The blogger's world

The blogger’s world

                                                             Source : Google photo

Synopsis : This blog is to show my thanks to all my readers worldwide  and tell them why I started to write in the first place.


Let me admit that I am no professional writer and I do not write for money or for publicity. It came about when I was working in Burundi and lived alone in a village with solitude for company and a dachshund in the evenings. The village was a small one with no vehicular traffic and few people so it became eerily quiet after the day was over when the birds returned to their nest, people too went home and the dogs with no one to howl at became quiet.

My dachshund I named Jumbo was a quiet type and after messing around whole day in the village chasing chickens and other things came home to get his evening meal and he too retired to sleep on the sack of charcoal that was his favorite bed.  This left me alone pondering on many things while some soft music played on my cassette tape player.

A night watchman kept watch whole night while I slept so I often gave him food. I missed my wife and two kids who lived in the Philippines and could only see them once a year during my home leave so I paid for their visit to Burundi during their summer months.

Karuzi is really a small village with only two stores, a small clinic, one drug store, the agricultural school and the police station. The governor lived just across the street while Jumbo often chased his chickens but Jumbo was not too particular. He chased chickens for fun but not really to kill them although the chickens did not know that so they scattered whenever Jumbo appeared on his ridiculous short legs.

So I started to write my biography so that our kids would know how I spent my childhood and what I did as a young man in Vietnam during the war. I had a computer so writing was not that difficult so one day I finished it and thought of sending the manuscript to the Philippines. I did not show it to anyone.

When I returned to the Philippines in 1994 after quitting my last assignment in Sudan, I set aside the manuscript for a long time and eventually had it printed and bound for my kids.

Many years passed. The kids grew up, went to college nearby and one by one graduated and left for higher studies in Australia and the United States. Once our big house was full but now only my wife Jasmine and I live here. The rooms are empty and the lanai where our German shepherd dog I named Levko stayed is eerily quiet because he died.

The evenings here remind me of that village of Burundi that was so quiet; you could start hearing voices which is not a good sign. But here I am not alone because Jasmine is here by my side.

So about one year ago I started to think about sharing my biography with you all readers no matter where you are in this big world and put it out as an e-book ( widbook.com) in five  languages ( English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese) and was very  surprised that more than 10788 readers took to reading it in many countries.  

I had also made more than 100 power points on subjects like the art and craft of Africa, of Japan, of China, of India, history of Egypt, India and China, master artists of Australia, Europe, India, China and Japan, arts and crafts of the native Americans and the native Australians, birds of India, Islamic art, wildlife in Africa, India, butterflies, glass wares of Europe and numerous other topics.

So one day I put all of my power points in the internet and uploaded all of them in the One drive where anyone can see them. Then I put all of my photos from various countries and slides into CD and sent the CD to my children.

Then the idea of writing blogs came about because the internet offers wonderful blog sites where anyone can write and post his or her blogs. I had no idea when I started that I will write over 90 blogs someday on various topics and continue to write but what surprised me most was the reception I received from you from all over the world that is nothing short of wonderful.

I will list here all the countries where you reside and continue to read my humble words and give me feedback. The blogs are posted in English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese in websites like wordpress.com, Blogger.com, Wixsite.com, Simplesite.com, Medium.com and Poptype.com apart from my e book in Wid book.com. 

The countries where my blogs and biography are read are as follows :

USA, Philippines, Ukraine, India, Canada, Australia, U.K., Spain, New Zealand, Russia, Iraq, Pakistan, France, Finland, Holland, Kenya, Croatia, Czech Republic, Indonesia, Cambodia, Italy, Brazil ,Saudi Arabia, Germany, Ireland, E.U., Cameroon, Argentina, Serbia, UAR, Poland, Switzerland, Colombia, Japan, Denmark,  Tunisia, Guadeloupe, Morocco, Mexico, El Salvador, Panama, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Peru, Madagascar, Brazil, Turkey, Vietnam, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Israel, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Venezuela, Hungary, Thailand, Azerbaijan, Latvia, Finland, South Africa, Chile, Sweden, Mauritania, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Benin, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Egypt, Portugal, Romania, Iran and China.

It is truly amazing that in so many countries you my readers are reading what I write and many of you encourage me to continue to write. I am very grateful to all of you no matter where you are for all your support and encouragement because I am just a first time writer and have no experience in doing so.

Someday surely I will stop writing but will always cherish the thought that I have been able to touch your heart all over the world through my writings. Therefore I do not feel alone because I am blessed with such a large number of readers in faraway countries that I will never be able visit in my life time but I feel that a bond is created between us that will endure.

I thank all of you who have read my blogs 7232 times and continue to do so every single day. If the Google translation I use to make blogs in German, Spanish, French and Japanese are not up to the mark then just forgive me. A reader from Spain told me that the Google translation has improved dramatically since they have started using AI (artificial intelligence) guided neural translation which is much better than the literal translation they previously used. I hope you will help me improve them if you feel the need.

Blogging is way to share with the world what is in your head. The internet allows you to do that in a way that was not possible a while ago. The blog community constantly posts blogs about how to improve your blog, how to get more people to read them, how to better present the theme and the graphics and so on.

Honestly I have never followed any of their advice because I feel that people who like what I write will share them with their friends. Now sharing has been made easier through the Google + and various social media like the facebook, twitter etc.

I have encouraged many of my friends to write about their rich personal experiences they acquired in many countries and share them with the world but so far I have not been able to succeed with them.

Once I was in Phnom Penh where I met a lady near the Toul Sleng torture center where the Khmer Rouge people killed thousands of innocent people. It is a haunted place where the torture tools and the thousands of photos of the victims are still found reminding you what horrors took place there.

The lady told me that she and her whole family suffered in their hands during that dark period so I told her to write her story so that it could be shared with the world. She told me that she spoke only a little English and could not really write anything in English but I persisted so finally one day her first chapter came through the e mail. It was a brave effort of a woman who really could not write anything in English so I edited it and sent it back to her for approval.

Thus little by little she kept writing and I kept editing the chapters so one day it was finished and I put it on the net. It is a tragic story written by a woman who suffered a great deal.

It is now published as the Rising from the Ashes by Sivath.

So read it in my Wordpress.com site and send your feedback. I will then forward them to her.  

I have written about many people who made a difference in my life and in the life of others. It is my way of honoring them by bringing their stories to you. Many such people are dead but I was able to put out their stories in the internet so that my readers could share them and know about them. No one did anything for them but I could not keep quiet. You will read about many such people in my blogs although I do not name them. Only I mentioned the name of the pioneer of the green revolution in Asia Dr.Surajit Kumar De Datta in the blog called The Unsung hero which many of you have read and now know that he is a great scientist. He was also my mentor.

We all have the desire to tell our stories but most just tell it to their friends or none at all which is a great a loss. I believe that if you have something worth writing about then people will read them. Thanks once again for being with me. Cheers.


Note :  My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese  languages at the following links :

tumblr posts    
Blogs in French
Blogs in Spanish
Blogs in German
Blogs in Japanese
Anil's biography in Japanese
Anil's biography in French.
Anil's biography in English.
Anil's biography in Spanish.
Anil's biography in German