Indonesians Very Busy People

Uton: Hey Harun, where have you been? I ask you to come over here several times…
Harun: Sorry, Pak (Sir). I am very busy nowadays.
Uton: Busy, huh? Are you busier than me?
Harun: *smiling awkwardly*

The above conversation happened several years back between Harun Al Rasyid, then was a PhD student and is currently teaching at Universitas Sumatera Utara (USU), Medan, North Sumatra, with Uton Mochtar Rifai then was a Director of World Health Organisation for Asia Pacific and is currently a Professor of Medical Science in Universitas Padjajaran (UNPAD), Bandung, West Java. Pak Uton, as we used to call him, is a father of Izzur Mochtar, a renowned Indonesian actor and a father figure of us, Indonesian students in India.

When I urge some friends of mine who are currently holding some key positions in bureaucracy or academics offices to blog, and blog in English, the same answer come up: I am very busy.

The same question with the same answer will come up whenever I ask them why they don’t write a book or just a simple op-ed piece in a newspaper.

Why Indonesians are so busy? Are they working a 24-hour a day for all week or just can’t manage their time effectively? Or is it just a pure excuse of their lethargic and laid-back habit? Or both?

If most of us are so busy and don’t have enough time to do some more useful things then why a few Indonesians whose hectic schedules are unquestionable still have more time. Why then a few people like Juwono Sudarsono, Hermawan Kartajaya, Wimar Witoelar, to name just a few, still have time to blog or write articles? Why then a person like Uton Muchtar Rifai, at the time he headed WHO, still had many times to make a lenghty talk with me and my friends an hour before he left for Vienna to attend a WHO conference?

John Esposito, in his introduction to Encyclopaedia of Modern Muslim World, an Encyclopaedia he edited, aptly said that “The most prolific person is the busiest one,” which implies that when you say ‘I am busy,” basically you are not busy. You are just reluctant to do more.[]