Alibaba: A Global Business to Business (B2B) Facilitator!

I am an admirer of Jack Ma and his Chinese company Alibaba-the Alibaba Group Holding Limited, to be precise. If you have not known about this man and his company, you missed some thing. Better click the hyperlinks to read and know more!

From what I have known, in just about two decades, Jack Ma a relatively unsuccessful ordinary man in China played the role in building up this global giant of a company making the company and himself both successful and world renowned.

What is remarkable is that this business model was initiated by some one in China and the founder of the company used the name of a legendary hero of an Arabian folklore as his company name!

Alibaba surely have been opening up the gates of fortune for thousands of business men and traders across the globe ever since its inception. It has made global sourcing and procurement very easy. The company uses the potential of internet and e-commerce to its full advantage making it a win-win situation for itself and its clients!

All kinds of machinery, raw materials and bulk products can be searched, sourced and procured internationally using Alibaba's internet platform in a competitive manner. This is much beneficial for retailers, business men and industries in every nook and corner of the world today. Alibaba has made the world looks smaller, taking advantage of the internet to it maximum. This company has been helping the products of Chinese mainland to reach the nook and corners of the rest of the world with comparative easiness!

Alibaba is perhaps the pioneering company in the world that utilized the new world order of opened up international trade to its highest potential.

Business men and local traders around the world should explore the international online market place as provided by Alibaba for their growth and success!

Beware of These Frauds! They Keep Trying All Kinds of Phishing Methods!

I have been getting scores of emails and SMS messages announcing me as some winner of some lottery promoted in the name of world famous companies and requesting me to part with some personal information such as bank account details for the company to process the millions of dollars lottery amount to my account. 

The first time I got such an email was some 8 years ago. That time such e-mail frauds were not so well known. Yet my common sense warned me of the likely fraudster or fraudsters behind such a mail. 

I wanted to know more about it and I forwarded the mail to FBI who promptly confirmed the scam.

Since then, I have seen such mails and mobile phone SMS messages in various forms. The fraudulent people behind such activities continue with their acts because they still get a few fellows who get in to their phishing net due to greed for making quick money. 

Today too I got such an email. The subject of the mail said: Confirmation. The sender's email address was given as nandita.anuradha@cognizant.com. I do not know whether there exist a genuine email account holder in that email id or whether the fraudsters have made some software goof ups to send mail using this mail id.

The mail contained a word file attachment. The content of this world file document had been made to look as if it is very genuine. Let me reproduce some of the content below:

CHEVROLET AUTOMOBILE COMPANY

Chevrolet UK PLC, Griffin House,

UK1-101-135, Osborne Road,

Luton, Bedfordshire LU1 3YT

Register company number: 4533384

Telephone: +447010052776

http://www.chevrolet.co.in/enjoy-mpv.html

                                                                                           STAR PRIZE WINNER!

Dear Sir/Madam,               

This is to inform you that you have won a BRAND NEW Chevrolet Cruse CAR and cash prize of  3.6 Crore INR the car comes with a special CHEVROLET INSURANCE Cover for one whole year that is till the next promotion. It also comes with a one year warranty and FREE repairs at any CHEVROLET AUTOMOBILE   depot or service center worldwide. Your Batch No: 515944052/166 and Winning No: 1544 make you as one of the lucky winner in our 2015 Charity bonanza. You are to contact our claims manager on this Email :( ukclaimchvy@outlook.com) with the below details for claims.

Please Fill the Information below:

MAKE SURE YOU SEND THESE DETAILS TO (ukclaimchvy@outlook.com) FOR THE RELEASE OF FUND

          

1. Full Name:

2. Full Address:

3. State:

4. Occupation:

5. Age:

6. Sex:

7. Mobile Number:  

8. Country

9. Winning Email:

NOTE: - YOU ARE TO IMMEDIATELY SEND YOUR COMPLETE INFORMATION TO OUR AGENT FOR IMMEDIATE PROCESS OF WINNING ON THIS EMAIL ID ONLY :- (ukclaimchvy@outlook.com)

For those who are aware of the internet and the types of internet frauds, the above is nothing new. But for those who are innocent new comers, these are potential dangers.

