Why Jakartass?

When I started my blog on 21st March 2004, I had little idea of where it was heading.

I wrote then: Diaries are strange. Personal yet public. Did Pepys write his because he was forgetful or because he knew that he was living in interesting times? Is it a quest for immortality or a search for identity? And why am I asking these questions?

In the sense that I thought it would be an interesting way to keep in touch with family and friends 'back home', Jakartass is about my place in the world, an environment which I strive to understand.

I’m a Londoner now living in another city, a much more chaotic one, and have been here for over 23 years. I live at street level with my Indonesian family and am the sole westerner at my current place of work, which I commute to by public transport. Rarely a day goes by without my curiosity, my unknowing, being piqued.

For those of us who can be bothered to be interested, we are living in interesting times.

There were no 'social networks' in 2004, or Google come to think of it, and hand phones were a rare sight. My internet connection was via a landline modem which gave me, if I was lucky, a download speed of 2kbs per second. I now use a dongle, a then unknown word, and get a massive 10kbs per second, if I'm really lucky.

There were few blogs then either and it took a month to attract the 173 votes necessary to become Indonesian Blogger of the Year. Seven years and 1800 posts later, with the number of page views per month about 4,000, Jakartass.net is ranked at (only) 100 in the Indonesian Matters blog rankings. This is an indication of the size and breadth of the Indonesian blogosphere.

What is most encouraging is that after a dozen years of reformasi, Indonesians are finally emerging from their history of colonialism, not only that of foreign invaders, but that of the domestic despot Suharto.

Advanced literacy, meaning beyond the basic ability to read signs and government edicts, is a key to self determination, and provides evidence of a democratic society. That is one reason that I applaud Nulis Buku for their enterprise and foresight in creating an outlet for aspiring writers. Books have permanence; the "immortality" I referred to in my first post is not afforded by ephemeral messages on Facebook ‘walls’ or tweets.

Much of my inspiration comes from what I read, and a full life’s experiences. To quote Joan Didion, I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

This anthology of my public thoughts is, I hope, the first of many. I have initially chosen posts on Jakarta Life because that is the essence of Jakartass.

One selection here, Indonesian Highway Code, was written before I started blogging, and I included it in my rewrite of Culture Shock! Jakarta (pub. Marshall Cavendish), which was commissioned as a result of much of what is contained herein.

I hope to produce more anthologies of my obsessions. These may be about my Travels in Indonesia, Home Thoughts From Abroad, the Environment, Politics ….. or maybe not.

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/ Note: I’ve given the dates I originally published everything you read here.
I generally included hyperlinks to my quotes and sources. Do access them for your further reading pleasure.
When you take stuff from one writer, it's plagiarism.
But when you take it from many writers, it's research.
William Mizner