Bridge Blogging?There's
an expat blogger in town who's very keen on so-called bridge bloggers, which he defines as
writing your blog in English or some language other than Indonesian so that the world outside has another window with which to peer into your country.
Some of us have been doing that for five years or more, but he's not referring to those of us who've not yet got an Indonesian passport.
This Malaysian expat agrees that
there are some good blogs among the expats but most of them are droll and comprise of grouses about the country they live in, deprecating remarks about local women and mutual masturbation among unattractive expat men.
It's a shame that Ong's English isn't of a sufficiently high level to know that being droll is a very positive attribute even whilst he makes gross generalisations about the group he is part of.
He has also made assumptions about Indonesians blogging from abroad. Ho hum.
Jennie Bev's riposte to him makes fine reading and could almost be a manifesto for all those of us who seek to live in harmony in a multi-cultural society. Our grouses are very much related to helping this society emerge from the blinkered subservience of the recent authoritarian past whilst attempting to foster communality rather than consumerism and self-aggrandisement..
There are indeed a number of fine blogs written in good English by Indonesians, both here and abroad. I've linked to a number of these, including Jennie's, for quite a while in my links list.
One of the earliest is
Isman's along with that of his wife Angela, who writes Teen-Lit and keeps a mother's blog,
Mote It Be. Back in 2004 Jakartass just pipped Isman's Fool Found A Blogspot to become Indonesia's Best Blog. That just 188 votes were cast for my efforts over a voting period of a couple of weeks shows how far the Indonesian blogosphere has developed since then.
And today I've found a newcomer, they've only been blogging since August, which deserves loud hurrahs and a very warm welcome.
Monochromatic Rainbows, (aka Orwellian Charade), is
jointly maintained by cynix, Karina, *vitriolic, and ~whi who "are witnesses to the absurd and the voice of the less heard. We watched rainbows develop over our monochromatic skies."
They appear to be well-educated female Chinese-Indonesian students, whether in senior high school or at university I can't tell. However, these lasses have keen enquiring minds and with their level of language I look forward to reading more. Their list of tags gives some idea of their range so far:
Communism, Extended Essay, Ignorance, IPS, Family, Love, Busway, Corruption, future of Indonesia, Jakarta, Traffic, Pink, Appreciation, Art, Movie, Review, Chinese, Indonesians, Justice, Racism, Success, Superiority Complex, Idealism, Monks, Myanmar, Racism, Respect, Shame, Catholics, Christianity, Church, Hypocrisy, future of Indonesia, Motorcycle, Sensation, Wind.
Why are we so boggled up in our misconstrued conceptions? It was not until I choose to do my Extended Essay on Indonesian History that I was finally awaken of the numerous indoctrinations taught to me in my elementary IPS lessons.
An indoctrination still in motion, still unawakened in the mind of my peers, my cousins, my fellow countrymen.
Right on sisters.
Erm, let me rephrase that.
Write on, sisters.