When a gullible person replies with the personal details, the clever fraud masters behind the scenes use that information for various purposes. In the beginning they may reply you appearing as genuine as possible and make you provide more information and personal data which will finally land you in bigger problems. They might use the data to manipulate your bank accounts and many other such fraudulent acts which only fraudsters can think of.

So, dear reader! Beware of such phishing (unauthorized attempt to gain confidential personal information for fraudulent use later) attempts. Do not get in to the trap, even when the mails and messages appear very genuine.

It is also very important to keep in mind that no banks or financial agencies send you emails of SMS compelling you to part with personal data. In case you receive such a message, make it doubly sure from the concerned office about the genuineness of that mail or message.

You may also read the warnings given by the police authorities of a few other countries such as the UK, Australia , India and  Canada.

If you notice some thing of a very serious kind of fraud, you may make a complaint with the Serious Fraud Investigation Office in India.

How My Twitter Account Failed Me?

To be very honest, I was not very enthusiastic about twitter, the social networking and messaging site which is very popular among the so called elite intelligentsia of the world. So some time ago I thought of having a taste of it lest I would be left out in today's competitive race where every one tried to prove his or her mettle.

So I googled out twitter and got in to it by becoming a registered user. I got a twitter handle and was ready to tweet out to the rest of the world.

Soon I was learning the rules of the game that the twitter team had deviced for the tweeters. 

My tweets are of no use unless I have similar idiots like me who follow me. So I should now learn the game of making followers!

But the problem is who in the world would follow an idiot like me? No one ever would like to be a follower of any one else because all are greater than every one else according to their own assessments.

The world follows only celebrities and celebrities are either good looking women who know the art of making a beeline of followers for them or those handsome men who possess the traits that attract the former.

The rest are either the trapped followers of the celebrities or the unfortunate commoners who aspire to become celebrities by imitating the tricks and tactics of the ones who have transformed themselves to the celebrity status already.

In to this twitter pool of celebrities and their followers another group of tweeters try to catch some fish. They are the marketeers and their affiliates with all kinds of tricks to sell products and services.

The man or woman with millions of followers in twitter become a potential high value advertiser as his or her tweets could potentially influence millions in a second. 

And the free twitter for individual tweeters made billions from this game! And all these things are made possible through computer software which looked so simple for the individual but extremely complex from the inside!

That made twitter a global IT corporate giant.

But in what way it is of some use for people like me? I tried and tried to find its use, but I was soon to get disappointed.

No one is there to read my tweets which only appear for a few seconds for those of my followers, that too when they are glued to their computer or android mobile screens connected to the internet.

Who the hell has such time to be like that always?

If commoners like me are to gain followers, the only way out is follow some one expecting that person to reciprocate that gesture. It happens very rarely. That is what I realized soon.

Then came the offers from many marketeers who offered millions of follower, if I shell out some money. So followers are on sale on twitter! Why should I buy followers if I am not a marketeer of products and services or even a seeker of political or religious popularity?

The twitter fellows do not allow the tweeters to upload tweets which are more than 140 characters. I do not know why they kept that limit. Perhaps their computer servers get jammed if tweets are longer!

So it became a prerequisite for the tweeters to self master the art of tweet making which are within the 140. And when you log in you are perplexed by the kinds of tweets flash in and out and you go mad!

But twitter makes automatic short links and tweet it if the tweeter wants to tweet a link. With lot of efforts I became successful in making 600 odd followers and began to tweet these blog page links.

To my utter dismay, hardly any one noticed it or got interested.

So I decided to end the game of the twitter game any way. Fortunately, twitter or some one in the internet ocean sensed my intention and one fine morning I found my twitter account not getting opened on my PC.

That was some months ago. Today, a thought came to mind to have a check on my twitter identity. Luckily this time twitter page opened up on my google chrome browser (which was not happening earlier!) 

I knew my handle id but forgot the password. I tried the forgot password link to reset my password. It worked halfway and stopped.

