A bit about me. I have been a freelance writer, editor, and reporter since 1999, and have published articles on various topics including medicine, architecture, and law. I have worked for the European Union, the United Nations, the Association of European Parliamentarians with Africa (AWEPA), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and a number of multinationals, including ING Bank, Heineken, and Henkel. I currently work as a consultant editor for physicians at the Medical University of Vienna where I assist them in writing and submitting their articles to medical journals. Other than being a writer, I'm also a cat sitter, hiker, gardener, and lawyer! I never set out to become a writer, it just happened. The very first article I submitted for publication, was in April 1999, and was about the construction of the new library of Alexandria, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, as I was living in Alexandria, Egypt, at the time. Not only was I over the moon that the newspaper editors accepted it for publication in the features section, but that they didn't change a single word! Shortly thereafter, I wrote an article about the Lockerbie Trial, which got published on the front page of the newspaper!! I was living in the Netherlands by then, and needed to be accredited as a journalist to have access to the trial, which was taking place in a town not far from The Hague, under very tight security. I wrote to the editors of the newspaper asking for their help with the accreditation, and they were more than happy to oblige. It was my second article ever, and there I was, already rubbing shoulders with the bigwigs from CNN, the BBC, Reuters, AP and others! That was pretty surreal! As for this blog, well, I never really intended to do a blog, and was even against this new concept of “blogging”, as I believed firmly in the need for publishing to be teamwork; that is, someone writes and someone else edits, and yet a third person publishes. Very old-school and traditional. But I liked having the backup and support of editors. The first article I wrote on this blog, about being young and being old, wasn't initially written as a blog ( https://salwa-the-writer.medium.com/being-young-being-old-9dde4e3e2183 ). It was something I wrote privately for a few friends and some of them wanted to share it, so I made it into a blog. And there it stayed, alone and lonely for a few years. But then I did a second one, which was inspired by something I read on social media and the responses it got from millennials, about how to use the first zero when dialling a phone number. I replied to this question, and then decided to turn my reply into another blog, as it occurred to me that most likely, other millenials had the same question, so why not share my answer with them too? Blogging is no longer taboo to me, especially given the outrageous, and frankly, downright criminal, amount of censorship there is in the mainstream news sources. It seems alternative sources of information are much more valuable now, than are the traditional ones. So I’ve decided to become a blogger, and will post some random stuff from time to time. Just like I never set out to become a writer, so I never set out to become a blogger! It just happened! Anyway, stay tuned. And if you find yourself in need of a writer, editor, or proofreader, let me know, I’m still available for that too. :-) You can email me at: salwathewriter@email.com