Blogger Indonesia of the Week (57): Mulya Amri

From the time I started blogging about a year ago, I reminded Indonesian blogger to blog “for the cause” and hence, one should try to make quality content every now and then. By “quality content” it doesn’t mean a merely thoughtful-philosophical kind of content as not everyone has the capacity to do that. Quality content also include reporting what you see around you. Sort of “investigative” reporting in journalism world with, of course, much lighter sense of the term.

For example, I elaborated further in another post:

What I propose you (and me) to do is we should be an alternative information, beside the established indonesian media toward the outside world. To be another window of information and reality of Indonesia for the rest of the world.

For that purpose, what we need to do is not so complicated: just try to tell the world about what’s happening (of social and cultural values) around you. About poverty, corruption of LURAH (sub-district head), Camat (district head), or any officials you were facing with. By telling all daily cultural-social stories and dynamism regarding the wrong-doings and good things of our officials, our religious figures, etc, we’d give more lights to other people in indonesia as well as in the world about the raw reality on the grass root level. Something which every now and then is missing from the established media, either because of space limit or face value of the news.

At the time I wrote those two posts, someone reminded me in the comment box that there’re some quality-content Indonesian blogs outthere which I need to visit and look at. Hence the start of my blogwalking; a new activity that led me to this weekly blog review feature.

Yet, after so long time–one year sounds very long enough to me–travelling throughout the Indonesian blogosphere, it still amazes and upsets me that I fail to find a good quality-content blog owned by Mulya Amri, known in the blogosphere as Muli who started blogging three months before me. I found his blog only after he commented on my post here.

Mulya Amri’s blog content is as good as it can get. He seems trying hard to make clarity and unbias as his niche in making opinion; and for that, first of all, he makes it clear who who is:

I’m an independent consultant working on & interested in topics as shown below. To acknowledge possible biases, let me admit that I’m male, early 30’s, brown skin, Indonesian, Muslim, married, educated in urban planning, travels between Jogja, Bandung, and Jakarta.

I strongly agree with his implicit statement that clarity of identity will lead you to clarity of intention behind the topics of any interests. Especially when you’re interested in discussing issues where clarity of identity is needed: socio-cultural-religious-political issues.

That’s where people who read your opinion (in your blog) will know whether (a) you’re an insider who’s trying to be self-critical for the betterment of your own self and community or an outsider who just want to make a fun or a bashing to prove that you are a much holier and much more “civilized” entity than others; whether you are a person with strong universal values who’d like to protest against injustices done by anyone from any nation, regardless of faith of preference, culture or civilization or (b) are just a cheap individual who’d want to satisfy his/her lust by criticising and/or attacking others all the time and dont bother to appreciate the positive things done by THEM, while at the same time praising anything WITHIN and ruling out to criticise the wrong things in it.

I believe Muli is one of those who fall to the first category and therefore deserve accolade and respect from all of us.