I stopped my attempt to revive it for now and thought of sharing that experience here.

But there is a lesson that we should remember from this incident. The internet highway and the computer networks are the hand work of millions of computer code writers and they are bound to make mistakes here and there. And such mistakes could cause harmless difficulties for the twitter tweeters like me.

But it could cause harmful difficulties as well. Better we prepared for it!

Bankbazaar: The Best Online Site for Making Well Informed Decisions on Bank Loans, Bank Deposits and Insurance in India

Post liberalization and with the prolific growth of digital information technology (IT) and IT-enabled services, India has become a hot spot of both software companies and companies that offer IT enabled services such as banking, insurance, data processing, data storage, online trading, etc.

The companies in this sector provided millions of job opportunities with relatively good salaries to the young men and women of India who have the essential qualifications for getting employment in these specialized field of work.

The IT related business potential has been something which the old timers just could not dream just a couple of decades ago. The business models that the youngsters devised have created great wealth many times than the conventional business models. 

Being an old timer myself, I have been an awe admirer of the potential of computer software and the internet in raking up large scale economic activities and creating wealth for the individuals and the corporations.

A stage has come now that the computer systems have become an inseparable part of all human beings who have crossed over the threshold of basic development. 

The higher incomes that the IT and IT-enabled business have provided enhanced aspirations of young Indians for better housing, comforts, leisure and better services from the service providers. In turn it has been facilitating more avenues for entrepreneurs to come up with revolutionary ideas for providing better services to the customers.

Banks have been one of the first business sectors in India to shed the old style working replaced with computerization. In the retail banking, it has now become almost paperless. Several Indian banks have opted for advanced IT infrastructure and systems. 

The IT savvy population of India can now do almost all their retail banking requirements without they ever visiting the banks. They are now in a position to do it from the PC terminals or their mobile phones without leaving their comfort zones of the office, home or even while on the move. 

They could now see their bank accounts, buy many goods and services and pay online, transfer money to others, make recurring deposits (RD), fixed deposits (FD), know their income tax dues, file IT returns, pay for the services, etc.

But in the mean time, the banks have also become more flexible with every bank offering several options for each service. While outwardly all banking services looked similar, in reality they have become dissimilar. The interest that you actually get for your deposits, the interest rates and equated monthly installments that is applicable for your loans, etc are all different in different banks.

Imagine the difficulty that you face to discuss these things with each every bank before you can finally take a decision. The bank officials to whom you might talk could even be ignorant with regard to the various rules as applicable that you could get highly confused or misguided.

This complexity has initiated the thought process in a group of young and experienced engineers in the IT field that they have evolved a business model that provides a win-win situation for the individuals, the banks and themselves.

And this is the fast growing IT-enabled business called the Bankbazzar (literally meaning the market place of the banks) which got into this unique business sometime in 2008. [Read about Bankbazaar in this Wikipedia article] It was founded by a group of young and experienced Indian engineers [Read about some of them here]

Bankbazaar is wholly for the Indian people as of now. Let us see what all services this dotcom company provides to the customers in India:

It facilitate you to compare the HOME LOAN offers of various banks and finalize the best deal. 

Bankbazaar is the best place for you to compare the various CAR LOAN options from various Indian banks and zero in to the best one suitable for you.

And some of you may need a personal loan for some immediate needs. Banks usually charge higher interest rates for personal loans and they all have different interest rates, EMIs, processing charges, etc. BANKBAZAAR PERSONAL LOAN page would facilitate one to chose the best offer and finalize it. 

Bankbazaar website has many other useful features such a EMI calculators with special regard to the Indian banks, refinance calculators, Interest calculators, etc. One can access the various ONLINE CALCULATORS of this facilitating company for taking best informed decisions. 

It also provides those interested in investments to read informative articles about finance and investments in India.

One can also chose to get a suitable Credit Card from those banks in India that offer such a facility. 

In case you have surplus money, you can invest it safely in FDs of banks. But now-a-days different banks have different schemes and interest rates. Bankbazaar allows one to select the best deposit scheme and apply online for making the FIXED DEPOSITS. 

