As It Seems To Be A Tradition, My Not-So Traditional, But Humble, Introduction

Hello steemit, after lurking around for the last two weeks, I have finally manged to open an account and am here, all excited! Two weeks is a long time but I had a few things to learn, and a important consideration, that of anonymity as I shall explain why below. But the fact is, there was a tough learning curve for me as I am a newcomer to crypto currencies, and had to read and learn before I could use it.

I was introduced to this site by a friend whom I met a month back in New Delhi, the capital of my country, India. I wanted to join but my main worry was about my anonymity as I work in a rather sensitive profession. I am an investigative crime reporter for one of the larger vernacular news group in India. At present my assignment is in the state of Bihar, which is considered the "lawless" state of India.

Bihar has the highest rate of crime of any kind in India and the perpetrators are mostly elected individuals, who have made this state into a veritable hell on earth. Murders are common here and we journalists are a target, especially us that work in investigative work. To give you an idea of the seriousness of the problem, let me tell you that one of our senior colleagues, Siwan bureau chief Rajdev Ranjan, was murdered most brutally in May of 2016 and you can google it to read more.

I had to be careful as I have a family and young kids, and being anonymous was one of my main criteria but it seemed to go against the policies and tradition of steemit. It seems you have a tradition of introducing yourself with a photo of you holding a sign with your steemit user name and the date. I cannot do that as I am bound by my contract to the company I work for, and also for fear of anything happening to my kids and family. So I have taken a photo with the sign, but you cannot see my face, and I hope I am accepted despite these limitations of mine

Then I found anonsteem! I was ecstatic to find a service where I could open an account anonymously but was stopped in my tracks as I realised I had to pay in bitcoins, a currency I had never used before,but had read about it during the time our country was facing the challenge of demonitisation of high value notes. And I had to stop everything and read about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the rest of which I had not even heard of before!

But destiny came to my rescue in the form of my elder sisters son who came to stay with us for 3 days. He not only seemed to know everything about bitcoins, but he had some of it in a "wallet"! So for the next two days he helped me learn about this whole business of crypto-currencies, and helped me set up my very own wallet, Electrum, in which I deposited some bitcoins which I bought from him, and now I am proud to say that I am the owner of exactly 0.11909381 bitcoins, after having paid anonsteem to open up an account this morning.

After opening the account I was intimidated again due to the different types of keys which seemingly secures my account. As a newcomer to this whole crypto thing, I was overwhelmed with the serious sounding warnings regarding my passwords and the generated keys so I have taken the whole day to learn some new concepts of which I had no idea before. And if I am to be honest, I almost gave up half way but I had a patient teacher in my nephew, and he helped me immensely. And of course he too has decided to join steemit later, but using the easy way using his facebook page and for free, which I could not, as I am not on FB.

So after two weeks and around six hours of learning about crypto-currencies, crazy long passwords, space-age sounding cryptographic keys and an editor which seems like a relic from history, I am here, and posting this introductory blog at last.

So dear readers, I hope you understand my needs to keep my face and name anonymous and accept my membership as I intend writing about the crimes I cover, and other topics which interest me. I may also add that though I write for the vernacular press with a pseudonym, I am comfortable enough writing in the English language and would request you to overlook any inconsistencies with sympathy as I am not a native speaker.

So I start my time on steemit now and hope I will be able to make friends and get to read some great blogs.

But if there is one thing I learned in my education prior to my becoming a member, it is the saying: STEEMIT TO THE MOOOOOON!

Thank you.