional radio in the same premises meant another Rs.3 as fees.

For the new generation who haven't seen Murphy radio and never knew that a license was needed yes, the license raj did exist then. Later on it was removed with time.
All the images have been shared by Uday Deshpande.
Thanks to him for preserving a part of history.

Vikas Patnekar is talented young water colour artist from Belgaum who studied under the guidance of Late Shri. K.B. Kulkarni. Vikas has received a number interesting commissions during 2006 and 2007 and his paintings now hang in the offices of the British Deputy High Commission in Mumbai, the Mumbai and Delhi offices of Macquarie Bank and the office of Impact India Foundation. They have now also reached the shores of USA, Australia and the UK, where Lord Attenborough now has two of his paintings hanging in his home. 
Today the 27^th May happens to be his birthday, Happy Birthday Vikas!! Keep your brush painting.
 Born in 1966, Vikas Patnekar was born and educated in his home town Belgaum. He studied at Benyon Smith high school Belgaum.
 When reflecting back on the past Vikas always states that it was such a blessing to have grown up in Belgaum where he had to create his own entertainment from the natural world that always surrounded him. He lived in his imagination and expressed himself through drawing and painting.
 After completing his education in 1985, Patnekar relocated to Mumbai in search of job opportunities. Finally, after slogging, he landed a job as an illustrator at an advertising agency. In addition he freelanced for various advertising agencies in Mumbai and gulf countries. Finally, in 1997, Patnekar made a major career decision to leave advertising in pursuit of his muse – watercolors. He loves to portray the villages, the green fields, the ever buzzing streets in India , waterfalls, the miseries, etc.
 For an artist, life is very interesting when looked at very closely. For the past 22 years. Continuing, he shares his enthusiasm for watercolor painting, the joy of spontaneous creation that comes with watercolor and the emotional release of telling a story of the beautiful world around him. Vikas believes an artist’s work should reflect what’s going on inside the artist. An artist should always bring in some kind of emotions or feelings into his work and when it comes, there is a possibility that the painting might look wonderful. Secondly, an artist should never describe a painting verbally. He has to leave it up to the viewer to decide.
 Vikas has always said that he is not interested in just painting pretty landscapes or seascapes unless he can pull some deep feelings out of it, because REPRESENTATION is not ART! In addition, he feels one has to see the drama in the ordinary. It is all there, if one will only take time to discover it.
His collections are at the following places:
Alex de Grunwald - England, Claire Tuhey -England, Lord Attenborough - England, Maurice Sinclaire -Australia, Helen Deas - England, Stuart Smythe -Australia,
Fraser Kitione - Figi, Helen Balke -Germany, Peter Forby -Australia, Fred Means -England,
Rachel Eccleston - England, Dedorah Shurvell - England, Phill Michell -Australia, Garry Luton - Canada, And many more in India and abroad.
 Contact details:
Vikas Patnekar
B/14, Sainam C.H.S., B.P. Road,
Kandarpada, Dahisar (W),
Mumbai - 400 068. (India)
Email: vikpats@vikaspatnekar.in

Belgaum has seen some very good inflow of funds in the form of the special grant from the Chief Minister and under the said scheme a new project has been finalized by the city corporation and the draft proposal has been forwarded to the govt. for approval.
The proposal is of building an INDOOR STADIUM on the vacant land of the corporation near Dharmanath Circle MalMaruti Extension.
The stadium will be built on 2 lakh 60 thousand sq foot with an indoor stadium of 35 thousand sq.feet area.
A swimming pool has also been planned in the same premises.
Another attraction of the stadium will be the LASER show to be installed in the stadium.
Still this is a proposal and the same has been sent for approval.

Here are two pictures (not so great) from top of one of the tallest buildings in town.
Photos: Uday.
There are more photos taken by Mr.Akash Patil which will be uploaded in due course.

Click on the photo to see the large size image

Belgaum looks green and beautiful from the top of eight floor building. (name not disclosed for security reasons, but one can easily guess).
Click on the photo to see the large size image

The recent mishap at the Mangalore airport has made the people, the government and the airlines as well to think at the airports Tier-II cities like Mangalore, Mysore, Hassan and Belgaum.
Civil aviation experts say that government has neglected these tier II cities and have foucused more on lucrative metro airports.
Take Mysore for example, which was inaugurated on May 15 still has no flights from there and now after the Mangalore incident no airline is willing to use smaller runways.
Belgaum is no excuse with no commercial flights for over a year now the new terminal building built will be in rags in no time.
The airport has good potential for growth. In addition to night landing facilities and fire-fighting crew, it is equipped with Navigational Aid (DVOR) used by international aircraft flying over Belgaum airspace (more than 100 domestic and international aircraft fly over Belgaum every day) from which the income to the AAI is much more than what is got by providing landing facilities to airplanes. VOR/DME and NDB are available on 24-hour basis while VHF main/stand-by is available during ATC watch hours. At present, scheduled flights are not being operated but only unscheduled ones, including those of the Indian Air Force.


AAI is spending about Rs.17 lakhs every month on establishment costs and maintenance of the airport.
The AAI wanted to upgrade the Sambra airport to facilitate landing of bigger aircraft. About 370 acres of land was required to extend the length of the runway from 4,500 ft. to 7,500 ft. and for construction of a second terminal. Partial land acquisition has been done but no work other than the terminal building is complete even after it was announced in 2006.
Not many airlines are interested in flying from these places due to lack of passengers.
The Airports Authority of India (AAI) spent Rs3534.62 crore in the 10th Plan and is expecting to spend Rs12417.17 crore in the 11th Plan period. Currently, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore are operated by private companies, along with AAI, under the private public partnership (PPP) model. On the other hand, the government has not been able to rope in private partners for most of the Tier-II airports.
The recent mishap at Mangalore have made people raise their eyebrows when they hear of these tier II cities airports.
Actress Ramya, a self-confessed white-knuckle flyer said that Private jets and helicopters also have higher crash rates, so when she was invited to Belgaum for a function and the organisers offered to arrange a private aircraft, she politely declined.

Source: DNA
Image courtesy Sahir Kittur