Guess who's coming to dinner. Hopefully
John Walkenbach, whose
J-Walk Blog I regularly turn to for both inspiration and entertainment, has posted
the following:
The goal of this exercise is to identify nine other bloggers that you would like to meet for dinner/drinks. The only caveat is that these bloggers must be strangers -- you haven't met them before. State the blogger's name, a link to the blog, and why you would like him/her to be in attendance.
Ok, I thought, are there ten bloggers I read here in Indonesia? Um, no.
Are there ten bloggers who focus on Indonesia? Um, maybe.
Have we met? Um, no.
Could we? Ho hum.
So, in alphabetical order, here goes.
Agam and his Gecko is/are based in Thailand and has written to Jakartass about receiving Indonesia's Metro TV in
a missive in his blog which
has mainly been a way for family back home to keep up with .. musings and ramblings. I'm not family, but his posts are always worth a read.
Alia is
sweet like a kitten but can roar like a lioness. She also writes, in excellent English, about being a young Indonesian woman seeking an understanding of life, which she has a real zest for. This isn't shallow prose at all, unlike most of the I-kissed-my-cat-and-hit-my-boyfriend blogs out there.
Brandon is a photoblogger. His
Java Jive captures the beauty of Indonesia and its people in a remarkably fresh way. A picture
is worth a thousand words ....
Enda Nasution has his own blog, but I really want to meet someone who has used blogging as a tool for networking and to effect change. I refer to
IndonesiaHelp, which was deserving of the Indonesian Blog of the Year award.
Carl Parkes, writing as
Friskodude, reports on the Asian blogging world and I'm sure would love an excuse to revisit Indonesia, if only to catch up with old friends like Bill Dalton, his predecessor as travel writer at Moon Publications. And I certainly couldn't leave out my most frequent comment leaver.
Geoffrey MG, in his
Beyond Wallacia, has a wider geo-political perspective than Jakartass. However, he is an expat based in Jakarta and we have tried to meet. Having been involved in the recent Jakarta Infrastructure Summit, I figure he'd be an excellent conversationalist offering titbits of gossip and valued insights alike to what happens beyond the ken of little me.
Isman, calls himself
The Fool in Bandung. He is a wry humourist and published writer (on paper and in Indonesian). His blog is in English.
Simon is based in Hong Kong but offers extensive support to those of us living in Asia who offer opinions about the events and places we live in. He also organised the
Asia Blog Awards. Given the minimal blogosphere here in Indonesia, his insights would be of immense value.
The Swanker, with his
Macam-Macam, regularly comments on the news here. As he lives in Sydney, he is able to offer a more objective view of events here than yours truly. Not that I couldn't you understand, but I prefer not to.
And there is my list. How sad that I've struggled to find even nine bloggers although there are others offering a perspective on life here, albeit via newsletter or mass media.
Read
Bart's
Indonesian Expat Newsletter,
The Reveller for news, for single guys and philanderers, of the
Blok M bar scene and the noted journalists resident here, including
John Aglionby of the Guardian and
Bill Guerin who can be found occasionally in the Asia Times and
elsewhere.
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