Bankbazaar also provides you facilities to decide the best suited LIFE INSURANCE from the best company of your choice.

It is not a bad idea to do a bit research before you take loans, put money in FDs or to take an insurance policy.

Finally, a word of caution. Take a loan only when it is unavoidable and when you have the resources and income to pay the EMIs.

Never take a loan which has an EMI which eats out the major portion of your monthly income. 

    

Earning Money While Hobbying and Learning Using Internet !

One of the greatest inventions humans have ever made in their evolutionary history is the invention of the computers and the use of computers in global communications and knowledge management.

Even when the micro details of computer hardware and software could be complex and boring technicalities, at macro level they are quite refreshing and simple.

The evolution of computers and the internet happened in my life time and it is still advancing. Millions of the new generation youngsters around the world have made this field as their sole source of earning a livelihood.

For millions of others, there is no source of earning and living  if computers were to disappear from the scenes.

The level of money the new generation computer companies make is unimaginable and ununderstandable by the conventional business men and politicians of around the world.

Even it is beyond comprehension by the so called technically learned people. I am no exception.

But it is somehow a marvellous example to demonstrate the truthfulness of what people say : drops make an ocean ! After all, business is all about making ocean from drops !

In the internet business today, sharing of information and knowledge is the fundamental of doing business and making money.

While a good number of people browse the world wide web of the internet for fun, hobby and some information by spending small affordable sums of money, huge accumulations of money happen in some pockets.

Again what makes the whole thing going continuously is its ability to keep people hooked up with new and new ideas and innovations.

While in the process of being hooked up to the internet casually for some time during my spare time, I have come across scores of instances and advertisements in the world wide communication highway which announce the details of making money casually without much serious efforts.

It appears that there are ample opportunities for people with some time and motivation for making money through the internet without being in the pay roll of any company or on regular employment.

Since money making is not a motivation for me, I have personally not ventured to try any of those seriously yet.

But the other day, it so happened that I got a link sent to me by some of my twitter account [join me here !] followers which opened up an invitation to me to join a site which claimed that it would help in making a few dollars for fun.

As I had some time, I thought of giving some attention to what they wanted to say.

What they explained did not go fully to my head.

But here is the gist of what I understood:

I can become a member of the said dot com company by simply registering with them using the registration page.

All I need is to fill up  my name, my valid e-mail id, a suitable password for accessing the website and a user name which would work as the user id. By filling these information I would be able to sign up to this site.

It was so simple and so, I signed up.

Then they have sent me a validation mail to my e-mail id with an e-mail validation link. Clicking  the same validated my e-mail account and perhaps my existence for them.

Then followed a few mails from them which explained the process by which I could earn very small fractions of dollars by clicking some advertisements that they post me when I sign in to their site using my user name and pass word.

Further instructions followed on completing my profile and the manner in which I should get the money that I would earn in the process from them.

Okay, it all appeared very genuine and reasonable, though I haven't made any dollars yet.

There seems to be ample potential for those who are keen and have the time to study the whole process carefully.

For me it is just a test case to understand the dynamics of the internet business out of curiosity.

But I know there are many others for whom opportunity to earn some money is important.

If you happen to be one of that kind or one of the curious one of my kind, I am giving here a link through which you could also sign up for this site and proceed to make some money at leisure. [Click and Sign Up Here !]

If you find it useful share your experience with others as well.

Best of Luck !

But this blog would not be complete if I do not write a word of caution.

The internet being an ocean of all kinds of information, there are ample situations of danger too in it.

All kinds of fraudsters operate in the world wide web with various kinds of offers and lures.

Opportunities of simple money making is perhaps the biggest lure. I am not sure in what all ways the fraudsters operate.

So beware and be cautious !

It would perhaps be better if we do not get lured in to such things !

[ View the linked list of all Blogs of the Author Here ! ]

Beware of Modern Era Frauds !

In this world of ours, there will always be present a group of cunning and clever fraudsters who keep planning and executing their techniques of cheating innocent and gullible people in several ways.

