life's like this - avianto's journal

Activities

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:45:56 -0500

Life, currently: Less writing, more taking photos. More on flickr

Abuse

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:27:45 -0500

Law existed to protect people. Law created to make people feel safe. But somehow, it worked the other way around in Indonesia. Law was used to shackle people, to keep people on the leash and to shut down the voice of freedom.

The story so far

This was the case of a mother of two children against the all mighty private hospital with divine and majestic name, Omni International Hospital. The mother wrote an email about her dissatisfaction of the hospital treatment to her, which she claimed was bad and horrendously unsatisfactory. The email, naturally, spread around certain mailing list and published on a couple of website including this one (It’s in Indonesian). Reasonable enough since she said the hospital was not really paid attention to her previous complain. Or not.

Update: The English translation of Mrs. Prita’s email are available; credits goes to Ryan Koesuma for translation and Unspun blog for republishing it outside Facebook.

Somehow, the all mighty hospital felt insulted and sued the mother base on defamation/libel. So, they treated patients like cash cows, which unfortunately a common practice in Indonesia’s medical field, and when the patient complained and wrote the complain so the whole world could see, they felt insulted and sued the patient. Well, as if holding up a body of a deceased person because the family could not paid the bill or holding up a newborn baby because the parents could not afford the bill right away were not enough, now the hospital felt insulted when somebody told the world about their misdemeanor and sued that somebody. What was it? A joke? It wasn’t even funny.

What striked me actually, this fiasco probably would not happened, still probably - there were many way to twist the law in Indonesia, if you had the power and money, if one particular law was not exists. Introducing, the famous Information and Electronic Transaction Law aka. UU ITE (Undang-undang Informasi dan Transaksi Elektronik).

Armed with this law, the hospital sued the mother and the court pointed the mother as the suspect and she has been in jail for 3 weeks, as of today (Source: Koran Tempo in Indonesian). The trial will be held on June 4, 2009.

Information and Electronic Transaction Law aka. UU ITE

When this law was signed more or less a year ago, I was cringed. I was afraid, not because I could be punished by this draconian law but because some of the points were obscure, unclear and could be interpreted in some twisted way. I won’t go far to explain the law, use Google and read it yourself. Some items in that law were actually good and fulfill their purpose to protect the people, but those items, especially those parts about “defamation and/or libel” were so draconian and easily manipulated especially to those who got the power and money. Added the corrupt justice system, which again unfortunately a common knowledge in Indonesia, to the mix then we had a recipe to disaster.

I am one of the biggest opponent of this law, as many of my respected colleague, but as you might remember my writing titled “Commander” around last year - it was a different case but it lead into this law being signed, the department who were somehow responsible for the creation of this law was ignorant. Now, to add the absurdity of the current situation, the Director General of that department, Mr. Cahyana who hold the Master of Law degree, told one of the prominent blogger, Enda Nasution that the court actually misinterpreted the law. Where have you been, Sir? Did we said this law could easily misinterpreted more than a year ago? And your department defiantly went into deaf mode and said this law was for the good of the people? The truth, Sir, your department were plain ignorant at that time and now it’s time to feel the wake up slap in your face.

That comment also made me wondered; so if the law was misinterpreted, did it because the law was not clear enough or the court was not smart enough to interpret the law? Or even worse, the law was not clear enough and the court was not smart enough too. Again, the recipe to bigger disaster then.

Cowards

Added insult to the injury was the response of some people related to this case. Some said, it mean everybody, Indonesian especially, should be careful of what they were writing online (email, blogs, tweet, whatever), even if it was the truth. Sounds pathetic, wasn’t it? I called them cowards. When the bush was beaten, they were cowering down under, afraid to speak the truth and even stigmatize those who told the truth.

These people were the reason Indonesia never soar as a great country it supposed to be. These people put a blind eye to the corruption of power those institutions above showed. These people chose, deliberately, to stigmatize the people who brave enough to tell the truth. These people were the traitor to free speech, democracy and humanity.

Critics

So, by writing this, I directly and indirectly criticized the medical institution, justice system, a government department and a bunch of cowards. Will I get sued for defamation and libel? It possible. Even though I am just stating the truth, I am not fabricated any facts, known facts, about the corrupt system of justice, the money seeking practice of medical institution and the ignorance of a government department. So if the worse thing happened then all I can say is the country I always love is going back to the way it used to be, a repressive, totalitarian and draconian one. What a step back and for that I am feeling very sorry…

While waiting for the hammer to fall, these are some call to action links (all in Indonesian):

Put the banner to free the mother, Mrs. Prita Mulyasari
Facebook Cause: Support for Mrs. Prita Mulyasari
Facebook Page: Say No to Omni Tangerang Hospital

25

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:33:33 -0500

I am following the herd, some people tagged or asked me to do this, so I comply. Here they are:

I’d been living in 4 countries until now; Indonesia (most of the time), Germany, Canada and United States (currently) and visited more than a dozen countries.
I hold a bachelor in Architecture but never worked as an architect, I prefer architecture as a way of life not as a work for living.
I used to smoke a lot, not anymore right now except for an occasionally collapse of good judgement.
Despite used to be a heavy smoker, I never use drugs in my life and not planned to do so in my life time.
I don’t care about races and sexual preferences, it doesn’t matter if you are black, white, yellow or even green and while I am a strictly straight guy, it doesn’t matter if you are straight, gay or bisexual. What matters is that you are a good person and act like one.
I used to be very emotional but I think growing older make me more patience.
I love to cook, while my cooking ability is about average I think I am improving every day.
Movies, books, museums, galleries and live music hall were the things and places I spend my free time, mostly.
As a digital person, I still keep my plan and notes using a paper notebook, Moleskine preferably.
I care much with those who I consider as friends, sometimes too much to the point it annoyed them.
I prefer walking and taking public transportation than driving but I love to drive as fast as I could if condition allowed.
I always afraid of getting fat to the point of nearly an obsession.
My passion lies in creating something useful for people to use, that’s why I am in user experience business.
People think I am a perfectionist but I am not, I just want to be the best in everything I do.
I prefer being a generalist than a specialist, specialization is for insect.
I can be extremely cynical, it doesn’t happened so much, but when it happened, you will noticed.
I am starting to develop a fashion sense awareness, used to not care about how I dressed but now I put some thought when I am dressing.
I have a really bad set of teeth, been thinking to fix them up but it will cost me a fortune, but I’ll do it anyway soon.
I used to think life was suck but now I think life is as good as I want it to be.
I love pets but I am allergic to the hair… Bummer. I also allergic to dust so I prefer clean places.
I can play any kind musical instruments except bowing and blowing instruments.
I am an Apple geek; currently owned a white Macbook, a white iPhone and silver iPod nano, but currently using ASP.NET and Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 for work.
I owned avianto.com since 1998 and planned to keep it for the rest of my life.
I am stubborn but always open to a reasonable argument and with decent delivery.
While I am enjoy being online, there always be a day or two in a month I prefer to be disconnected. Talking about taking the time out.

