This past several weeks I’ve been put under so much work, I’ve been unable to post a blog article. Thank God I usually have a few posts set on drafts, so the posts will still show up for a while in this blog. So you thought I blogged routinely? Ha ! 🙂 oops…

Anyway, just now I realized I’ve missed a very interesting topic – bridge blogging. Yay, now everyone knows that I didn’t blog routinely 😀

Back to the topic, I agree with Unspun that he’s not the first to propose the idea. Personally I was told about it by Budi Putra, and according to Unspun it’s already proposed by Fatih Syuhud before that.
And since the first time I’m in fully agreement with the idea.

Why is it a good idea ? Because blogging in other language (in this case, English) can be really useful & helpful to others. It helps one to widen his/her perspective.

Two excellent examples :
[ The beautiful Iran ] : Most wouldn’t know Iran as potrayed here – btw, we’re talking about photoblogging here (ok, ok, so I’m really stretching even that term, but hopefully you got the point 🙂 )
[ The Real Myanmar ] : Truth-spreading blog (no, it’s not a happy one)

Also from personal experience – at the time of 9/11, we (muslims) have been subjected to ridicule because we have not spoken against the terrorists.
Well guess what, we DID. But at the time, the media chose not to air it – effectively silencing us; thus creating the impression of approval of terrorism from us. We suffered a lot, up to personal level : my wife even got harassed.
So then I made a vow to try spread any useful information & knowledge as much as possible. Blog has made it easy for us to share our thoughts, and Google has made it possible for others to easily find it.

I think most of you by now will agree that bridge blogging is indeed a good, and important, idea.

So what’s left is the problem of its execution – how should we do it ?

Personally I say : up to you !
Say whatever you want to say (except, of course, things that breaks the law: stealing others contents, libel, harassment, etc). In whatever language, English or Indonesian.
Positive or negative, blog them all. The single most important criteria is : try to post (even what may seem remotely) useful things.
(of course it’s still okay to post other stuff than that, but at the moment we’re talking about an idea which goal is to benefit others)

Anyway – however, for maximum reach, do try to blog in English too sometimes. I’ve had contacts with people from all over the Earth because of this; Middle East, USA, Morocco, France, Italy, and so on.
They’ve been able to benefit from me because of my English blog posts / articles.

That’s just too cool.
Without Internet/Google/Blog, we’ll be busy with just ourselves under our own rock (hi Patrick!)

Also people have been very surprised when I told them how it is in Indonesia. The fact that I don’t have to live underground. From what they’ve seen in news, they thought it’s riots & disasters & misery all over the place.
Well, sorry, but no 🙂 It’s mostly very peaceful here, as my recent holiday to the corners of beautiful West Sumatera proved. I was very much recharged from it.

I just found that nadia febina share similar sentiment. Yes guys, Indonesia looked **really** bad from the outside.
When you’re out there, indeed you’ll know (and personally experience) too about what (the heck) is it that I’m talking about.

About blog politics : I could NOT care less 😀

I’m blogging to share (whatever that can be shared), not to play some games. As the result, I’ve been targeted quite several times, especially in the open source topic (so far I’ve had to disable 2 blog posts to avoid collateral damage).
People are angry with me and calling me (really) bad names. Some call me naive. In return, I’m calling people to blog.
I don’t care if you’re from this community or that community (high five with treespotter) – just blog the truth. We are bound to the same universe anyway (so yes, I’m calling you too, my Martian & Plutonian friends).
So there 🙂

I’d like to offer my opinion on 2 things while we’re on the subject. First, if I’m Unspun, I’d rather not use the word “most” in the sentence most of them are droll, since, if you haven’t done a proper research, it’d be way too close to generalization. “Some” would be much more closer to truth.
Still I’m very thankful to him for bringing us the term “bridge blogging”. It’ll make further conversations on the topic with fellow bloggers easier for me 🙂

Second; I feel really sorry to what happened to Jennie. It seems like she’s been in quite some hardship, she found it hard to talk about Indonesia positively.
No worries there Jennie, do speak out about it, and be happy knowing that you’ve contributed in creating the big picture !

I’d like also to comment on her comment here :

I was able to see how “parochial” Indonesian bloggers are based on that incident. Why can’t they just show one small sympathy?

Well, similar thing has happened before in the past. Curious what fellow Indonesians have to say to the accusation, I asked several of them.
To my surprise, some of the responses are rather amusing – they thought America is the land of the rich, and therefore very much able to help themselves in case of disasters like this.

Guess how surprised they were when I told them how bad it’s over there – unemployement, 50% spending budget allocated for military, there are hungry & poor people, how they’ve been screwed so bad by their own government (Bush has cancelled the children’s health safety net, and the latest he tried to cancel the budget for critical water projects. Even after Katrina, can you believe that? Cruel, indeed he is)

So Jennie, it’s down to our naivety. Hopefully you (and others) can forgive it.

Back (again) to the topic – I strongly believed that knowledge wants to be free, and still do.
Blog has enabled us to do so easily. Let’s make full use of it !

Let us build the bridges to better understanding.

FYI – others posts on the topic :
[ Unspun ] – [ 2 ]
[ Jakartass ]
[ Jennie S Bev ]
[ Marisa Duma ]
[ augustmist ]