A good number of people are aware of such nefarious schemes of twisted fellows, but more and more people keep falling preys to them even now.

So, it is necessary that those who are users of the Internet should know about such things in order to safeguard them from getting themselves victimized by such groups.

Let me tell you about my own personal experience in this, which happened to me a few years ago when such things were not very common.

In the first incident, I got a genuinely looking and neatly printed letter in the letter head of an organization introducing them as a very reputed Non-Governmental Organization (NGO).

A person introducing himself as the Secretary General of the organization had written the letter.

They had my name and address obviously collected from some source !

The letter stated that I had been selected for a prestigious award for the contributions that I did in my professional field. The selected awardees are to be honoured in a function to be held later in the year in the capital where top dignitaries of the nation would all be attending.

The letter had other documents as attachments. One leaflet described in detail about the activities of the NGO with a few photographs of events held in the past. Another one described the details of some awardees from the previous years.

But the awardees were all known who is who of the country. That made me suspicious as I was no such a great person to be included in such an elite list.

At the same time, I was thrilled. Who knows, I could indeed be a 'great' person to be 'spotted' by this NGO !

The introductory letter just wanted me to reply back with my willingness to accept their invitation and a brief write up and photograph to be included in a Souvenir that would be published during the award distribution ceremony.

That was not difficult. So I decided to comply with the requirements. I replied back.

Shortly I got another beautiful envelope from the said NGO by post.

Again a very decently phrased letter. This time the letter politely informed me to sent them a substantial amount as part of the costs towards printing , publishing and organizing the event. For such a grand event and such a great honour, the amount was just peanuts. They reminded me.

Then this innocent and decent looking fraud scheme got clear to me. I refused to be their game any more ! Later I had seen news coverage of  some people receiving the same awards from the same NGO. 

After all they are awarding people who are willing to bear the costs ! What is the degree of this fraud ?

I leave it for your own assessment.

Some time later, I got a decently worded e-mail. It said that my e-mail was included in an international level lottery and I had won a few million British Pounds as the prize money !

To claim the prize money in foreign exchange I should sent my details including bank account to the organization.

The letter looked so genuine with names, addresses, telephone numbers, organizational logos, website addresses and the like. For an ordinary person, there was nothing to be suspicious.

Now this fraud is very common. But at that time it was not. Yet I decided to find out the truth. I forwarded the letter to a fraud investigating wing of the FBI.

They replied me with the details of the modus-operandi of this international fraudsters who operate from Nigeria.

The Internet is the arena of clever and intelligent fraud masters of modern era.

More and more clever ways of fooling the gullible people are devised every now and then.

I earnestly advice my readers to use their God given wisdom and intelligence to ward off such deceitful human minds taking them for a ride.

There is a website called hoax-slayer which is a good effort of one Mr Brett M.Christensen for providing information about frauds and hoaxes that pervade the world wide web. Those interested more on this may consider improving their knowledge by going through the information that this site provides. 

Why I prefer Blogging with Blogger ?

When the word blog and blogging came to my notice a couple of years ago, frankly, I was not knowing its meaning. Slowly, I began to understand what it is and what it can do.

A blog as I understand now, is something in written form which is shared online in the world wide web or Internet, the technology of modern world that changed the way people lived and communicated. The voice communication technologies of modern telephony do not have the superior advantages of mass communication and information archiving facilities that the blogging technology has.

The adaptation of the Internet with this new blog creation and publishing platform has revolutionized the ways of reading and writing of people.

Monopoly of writing and publishing has crumbled and it has now come in the hands of every one, almost free of cost.

Now potential writers like me are no more subject to the whims and fancies of authoritarian editors of the so-called media, either print or online, who for so many years have been doing the subtle task of subverting the ways in which people thought or wrote.

They never allowed the thoughts of the common man to be known to others without their censoring. If a line of thought is not meeting their purpose, they would strike it down, killing the seed of the thought ever getting a chance to get germinated.