Well, I did it. Hope you know me better now.

Decision

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 08:53:51 -0500

Some of you asked me, why given up a good living in Jakarta with managerial position, good salary and good reputation to go to New York with middle position, decent but minimal salary and no reputation? On top of that, why made a move when I already in my 30s and still not married. Well, sometime I also asked myself, why?

Career

Career-wise, my decision was a step back in career point of view. I was already in managerial position, 8 digits salary (in Rupiah, of course) and had a huge network among multiple disciplines and industries. It was a good career and I was on my way to the top. Here in New York, I was working as a middle position knowledge worker, slightly above standard rates salary and no network at all. In other words, I was pressing a reset button in my career path.

I left my career and the opportunity to climb the higher ladder of position. I even abandoned my 3 years of teaching career.

Rent and Commute

Living in New York is very expensive, especially the rent. Most people were paying around 30%, even 50%, of their salary for rent only. Another 25-30% went into tax. At the end, people were getting 40-50% of their total salary to pay bills, food, entertainment and saving (or investing). That was not much and it would take a good judgement to spend the money wisely. Living like the girls (and boys) in Sex and the City and Friends TV series was a myth. Unless you were born or stayed in Manhattan for more than 20 years, I did not think those TV series lifestyle would be affordable for most New Yorkers. That would be another story, I was still surveying and writing about the reality of rent price in New York.

Commuting was another story. Currently it took me around 45 minutes to commute every working days to the office using bus and subway. Almost the same when I was living in Jakarta. The different was I did not need to drive and fight with the traffic. Hopped in the bus/subway, found a good spot, read or sleep during the commute. Less stressful and more opportunity to rest or read.

Living Standard

Other than rent, New York is actually quite cheap for living, if you know the right place to get what you need. Lunch for $3-$5 was not unheard of, dinner for less than $10 was possible and for sure it would be cheaper to cook on your own. Groceries were cheap, again if you know the place, and there were a lot of bargain shopping around the city. Especially in this bad economy, almost all stores were cutting their prices so people could afford to buy their stuffs. If people could not buy anything then the economy would halt and it would cost more damage than it already was. It would take some experiences, experiments and street smart skill to live as comfortable as possible without sacrificing too much.

Sure, living in Jakarta was way cheaper than living in New York. Rent price was affordable for a start. Lunch for less than $1 was still available, right? Transportation was also cheap, around 30¢ for one busway trip (it used to have a monthly ticket without discount rate but somehow that convenience was eliminated). Phone and cellphone rate, electricity, water were cheaper too and no need to pay for heating.

On the other hand, according to my ‘Starbucks Economy’ point of view, living in Jakarta was also expensive. Using my standard not-so-scientific comparison for the price of a single cup of Starbucks coffee it would goes like this: It was $1.65 for a tall black coffee here and it was Rp. 18.000 in Jakarta. It was practically the same price! Lunch/dinner in the restaurants could cost around Rp. 50.000++ per person; which translated into around $4.5++ here; which of course a bit cheaper. Car price was enormous with or without insurance. Clothing price were varied, branded clothes practically had the same price as here. Electronic price was a bit cheaper but not much, especially computers. Books were on the same ground and most of the time, even more expensive than the original printed price in US dollar (of course to be fair, add around 8-9% of sales tax in here).

Dropped the rent price and suddenly living in Jakarta was as expensive as living in New York. To be fair, it was not exactly the same but I was just trying to share my view.

Decision

Combining all of the factors above, the question raised again: Why the move? Why bargained everything I had for something uncertain? Why now?

There were no easy answer to that questions. The only thing I could think of was; I want change. Three years living back in Jakarta was teaching me a lot about how low people expectation of good quality of life could be. “It’s Jakarta, traffic is always packed, police are always corrupt, raining always means flooding, what do you want? It’s Jakarta”. Was it? Or was it because people did not know any better?

Maybe that was my main reason, I wanted to know more about the world. I wanted to grow, I wanted to experience something new, something great and something different. Even if it meant to throw my current comfort away, I would do it anyway. No regret, no remorse and embraced the unexplored.

Now I really understood the deep meaning of Frank Sinatra’s song, New York, New York:

I’ll make a brand new start of it - in old New York
If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere
It’s up to you - New york, New york!

It’s New York, the city that never sleep and I am living in it. Welcome to a brand new life!

New Yorker

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 07:26:28 -0500

Things I notice after living and working for around two weeks in New York:

On the street and public transportation, English was not the major language. Almost everybody was talking with their own language here; Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Germans, Polish, Yiddish, Tagalog, Indonesian, Malay, French and others are just a fraction of multi cultural reality in New York.
Everybody was jaywalking. I mean EVERYBODY. If you were not jaywalking than you better step aside because New Yorker would push you anyway.
iPod and/or iPhone was ubiquitous, in the subway, bus and even the street. Most New Yorker were listening to song, watching videos, playing games or even browsing the Internet from their iPod/iPhone.
The public transportation (Subway and Bus) was superb. As a public transportation lover, I finally found my heaven. It’s not as clean and time-concerned like Germany but still, it’s so reliable and it’s 24 hours. Who could complain about that?
Most New Yorker are courteous. Maybe you heard differently but from my own experience, they were quite nice to each other.
Food were abundant. Eating out was not a big deal, you could had from $1 hotdog to $20 pizza or even $100 cuisine. Halal food was not a problem here, they were everywhere.
New York was very dynamic in every sense. The people were diverse, their movement were just amazing to watch and their behavior were varied.
New York also full of strange people. Almost every time I was using subway, I encountered strange people. There was a lady who keep on running inside the subway muttered strange thing like she’s being hunted down. Another lady was reading a newspaper and for every 3 minutes look at herself into her reflection in the subway’s window and talking in strange language. Those two were just a small sample of strange people I’d encountered and I bet there would be more.
All and all, New York was a fun place to live. Yes, it was very busy and very crowded but it also so dynamic and diverse it made me feel very comfortable and falling in love with the city instantly.

Living in New York was an adventure. I did not even seen half of the city, maybe only 20% of it, so I might be wrong about my feeling for this city. But so far, it’s been a very good experience and it made me feel so much alive absorbing the vibe of this great city.

I’ll write more about this city and once I got my paycheck, I would buy a new camera so I could share the visual of New York. So until then, keep on reading because there will be more stories to share.

From Jakarta to New York

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 14:37:11 -0500

This entry is overdue a couple of days. I was moving to New York City and will be working with Research Foundation of City University of New York. It will be a new adventure to start a whole new year.

