Queens, New York, is an immigrant's paradise. It's packed with interesting people, news and events taking place daily.Their lives are full of stories that needs to be told. That's why I launched the immigrant news web blog, to showcase some of these interesting people and their lifestyles.

I write for several online websites and for local and community publications in New York. I also maintain a blog at Windows Live and write and update content on the queensunderground.com website for promotions and special events.

What an experience this was, trying a new profession. It was intriguing as well as educational. I learned the complexities involved in buying a home, from both the purchaser and the bank's (financial institution's) angles. The importance of the applicant maintaining a clean credit report and its impact on obtaining a mortgage for the home he wanted. I was introduced to a Good Faith Estimate and learned how to read it. How to fill out a 1003, read appraisals and titles. And how to qualify a potential homebuyer for a mortgage. I became adept at calculating monthly payment rates based on the applicant's income. I never thought I would excel at calculating figures. I did.Interviewing the potential homebuyer was nothing like previous interviews I had conducted. The questions were different, the information sought were specific to a homebuyer's suitability for approval of the proposed loan. I truly learned a lot and earned a lot while experimenting with another profession. In the end, I decided it was not for me. I enjoyed it but then I lost the thrill. I guess I had learned as much as I wanted to in that profession. Writing was wooing me back to the computer.

I have seen death in all forms. Murder. Illness. Natural. Headless bodies, stinking decomposing maggot eaten bodies, mangled bodies, crushed bodies and fresh kill. None remains with me like that of a seven-year-old-girl and her five-year-old-brother. Their bodies twisted with rigor, dug up from a manure heap at the back of their house. Beaten and buried alive by their step-mother.And I have learned firsthand of the evils that live among us, masquerading as mothers and fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, relatives and, in instances, strangers, whose paths victims have unwittingly crossed. Like the husband who impregnated his teenaged wife so he could practice "obeah" with the babies and when they died threw their fragile bodies into the latrine. I have begun to accept that people can completely disappear as if they never existed. Death brings pain and inevitably, closure, but when a child, a parent, a brother, a sister, a friend, disappears suddenly and without explanation, or meaning, there is no peace for those related to the victim. With time memories dry up, images become blurred, and faces lose form. Yet people wait, sometimes for decades for word of the missing person. Like the family that wait for Omah Nanan, 11, who disappeared one morning on her way to school. Decades have passed and many of them have died without knowing what became of their little girl.I could write for a decade and stories would continue to fly from the tips of my fingers. Not all horrible, many good too, but it's the bad ones that leave holes in your heart. Because like everyone else, I still wonder, from time to time, what really became of all the wonderful people that inexplicably disappeared from life?Before I became a reporter, I never knew so many bad things could happen to so many good people. I was young and naive and saw the world from the safety of my family. Since then, I have adopted an askance view of life and the people around me.