Newspapers and online magazines publish many things on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. But what they publish are solely those matters what they deemed as fit. Thus they, in a way acted as the sponsors of budding authors.

Even the common features like the 'letters to the editor' were subject to the whims of the editors. Thus those letters getting published to public gaze were the opinions of the readers what the editors agreed to be made known. I remember some instances where some of my comments of general interest getting deleted by the editors while they allowed obscene and objectionable things freely. I do not have any thing to comment on their right to discard those writings which are non-readable or of a language not normally acceptable to the society. They do have the right on that. But they also decided the content on the basis of its possible impact on the readership of their respective media.

In the final analysis, media is also a money making business. Money has to be generated to run this business. So those content that was not facilitating money making was not normally favoured.

The blogging facilities of dot com companies which thrive on the modern Internet technology are also part of some businesses. Some of them are bigger and more internationalized than the conventional media businesses.

But the good part of the blog media is that it allows somebody interested in writing to write and publish a matter almost instantaneously and fully without any draconian editor coming in between to prevent its publication.

The responsibility of the content of the blog vests fully with its author.

More over, what is published is visible to the public through the Internet pages and is archived for an infinite period visible to not only the present viewers, but also to the potential viewers of the future.

Though there are many blogging sites, Blogger in association with Blogspot, both now part of the big brother Google, is no doubt the best. That is my personal opinion.

It has some best facilities that no other blogging company has or offers.

First and foremost, it has the best hassle free technology. And keeps advancing or improving. So far I did not face any technical problem with publishing. It is really fast and friendly with your PC and the loaded software that it normally has.

Second it offers your blogs to be published in the most decent manner and you have all the desired levels of controls and tools for designing your blog page. You need not be a computer expert for this.

You can edit, delete your blogs or the comments from your readers at any time. You can also keep the drafts of your blogs, in fact many drafts at a time, on your dashboard indefinitely till you decide to publish them.

You don't incur any expenses in publishing your blogs, except the Internet charges that you pay. Additionally your blog page does not get bombarded by advertisements without your permission. The Google AdSense is ofcourse there for those blog authors who desire to make some money provided their readers cause generation of some income by showing interest in those advertisements placed on your page through it. But for you have the absolute freedom to decide whether your page should have advertisement or not.

Your pages are and its content are searchable by the search engines or to limited audience as per your choice.

You can enrich the pages with pictures or videos if you desire.

Most importantly, Blogger allows you to know some feed backs about your readers. The total number of page views with a detailed analysis of the readership on a monthly, weekly and daily basis is one of the best features a blog author would perhaps like the most. It gives a global perspective of your readership. Again with such a superb and hassle free technology!

Nevertheless, this feed back as of now is available only to me, the author. I tried to give a link for the benefit of my readers but it failed. Because to read the feedback link, signing in is required.

Anyway for your information, my blogs on blogger with the title Rajan C Mathew's Blogs became active from July 2011, though I opened the blogger account in May 2009. My blog writings in blogger got momentum in the last two or three months only. In the last three months around 1600 page views have been registered. Leaving the page views from my own country, the major viewers are from the USA (415), Germany (100), Russia (82), France (54), Moldova (32), Latvia (25), Canada (22), Portugal (20) and Denmark (16).

The majority of blog viewers, are silent viewers. They somehow lack the enthusiasm to write their comments or express their feelings. Personally, I would feel happy if my readers do this, even when the comments are critical in nature. Comments would also give an opportunity to all readers to know mutually to some extent.

Use blogger and blogspot to the full. Best Wishes !!

[ You may also like to read this blog : Why do I write blogs ? ]

Why do I write blogs ?

In this advanced age of computers and the internet, millions people especially those who are born in the computer age, write their thoughts on what is now known as 'blog sites' in the internet parlour, an acronym derived from the two words,  web and logs.

In my childhood days computers were just beginning to make an impact in this world. When I was an engineering student way back in the early seventies of the last century, we had to do a lot of engineering calculations. In those days we had no other options other than to use printed logarithmic tables to do tedious calculations involving multiplications, divisions and power functions. This method was very cumbersome and boring.