This entry is about my long travel from Jakarta to New York. Some of you were keep asking me about this, so here it is. Enjoy.

SQ 967, Jakarta - Singapore

My first flight was using Singapore Airlines. Not much happening during the flight, it was a short flight, around 1 hour. Landed at Terminal 3, Changi Airport around 10 PM and had to wait for the next flight at 6.50 AM. Terminal 3, Changi was a relatively new transit airport (opened at January 2008) and its amenities were first class. It was amazing how Singaporean serviced their transit visitors. On the first floor it had a huge shopping mall, standard for every transit airport, since it was better if the transit visitors spent some money while they were there, right? The surprising feature of this floor was the Butterfly Garden. It had a huge area filled with butterfly where visitors could get in and enjoy the beauty of hundreds beautiful butterflies flying around. Too bad since I arrived there at night, almost no flying butterflies in sight. Well, maybe some other time.

The second floor hold more surprises, it had small free movie theater, it was showing August Rush when I was there, transit hotel, visitors lounge and a huge eating area. I was looking for a place to spend the night since I need to wait for another 7 hours or so for my next flight so I went to the transit hotel and asked for a room. Unfortunately, it was full and since I only need a place to lie down for a couple of hours, the friendly staff recommended me to get a nap room at the visitors lounge. So I did, a nap room was a very small room, 2x2 m with bed, small credenza and blind (no door). It cost 30 SGD for 3 hours plus a couple of SGD for an access to shower. It was not bad at all, so I took the time to lie down, get some rest and taking a shower before checking in at the transfer counter around 4 AM.

Everything was cleared, my passport and visa checked out all right and I was ready to board my next flight to O’Hare International Airport, Chicago with a short stop at Hong Kong International Airport.

UA 896, Singapore - Chicago, via Hong Kong

Next flight was with United Airlines and although it counted as one flight, it actually required the passenger to change plane once at Hong Kong, so it was quite a short trip from Singapore to Hong Kong, around 2 hours, and not much happening. Once the flight landed in Hong Kong, I did not had the luxury to look around the airport since it was a really tight schedule changing from one plane to another so I just went to the boarding gate and get in on the next flight, the longest one.

The flight from Hong Kong to Chicago was long, really long, around 18 hours, and to my surprise, I’d got an Economy Plus seating which mean more leg room and my seat was a front seat so I did not had any other seat in front of me. It also mean I sat in front of the screen which was always good. I did not remember all of the movie but some of them were: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (I slept halfway of the movie, too tired I guess), The Longshots (also slept in the beginning but wide awake for the ending), Bottle Shock (which was actually a good based-on-true-story movie) and City of Ember (which I loved since it had steampunk elements on it). It was a relatively good flight, I mean my body was sore all over the place but what could I expect from sitting (and small walking) inside a Boeing 747-400?

The real adventure started in Chicago…

O’Hare International Airport, Chicago

I landed at O’Hare around 4 PM and since I need to change my flight to domestic flight, O’Hare was my point of entry to United States. So when I presented my passport and visa to the Custom and Border Protection officer, he asked if this was my first visit to the US and since I answered yes… the adventure began. The officer asked me to follow him to another room to process my documents. Well, some of my friends already warned me that this process could take at least 2 hours and they were not joking. My problem was, I need to catch my next flight to New York in 1.5 hours…

So there I was, inside a room with a dozen or so people waiting for my document to be processed. Then, another officer called my name and 4 other people and we were moving to another area. Just my luck, I was number 5 behind 4 middle-eastern looking guy… So while my documents were processed in less than 30 minutes, 21 minutes to be exact, I had to wait around 3 hours before my documents were actually processed. That was a very long wait in a not so comfortable waiting area. Was it worth it? At least, it trained my patience… But to my delight, most officers were courteous and polite, of course there are some rude officers but fortunately I did not had to deal with them. That was a little incident happened with the first person in my line, he was a Pakistani and he was standing because he said he was tired sitting for hours in the plane and in the waiting room. The officer was asking him to sit, he said no and somehow the officer was irritated and push him to sit, he was yelling and telling that he was being treated unfair and impolite. It was quite a scene, more officers came into the scene and there were a yelling contest for quite a while. Fortunately, the incident was not escalated to an arrest and it was solved quite nicely and the Pakistani guy was finally passed the process. Other than that, not so much happening, for 2 hours or so before finally, after the airline staff told me that my two baggages were left at the carousel 6 and I should picked them up before I continue my travel, my documents were processed and I was finally allowed to enter United States.

I supposed to miss my next flight because of the custom procedure. While the custom officer assured me that the airline will definitely replace my flight with another flight, I was still worried and irritated about the fact I was missing my flight and had to trouble myself with rechecking with the airline. So I brought my two large baggages and walked to the transfer baggage check-in. A friendly Philippine baggage officer checked my baggage tags and to my surprise, told me I had not missed my flight since my flight was delayed for 2 hours 47 minutes! My good luck but bad luck for others. So I checked my baggages and walked happily to the boarding gate.

O’Hare airport was so crowded and the security were really tight. And so I waited for the delayed flight, getting some lunch and coffee and waited… Until finally, after waiting for almost an hour, I finally boarded the plane. On the runway, the pilot announced the plane would had to wait 27 minutes before the tower allowed it to depart, well, great… another delay. Well, at least 27 minutes was true and the plane finally leave Chicago after the long delay. Great!

UA 646, Chicago - New York/New Jersey

The plane went to Newark Liberty International Airport, New Jersey. It’s actually one of the three airport servicing New York, the others are La Guardia (mostly local flights) and JFK. I went to Newark because my new boss could only picked me there since it was the nearest airport to his place. So, Newark was my destination of choice. The flight was uneventful, except for the 27 minutes of delay, again I had an Economy Plus seating at the window side and there was no movie on the 2 hours flight. It was practically a night flight.

Uneventful as it was, at the end of the flight, as the plane dived toward Newark Airport, my eyes caught a view that I will never forget for the rest of my life. It was Manhattan, glowing with thousands of lights and it was so beautiful and so grand, it almost brought the tears to my eyes. This was the first time I laid my eyes upon New York and I was staring at the main city glorified lights. Paris could take the title as “The City of Lights”, but I’d seen Paris and I think Manhattan could took that title now. It was amazing. I was so amazed, I made a mental note to recommend everybody who would visit New York to land on Newark at night time, it was an unforgettable experience.

Photos from dead_squid

Newark Liberty International Airport

Get off my plane, straight to the Baggage Claim area, waiting for my bags and while waiting, my new boss greeted me and finally, after communicating back and forth using email, instant text and video messaging, we finally met. I was tired, the total travel time was almost (or more?) than 36 hours, but I also happy because this was a start of a new beginning. So after collected my baggages, me and my boss walked outside to the parking lot and there I was greeted by the winter weather. It was quite a shock, since just a couple of days ago I was living in the tropic and suddenly the temperature drops to almost 0° Celsius, reminder to self: started to get used with the Fahrenheit system in this country. So we entered the car and drove away from Newark to his house, somewhere in New Jersey…

Epilogue

The story ends here. For now. Next will be about my first trip to NYC… I hope all of you, especially those who keep asking me to write this, enjoy the story as much as I enjoy experiencing it. Always have faith that things will get better, as long as we tried hard and harder.

Happy New Year 2009! Time to make our life better!

Leaving

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 11:37:28 -0500

Last Tuesday was my last day at Carat. I will take another leap of faith to another venture and building a new kind of life. It’s been only a year I worked with Carat but it felt like a long time because there were so many things happened during my time there. Starting a new division was not an easy task and one year was a really short time to get things going really well. I hope what I did was sufficiently enough for that new division to keep rolling without me. After all, it was practically a one man show during my time.

Media Approach

One thing I love about working with Carat was the experience and the challenge. I never had a stint with a media agency before so I was quite thrilling to learn a different way of seeing and approaching “interactive media”.

I came from an interactive production background, I saw things base on user experience, I did things accordingly to user’s requirement and needs and trying to make user could finished their tasks or goals. It was purely a user centric approach to get things done. It was a basic “how”.

However, media approach was quite different. In the end it still back to the “how” but the approach added another layer on top of it, the “why” layer. Interactive media was all about usage, there was no point of building an “interactivity” nobody use. Media was all about marketing effort to reach people.

Traditional media like television, newspaper, magazine, radio, billboard and others were channels to deliver the message from the advertiser (commercial or non-commercial) to people. Traditional campaign relied on one way communication and using media as its loudspeaker. Interactive (or digital) media like internet, mobile and digital installation had the ability to “interact” with people, which means multiple way communication and both or more parties were using the loudspeaker both way. That particular character brought every parties on a equal footing. Good news for customers and advertisers who care for the customers but bad news for most advertisers since most of them were not ready, even prepared, to deal with the reduce of power. To make things worse, there is a common understanding that if you need to advertise heavily then your product (whatever that is) is not good enough.

People used interactive media to achieve something, to get things done or just to have fun. The advertisers want people to aware of their message, to make people at least tried their products or to boost their sales. So the basic question was “Why people want to use interactive media which actually a part of a marketing effort?”.

Different Ball-game

In the near future, as near as next year, it will be a different ball-game for the advertisers. Of course it will be so naive to predict the death of traditional media, especially in Indonesia where traditional media still hold the biggest influence but it also very naive to ignore the rise of interactive (digital) media to influence the people especially those who had digital access privilege.

Advertisers just not had to listen, they also had to respond. It may help to has a dedicated ‘digital media task team’ in the company to handle this new and growing level of interactivity. It will not be easy since the current economy situation forced most advertisers to cut down the budget or even the employee. Although, doing it correctly and elegantly will has its own reward when the economy started to recover again.

A simple magic mantra would be “Join the conversation”. It was an easy things to say but in reality it was not easy to do.

Epilogue

I was leaving Carat. I was leaving a simple legacy, an Interactive Division (which is now part of the Diversified Division) and its network in the media provider and partner. I was learning a lot of things related to the media industry and business. I was happy and grateful to be a part of an exciting and challenging company like Carat. Now it’s my time to move on. New company, new challenge and new country.

It’s about time.

Media is Life

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:18:28 -0500

It’s been a while, isn’t it? It is not because real life™ is taking over but there are many exciting things happened around the online environment too.

Microblogging

Twitter, Plurk, Pownce, Jaiku and even Facebook’s status are becoming my main vent of online presence. Writing in those so-called microblog platform is so convenient and easy, so writing a long article in this blog seems like a very challenging task.

Not to mention nowadays I rarely had time to think and analyze things thoughtfully. Instead of writing a half-thought entry, I rather wrote a simple and direct thought about… well, everything in those platform.

Of course keeping all of those microblogs is a challenge itself. Using Ping.fm really helped me with updating my entries but not really helping in keeping my conversation with others. Basically, I paid more attention to Plurk’s conversation than any other services. So if you want to catch me, check my Plurk.

Work

Practically, I am swamped. It is not easy to become one man show army supporting the entire office. Not to mention the regional requests and inquiries as a consequences working within a multinational company.

Especially during these late of year months where all the pitches for next year strategies on media are happening. My work lately had been rotating between one pitch to another and another. Working on Saturday and Sunday is becoming a routine. And that’s not entirely agreeable. At least with me.

Life

What life? Really, for the last couple of months, my life had been reduced into work and rest. Thankfully I still have teaching activity which I put as a ‘break and charge’ activity. I am not complaining because despite all of this and that, my life is quite satisfactory.

Of course I missed a lot of things. I rarely watched cinema, barely played games on my PSP, painfully missed hangout with friends and any others non working activity. But I guess that was the risk I had to take when I accepted this job and I had to do it until I am tired of this and ready to move on.

For now, I let myself become a corporate drone.

Others

There are many things to share, many thoughts to write and many experiences to tell. Maybe later. I am not giving any promise.

Until then, I am still be around and post my small and simple thought on those microblogging platform.

33

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 00:14:34 -0500

is the number that has the meaning “good will always triumph over evil”
is the code for international direct-dial phone calls to France
is the age of Alexander the Great when he died
is the atomic number of arsenic
is a significant number in modern numerology, one of the master numbers along with 11 and 22
is the title of the first episode of the new Battlestar Galactica television series
is the number of vertebrae in a normal human spine
is not the answer to life, the universe and everything. It’s still 42.

is also the number of years I’ve been breathing on this planet today.

Re-quoted my favorite poem:

“As through the calendar I delve
I pause to rejoice in April twelve.
Yea, be I in sickness or be I in health
My favorite date is April twealth.
…”
“Lines in Praise of a Date Made Praiseworthy Solely by Something Very Nice That Happened to It”,
by Ogden Nash

Commander

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:22:08 -0500

After a meeting with Ministry of Communication and Informatics yesterday night, I am still amazed about how linear, short-sighted, narrow minded and low self-esteem my government is. From the discussion, all of those attributes were coming out one by one and it scared me. A lot.

Self-Esteem

If I burn the barn just because I can not catch one rat, I believe people will call me stupid, absurd or even idiot. But that was what happened with YouTube case. I don’t know who was behind the idea of blocking YouTube, the Minister said it was coming from the President, just because one crappy movie. Yes, the movie insulted the religion of the majority of Indonesian, no doubt about it, but the way Indonesian government reacted was totally over reacting.