To ease our calculation efforts later on those days we were allowed to use a cute instrument in the form a measuring scale with the sliding scale fitted inside called the 'slide rule' to find the results of lengthy calculations involving multiplications, divisions and roots. This precision sliding mechanical device used to get imported from Germany and was expensive too in India- the cost being half a month's salary of my middle class dad who worked as a high school teacher. Besides, the results it produced were only approximations and not the exact numerical!

Imagine our great joy and surprise when this electronic gadget called the pocket digital calculator got invented and was brought to our college to the first time by some fortunate colleague whose parents had access in the foreign markets. It had red light LEDs and it gave out all those calculation results accurately just at the press of a small button! In fact we were seeing this wonderful light emitting diodes for the first time!

The electronic revolution began and invaded quite fast that within a few months these cute gadgets were in the hands of most of us. Though it used to cost a fortune, the cost was comparable to the slide rule. In no time the slide rule manufacturing companies located in Germany might have closed down or ventured into other business opportunities!

Then during my higher studies, I had the opportunity to work with the big size computers of the 2nd generation and the third generation such as the IBM 370, DEC 2050 etc. There were a few centralized computer centres set up in national level educational and research institutions in India at that time costing millions of rupees. I considered it a great opportunity  to get privately associated with a computer hardware engineer who came to install and commission the 4th generation DEC computer in the computer centre built up at University of Roorkee in those years where I was a PG student of chemical engineering. 

I remember secretly admiring my hardware computer engineer friend for his vast knowledge in the wonder area of computers. At the same time I remember him telling me about his admiration of me having knowledge in the field of chemical technology on which he had little idea! That was an incident making me realize the importance of having mutual respect between each and every individual. Because every other person knows some thing that I do not know!

Now back to the subject. Why do I blog?

Why did I write the above ? Is it that I want to become famous which other wise I cannot have achieved? But what shall I be going to achieve by simply becoming known to some strangers here and there?

Here a story which I used to hear when I was a kid comes to my mind. 

It is about a poor wood cutter. This poor chap was not able to afford rice and  most often he and his family had to eat rice bran which was available as a cheap cattle feed. But at the same time this cheap rice bran with a little mixing with coconut flakes and cheaply available country made molasses could transform itself as a tasty and rich food for him. The only problem was that this food was labelled as a cattle feed by those who could afford eating rice always!

So this poor chap was always cursing his situation which he considered as pathetic as compared to those rich fellows around him who survived on rice making him to rely upon rice bran that the rich fellows discarded as cattle-feed.

But quite by chance, on an occasion when he was called for some manual work in the local king's palace, he was taken aback by the accidental site of the king eating the same rice bran food that was supposedly food for the cows and people like him.  It was a shocking sight for him- the king relishing on this cattle feed ! Then the king saw him. The king warned him of dire consequences if ever he told this incident to any one ! Obviously, the king too feared the negative publicity that such an incident could create!

Our poor wood cutter was now in a dilemma. 

He wanted to tell his wife and his children about what he had seen. He wanted to tell all about it. That the king too ate the same cheap food that they were eating !

But if he did that perhaps the king would punish him. The little knowledge that this fellow had in his mind boiled. He had to tell every one. But there was no opportunity for that.

Then one day while he was alone in the deep forest for cutting bamboo poles, this fellow released the secret that was contained in his little brain for all these days by shouting with all his might to the bamboo forest : 

" Oh! the king too ate cattle feed !'

The story further continues with what happened later. A bamboo piece from the same forest became part of a musical instrument  and the wood cutter became scared of the music that came out of it. The music appeared to him as resembling what he yelled out secretly in the forest!

Perhaps that could be the reason. I have many such secret thoughts in my mind which I fear telling the folks around me. They could ridicule me or reprimand me for telling things that they do not like to hear in public . I might get the ire of the present day kings!

But I have to vent out the thoughts that fill my mind and I have no safe place to vent it out other than this bamboo forest of the 21st century- the vast  internet bamboo forest of the blog sites !

You now know the secret behind my writing these blogs.