Let me turn my flashback engine. Indonesian government told YouTube to takedown a movie, I don’t have to tell you what movie it is - if you don’t know what movie I am talking about, just help yourself with Google. YouTube didn’t respond because well, it’s YouTube, all of the content were user generated content. But instead of following the spirit of the web by flagging the movie as negative or offensive, the government grumpily chosed to block the entire YouTube. Yeah, I said grumpily because the government thought that YouTube didn’t respect Indonesian government request. So low self-esteem. So low that the government didn’t have guts to create a creative way to counter the movie on the content level. So low that instead of encouraging its own people to create a counter movie, the government chosed to close down the infrastructure. It’s pathetic, really.

That action was also very New Orderly. In the New Order era, if the government did not like one article then the government would ban the newspaper that have the article. The history repeated itself. Welcome to the New Order 2.0.

Narrow Minded

It’s clear that the intention of the Ministry to invite the community was to ask how to block a certain movie discussed above. Nothing else. So no matter how the community screamed out their heart out and even offered brilliant alternative solution other than blocking, the Ministry simply shrugged those off. The Ministry only want to hear the solution for their solution which was the blocking, imagine how strange it was.

Who put us into this mess first time? Who brilliant enough to come out with the idea of blocking the whole website, without even knowing the essence of user generated content, just because of one content? Then when they realized it was not so easy, they were asking help for their problem and closed their eyes and mind for any other better and yet smart alternatives. They can not even solved their own solution. Nice work.

Xenophobic

One of the department staff continuously talking about xenophobic and racism toward us in the international world. As if Indonesian were not xenophobic and racist toward others? I always said this and people kept getting angry with my statement: “Indonesian are one of the most xenophobic and racist people in the world”. Do you think it’s not true?

Even worse, Indonesian are just not racist, Indonesian are tribalist. How many times we hear: “Javanesse vs. Sundanesse”, “Sumatra people are better than Java people”, “Where are you come from? Java? Solo? Jogja?”, “You don’t look like Batak”, “Are you Chinese? So you must be very rich”, “Indonesian girls who are dating foreigners are only looking for money” and other racist/tribalist comments? Don’t say you never heard it or even don’t say you never said it, because that will be a lie.

Putting the blame to the international world for being xenophobic and racist against us was like a childish act. We are racist, we are xenophobic, we are tribalist - even I sometime fallen into that trap, not just toward the international world but toward our own community, our own country.

Commander

I saw yesterday meeting as a step forward for the government to listen the voice of its people directly. I appreciated the effort, really I did. It’s just a shame that the government was only looking for one track solution. There were other inspirations, other ideas and other things that could become a better solution without losing our dignity as a nation.

International world treated us with xenophobic and racism. Fine, that’s already happened. Are we stand still? Of course not. But not in the level of forbidding access, not in the level of an undemocratic country (yeah, some of you probably laugh about this), not in the level of a security personal. We showed them that we are great. We are creative. We are proud of our identity. We are able to compete on the same level with them. That will be a very smart and dignified solution.

Somehow the word ‘Government’ made me wonder. It means ‘someone to govern’. While it translated into Indonesian as “Pemerintah” which actually means “someone who command”. Commanding vs. Governing. Is that what the Indonesian government all about? I command thee to block YouTube - no other option! I didn’t want to believe that it was true but it seems like the truth.

Epilogue

It was clear that the commander er… government only could think of one solution. Blocking (or in the milder term: filtering). That’s all. They want to control the information again. I was joking around and said that the Ministry of Communication and Informatics (Depkominfo in Indonesian abbreviation) should probably changed its name into ‘Departemen Kompilasi Informasi’ (Department of Information Compilation) - it still retain the name ‘Depkominfo’ but with a different meaning because that’s what they did right now. They decided and compiled which were the best content for their people - for some it was an insult for an intelligence, of course, but those ‘some’ are not majority, so don’t worry.

There you have it.

Additional Note (April 9, 2008 - 0:23):

I just watched this movie. This is an example of a smart way to deal with the issue. This is what I was trying to tell the Ministry - which of course, like shouting against the wind. This is the mature solution. This is what I called “playing on the same level”. This is a high self-esteem. This is a broad-minded view. This is what our government lack of…

Dengue

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 18:42:53 -0500

According to Wikipedia:

Dengue fever (IPA: /ˈdɛŋgeɪ/) and dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) are acute febrile diseases, found in the tropics and Africa, with a geographical spread similar to malaria. One major difference, however, is that malaria is often eradicated in major cities, whereas dengue is often found in urban areas of developed tropical nations, including Singapore, Taiwan and Brazil. Caused by one of four closely related virus serotypes of the genus Flavivirus, family Flaviviridae, each serotype is sufficiently different that there is no cross-protection and epidemics caused by multiple serotypes (hyperendemicity) can occur. Dengue is transmitted to humans by the Aedes aegypti (rarely Aedes albopictus) mosquito, which feeds during the day.

According to me:

Dengue fever is a very frustrated sickness. Not only you will need constant supply of fluids, either using intravenous theraphy or drinking a lot, more than 2 litres a day, you also will have to stay still most of the time in bed and do nothing. It will take more than 3 days to feel better and it will take more than a week to really recover but after that you will still feel really weak. No direct medication available too, the only way to fight the virus is using the above methods and wait for your own body to fight back the disease.

No Direct Medication?

True. Only supportive therapy. During my hospitalization because of dengue at the late January 2008, I didn’t get any specific medication to counter the dengue virus. The only official medicines were vitamin, paracetamol (as analgesic) and a medicine to counter my queasy. Intravenous therapy was also part of the medication to prevent dehydration and blood coagulation.

One of the distinguished feature of dengue was the rapid drop of thrombocytes from their normal value between 150.000 - 400.000 per mm³ (Mine was dropped to 45.000 on the day the first blood test was taken and keep dropping until the lowest 13.000 before they hiked up again). So the major aim of the therapy is to boost the amount of thrombocytes back into their normal range.

The Danger

Dengue fever could be very dangerous if the detection was too late. Dengue started with a very high fever for 2-3 days and the fever rapidly dropped on the 3^rd day. Most of the fatal cases happened because during the drop of the fever, the thrombocytes were dropping too, very rapidly and because of the lowest amount of thrombocytes, if there were any bleeding happened - the bleeding was having a hard time to stop (thrombocytes responsible to stop the bleeding) and it could be very fatal.

So, if you were having a high fever, please do a blood check when the fever stopped. It could be only a normal fever but if it was dengue fever at least you’ll find out soon enough to get a proper treatment.

Traditional Methods

There are some traditional methods, which not medically proven yet but really does not hurt to try, to boost the amount of thrombocytes. There is a traditional Chinese medicine called Angkak, the highest recommendation from everybody, which said will boost the amount of thrombocytes very rapidly. Guava juice also said to boost the amount of thrombocytes. Honey from dates also one of the traditional medicine recommended. Isotonic drink, not a traditional method but a convenient, also helps to prevent dehydration. Which one is actually proven to be the best? I have no idea since I used all of the above methods to rapidly boost the amount of thrombocytes.

I was hospitalized for 6 days and these were the amount of my thrombocytes for each day: 45.000 (dropped to 37.000 on the first day), 13.000, 15.000, 34.000, 67.000 and 122.000. When the thrombocytes passed the 100.000 barriers, I was allowed to went home but still need to rest and drinks a lot of fluids (but no intravenous therapy needed anymore, what a relief).

For a week after my release from the hospital, I was still drinking all of the traditional methods mentioned above. After a week, I was checking up to the doctor again to see how was my current health. Well, the thrombocytes were counted as high as 413.000, the doctor said it was called the ‘bouncing effect’ since previously the thrombocytes was pressurized to reduce themselves, now with the pressure factor gone, they were boosting up themselves beyond the necessary amount.

Health

So yeah, I was officially healthy again. But the medical advice still the same: Slow down a bit and get a lot of rest for at least a month because my body still need to adjust itself before it will tune in a full gear.

I missed a lot of deadline and currently tried to catch up all of those without extorting myself. It was difficult but well, it’s time to move back into normal life, right?

And Justice is for Who?

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 12:36:34 -0500

Here’s a long and true story… happened on Tuesday, 15 January 2008 from around noon until late night. The locations and events were true.

Around lunch time, a rather old citizen mechanic was asked by a car owner to fix and get the owner’s car which was stranded somewhere in a public parking lot. Unfortunately, a miscommunication happened and the mechanic accidentally tried to open another car with the same look just across the street. Guess what happened next…

South Jakarta Prosecutor Office (Kantor Kejaksaan Jakarta Selatan, Velbak)

The mistaken car park in the South Jakarta Prosecutor office. Before the mechanic realized his error, one of the prosecutor official yelled “Car thief!” at the mechanic and dozen of prosecutor official in their official uniform punched and kicked the mechanic. Now, try to imagine this: prosecutors, part of the Justice Department, wearing their uniform, punching and kicking a senior citizen who accused stealing a car without even gave the mechanic a chance to explain himself and they are supposed to be the one who make sure that justice was served in this country. Great.

The mechanic bad day was not ending yet. After being punched and kicked brutally, they (prosecutors in uniform) dragged him to the security room and questioning the mechanic. Then, the mechanic was sent to the police station.

South Jakarta Sector Police Headquarter (Polsek Jakarta Selatan, Taman Puring)

Police. The arm of justice. Yeah, right. What happened in the police office was more mind blowing. The mechanic was dragged into the interrogation room and, this one was pathetic, tasered again and again to force the mechanic to confess. Tasered… taser was created to defend oneself, not as the torture device, right? Yeah, right. And to confess, confessed what exactly? That the mechanic was a car thief? He’s not. He was simply mistaken the car. OK, the mechanic had his own fault for not checking the car plate first. But according to the mechanic, which he told later, he already asked permission to the parking guard and got the parking guard permission. Well, no use. Still the police tasered, punched and threaten the mechanic to get his ‘confession’.

Procedures

The car owner finally get notified about the accident (but not the beating and torturing part) in the afternoon. He thought lightly about the issue at the moment because well, it was a simple mistake, right? A couple of ID checks, few phone calls should made everything all right. Right?

It turned out the police made things complicated than that. They said the mechanic was not supposed to be release because:

He got to be contained for 24 hours OR,
The owner of the mistaken car filed a complain if the mechanic accidentally broke the car lock OR,
The family of the mechanic ‘bailed’ him OR,
Whatever… No idea.

So there were many and different reasons for the mechanic’s contained situation. Most of them were ridiculous anyway but how about made things more interesting? Read it until the end then, it will get more absurd as ever.

Reasoning

The car owner arrived at the police station after dark. He felt like a moron because he was believing that the police would treat the mechanic well and humanly. He had a good faith with the police. He used to be a ‘school security patrol’ when he was at school. He knew there were a lot of corrupt police but this case was not about money - it was about mistake. He got to admit that he was wrong. Wrong about the police and especially wrong about the justice.

When he came to the police station, the mechanic was sitting in the office of one of the officer with one officer. The mechanic looked stressful but physically quite well except for a couple of bruises in his face. The police was acting like he was the ruler of the world. Arrogant, full of pride and snobbish. Typical.

So, the car owner directly asked what should be done in this particular situation. Before the officer started talking, the car owner put a tape recorder and took out the notepad to write important things. The police officer gave a long speech about this and that, how things were really put the mechanic in a very deep trouble and so on. The office even emphasized about the owner of the mistaken car, he said the owner was one of the highest rank in the prosecutor office as if that fact will add some value other than a fact that a high rank of public servant was allowing an innocent man to be beaten and contained?

The car owner was furious and irritated of the officer’s answer. But he thought anger would not solve the problem, so he took a deep breath and started talking about the facts.

Absurd Facts

Now, here comes the most absurd parts:

When asked about the name of the high rank prosecutor, the officer said he did not know and did not care. He just wait for that prosecutor to come to the police station to file a complain.
When asked about the car plate number of the mistaken car, the officer said he did not know and did not care. So the car which was about to be stolen, an evidence, was not identified and was out there somewhere.
When asked about how long the mechanic would be held, the office said he did not know and reasoned it was depend on the ‘situation’. He asked if someone would like to take responsibility if the mistaken car owner filed a complain then he would try to release the mechanic as soon as possible.

So, the owner of mistaken car was not identified, the identity of the mistaken car was not identified - only the color and the brand (even with the brand, the same kind of car had 3 types, which of course was not identified either) and the time of containment was not rigidly set. A really great situation.

The car owner told the officer that he would be the one who will take the responsibility if there were any damage to the mistaken car’s lock. The officer told the car owner to write down the note of responsibility. The car owner wrote the note himself, these are the quotes:

… Will took responsibility if the mistaken car’s lock of the car, which plate number was not known, was broken because of the mechanic’s act and the mistaken car owner, which was unidentified, asked for a compensation…

It was a ghost car with a ghost owner.

The officer read it and made remark about maybe sometime will visit the car owner when he was in the neighborhood. Politeness or a threat? Nobody knows, just wait and see. The officer then told the car owner that he would need to contact his superior for the approval of the note. He said he could not guarantee the time since probably the superior was not at the office. It could take 5 minutes to the whole day, according to him. The car owner said he would wait until the mechanic released. So the officer went out for about 10 minutes.

After the Note

When he returned, he said everything was fine, the mechanic would be released right away. Great, except one thing. All of the belonging of the mechanic (ID card, some money and his motorcycle’s key) was confiscated and stored in the drawer of one of the officer and he was away. The officer told the mechanic to retrieve his belonging on the next morning. The car owner said he would be the one to retrieve it but he need the name of the officer who held it. The officer refused to tell the name of the other officer but suddenly a person came into the room and asking for that particular officer while mentioning the name, great. The car owner wrote down the name of all three officers in that room. It could come in handy one day.

Couple of minutes later, the drawer’s officer came in with a polite behavior and a very bright smile. He tried to be friendly while later on, the car owner learned that officer was the one who tasering the most and even spoke the harshest threat to the mechanic. The office then opened his drawer and handed out all of the mechanic’s belonging.

After some chit chat about everything, including marriage life and so on (Yeah, that was pointless, wasn’t it?), the car owner and the mechanic walked out of the room, walked out of the police station, get the mechanic’s motorcycle and went home.

Epilogue

During the fiasco, the car owner wondered, what was the point of all this hullabaloo. The prosecutor officers were brutally oppressive, the police officers were tasering people around, the mistaken car and its owner were not around and not filing anything yet, the mechanic was held up and get tortured, the car owner time was wasted, the energy was depleted and the point was?

Some people pointed out that these were strategies used by the police officer to extort some money. Well, in this case no money was spent useless - except maybe the taxi fare. The officer did not ask for money at all. Maybe they just enjoyed tasering people.

Is there anyway to file a complain if we experienced this things? Especially about the brutality of the prosecutor officers. Indonesian already knew the police corp is the most corrupted and brutal institution in this country. Where we supposed to report about this incident? The police? The court? Or these kind of accidents just happened and we just have to forget it? Seems like my last writing foreshadowing these kind of accidents.

To make things fair: The beating was witnessed by a lot of people but the tasering was told by the mechanic only. As far his relatives and friends knew, the mechanic was an honest man.

Note: Bringing a tape recorder and a notepad were a good way to deal with government or public official like police officers. Mentioning the word “journalist” also helps especially if you had press contact or a press corp yourself. Had a connection with Committee of Law Support and Corruption Eradication Committee was also a great assets.

Amnesiac

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 12:56:33 -0500

Indonesian are curiously amnesiac. Watching current news in Indonesia proved that interesting fact. There is a certain events happened in the media (television, radio, newspaper and internet) right now. It is about the same topic again and again. Most of the people, related to the topic, talked about goodness, forgiveness and reward. Fair enough, but somehow there were some missing pieces. How about the wickedness, repentance and punishment?

Being Human

As a human being we need to be able to forgive. If you are a religious person then you must believe that God will forgive anybody as long as they repent and in extreme situation, those who repent still need to be punished for their wrongdoing. So we had three main issues here: wickedness done by a human, repentance by that human and punishment for the wickedness done by that human who repent. Those train of thought were established to maintain a good society. It was not meant to hurt that particular human, it was meant to remind people about the great responsibility as a human being.

Being human is difficult. There are things a human should but could not do it. Or could but should not. Most of us picked ‘should but could not’ stance when faced with difficult situation. There are people who got so much power and most of them picked ‘could but should not’ approach to the situation. For example, people should help others but some people choose not to do it because they don’t have the ability or power to help. People with power however, they should not use their power to harm others but most of them choose to do it anyway, just because they could.

With great power comes great responsibility. Comic book lovers knew where the phrase came from. It may be a cliché but it holds the truth. Unfortunately, most people with great power did not understand this. They saw their power as a mean to escalate personal interest. Their power were so great, they even could altered the mind of people they were controlled.

Being Amnesiac

Forgiving is a good act but forgetting is not. Forgiving is an act of clearing our heart and believe people always have their opportunity to do things right, next time. Forgetting is an act of wiping our mind and try not to remember anything, good or bad, about a certain person. By forgetting, we actually gave them another chance to do their best or their worst indefinitely.

Selective forgetting is the worst act and this is what happened here in Indonesia currently. Forget all the bad things, remember all the good things and that’s all. It does not really matter if a person practically, direct or indirect, was destroying many people’s life, practising wicked behavior and economic, manipulating minds of million of people and ruining a whole country with his/her previous action. It does not matter at all. Indonesian could forget all about that and remember only all the good and great things ever did by a person. Wicked deeds did not need to be repented and wicked deeds definitely did not need to be punished. This issue will lead into bad precedence for Indonesia now and in the future.

For some people, what happened to them was the opposite. Their hatred was so deep, they could not see the good things. Their hatred was tragically reasonable enough. They were destroyed, isolated, tormented and mollified physically and psychologically. They lost family members, their jobs, their reputation, their way of life. In their hatred mind, forgiving and forgetting are the same action. How we are going to assure them that forgiving is not forgetting and forgetting is just plain ignorant? Or maybe it was not our problem.

Most Indonesian memory do not last for more than 10 years. They do not remember why thing happened the way it was in 1998. They do not remember how to life under pressure, being afraid to talk their mind, scared to say something is right or wrong. They do not remember anything about the horrible past. They do remember all the supposed-to-be thriving economy. They do remember everything were easy if you had the money. They do remember how a public servant could become amazingly rich. They choose to remember all the good things while forgetting all the bad things.

They choose to be amnesiac, selective amnesiac.

Being Forgiven

Just ask for forgiveness and be forgiven. Asking for forgiveness is hard to do because we, direct or indirectly, admit our mistakes. Especially if we were someone with great power. Admitting mistakes was the last thing we want to do because we were afraid to look weak or stupid. But mistakes were practically human. Admitting mistakes makes us human and respected as a human being. If someone being a human, they should be treated as human too. So forgiveness is also part of our humanity.

Sure, we could forgive without being asked. That’s the greatest human action we could do. Just don’t forget. Don’t forget why we need to forgive in the first place. Don’t forget so we don’t experience the same thing again and again.

Please, be a great human. Forgive everything, just don’t be amnesiac.

Tasks

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 09:10:39 -0500

After more than 1.5 years out of daily job circle, last Wednesday I officially started my day by sitting inside my new office, Carat Indonesia. Not inside a cubicle, fortunately, but in a comfortable room, around 2x2 m2 with a comfortable chair, a huge desk and a wireframe trash bin that look exactly like a default Mac OS X Tiger’s trash bin (Yeah, I know it’s weird to make a reference about a trash bin - but I just couldn’t help it.). There are still some leftover stuff from the previous resident of this room, I had no idea what should I do with those stuff. Some items are still missing, I keep a reminder to ask for a whiteboard (As a person with responsibility for digital stuff, I had a strange need to write things, with hand and pen, everywhere - so a whiteboard is a necessity). I unofficially called my room, the ‘Chamber’.

That’s the physical. For the psychological, it was fine. Got introduced with almost everybody but couldn’t really socialize as I was sitting by myself inside my ‘chamber’ most of the time during the first day. So yeah, no socializing more than say ‘hi’ to a couple of people. The second and third day were not much different except the socialize thing started to escalate a bit. The fact that I am the first and only ‘digital specific’ person in the company didn’t really made this ‘socialize’ thing matter too much. Of course, socializing is part of the office life but in this case didn’t socialize much somehow helped me to concentrate more on my work.

The Tasks

About the job itself. Basically my current responsibilities are covering three tasks. Only three? Well, let me said those three were like the exam essay question with 1.a, 1.b, 1.c and so on parts. So, what are they?

My first task is to re-established the presence of Carat Indonesia on the web since the domain carat.co.id was expired months ago. It will be very awkward to announce that we had a new digital division and not having a website, right?
Second task is to build a presentation about the digital situation in Indonesia, a tough one. Tough because not only there were not enough information or data about it, for most of the time, Indonesia’s cases were unique and totally different than any cases around the world. It was difficult to get more information about digital users more than just 8.9% of the population (around 20 million) for internet users and 27.2% of the population (around 65 million people) for mobile users. Of course, there are many commercially available information out there - but buying them straight away was like buying a cat in a sack, I did not know if their data or methods were correct or even reliable, so if anybody out there could provide me with this kind of information with high reliability level - commercial or non-commercial, please let me know, I would love to discuss this.
Third task is to integrate digital media as a part of the media solution offered by Carat to its clients and prospects. This is actually the main reason why I am working here. It could be a small part or an entire part, depend on the problem we tried to solve. I am a believer of ‘integrated solution’ as I believe there were only a couple of rare situations when digital or traditional solution alone will be able to solve any problem in this era of augmented society.

So there they are. Of course, when the first and the second task are done, I will concentrate more in the third tasks with all of its related issues.

Overall, everything looks great and challenging. So, wish me luck on this new place!

Incoming

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 23:31:55 -0500

It’s the time of the year again. End of year. I’d been overwhelmed with Real Life™ lately and the end of year phase was not really helping me to slow down either. So yeah, sorry for the lack of update lately. There were many issues need to be resolved before the new year comes.

2007 Recap

For me, 2007 was a decent year. Not too great but not too terrible. Meet dozens new interesting people, some actually played a great deal in my life now. Doing dozens of projects, some of them were great and interesting while the rest could be categorized as ‘pain in the neck but I need the money’ type of project. Well, to sum it up, I’d seen better years.

Although things were not all glitters and golds, 2007 was the year I will definitely miss. It was a year when I finally barely coped living in Jakarta. Jakarta is still hell, of course. Floods, traffic jams, crazy drivers, arrogant governor, corrupted local government, unpredictable cost of living were only small fractions of Jakarta’s problem. And it was getting worse. I was less frustrated not because the situation was getting better, I just get used to it right now. I wish I will not too comfortable with this situation and getting numb because of it.

Starting 2007 as a semi-permanent lecturer at Binus University International, I am still teaching there now. While teaching I’d been doing favors to dozens of companies, either as a consultant or involved directly in their companies or projects. It was exciting time unless the amount of time wasted in the traffic really tired me down.

Not much happening tho. Most of the time, it was all about surviving. Getting the projects when the saving was low, relaxing after all the bills were paid, looking for project again when the saving was starting to deplete, wash, rinse and repeat. While this kind of living giving me a lot of free time, this level of ‘excitement’ sometimes felt too much.

The Challenge

Then the unexpected came. Somehow, my resume got a particular company’s attention. We talked and after couple of months back and forth, things started to materialized. I generally turned off the possibility of working within a particular company in Jakarta but the challenge I’ll have to deal with this one was just too good to pass. It was a position where I believe I could make a difference in the world that I generally thought as clueless, ignorant and aimless when it came to the ‘digital life’.

So, starting January 2008 - as early as 2 January, I will work as manager for Carat Digital, a business unit of Carat, an international media company and part of Aegis Media, in Jakarta. As the spearhead of this business unit, my main responsibilities will be to expand the business of Carat Indonesia into the digital world by introducing, educating, implementing and utilizing “digital” in the communication and marketing strategy that Carat will employ for its current and prospect clients.

It was a tall order since most of Indonesian media and advertising agency (including Carat Indonesia) are still working within their traditional mindset. Almost everybody who know me already knew my almost pessimistic attitude about this issue. Some agency tried to ‘adopt’ digital and most of them failed miserably. Most of their problem were based on their hesitation (or arrogance?) to understand about digital completely. They thought they could treated digital media as the same as their treated traditional media. Of course, for some cases, they were right but what they didn’t realize was “digital media was more than everything we already know and learn from traditional media”.

When they treated digital media as traditional media, they were actually trapping themselves inside their traditional box. While many traditional practices still valid when translated into digital, there were many possibilities outside traditional practices. Of course they were untested as vigorously as the traditional practice but that was the exciting and challenging part. Name one of Indonesian media or advertising agency creation related to implementation of digital media as a communication and marketing strategy that actually worked or at least had some major impact. It was a common knowledge that a website (a very basic implementation of digital media for communication and marketing purpose) built by an Indonesian media or advertising agency would normally unusable, inaccessible, not compliance with web standards and fail to meet its purpose. For some of the time, the strategy was great but something went wrong when it came into the implementation phase. So yeah, definitely there must be a better way for media and advertising agency in Indonesia to adopt digital as part of its arsenal.

I am not saying that I have a magic pill that could cure all of those problem. But as a person growing up half of my life with digital and taking formal education specifically in digital media, I believe I can make the difference. The challenge is too great to pass and I am not the person who let go the formidable challenge. I am talking about interactivity, connectivity, immersivity and subtlety. It will all about people oriented website or digital media, viral communication, alternate reality game, mobile devices, digital installation and dozens of exciting things in the digital world.

I still maintain my teaching schedule at Binus, my new company allowed me to do it and I was very glad and thankful for it, but maybe I need to adjust the hours. Currently I still had to finish the current semester and I will need to readjust the hours for the next semester.

Resolutions?

I didn’t had the habit of resolutions. Not that I didn’t had any dreams or ambitions, I have a lot of those, it’s just I put things into a flexible box. While there were many pointers in that box, those pointers merely served as reminders than targets. But for 2008 I think I will emphasize one red thread to highlight 2008:

To learn, educate, think, create, implement, utilize, bring to the new level, explore, communicate, popularize and promote digital as an additional framework of thought for a better and enjoyable life.

All right, it was very vague and I’d been doing that since many years ago but I will make 2008 the year I will dedicate to achieve those goals exclusively.

Happy New Year 2008!

So, happy New Year everyone. I wish all of you the best and the greatest year. The journey will be hard but the learning experience will be valuable. Have a great new year eve and see you in 2008. It will be a very exciting year.