National Bloggers' Day in Indonesia.

I was blog-walking through Indonesian Blogger site and came across this post on October 27 as National Blogger’s Day in Indonesia. Wouw!

It was a mix feeling but what thrilled me most was the fact that at the same day, I was preparing to launch my new blog that I named 28 Oktober dot NET. (Yes, it is in Indonesian and that’s why Oktober is with a ‘k’ and not a ‘c’.)

Aside from the fact that October 28 this year was a Sunday and I had enough time to kill during the weekend, hence I could work on my blog, 28 Oktober dot NET was also chosen for the reason that October 28th was a national holiday in Indonesia. It’s the day to commemorate the Youth Oath’s Day, when the Young Indonesians met and took an oath to have one country, one nation and one language – Indonesian, back in 1928 in Batavia, which is the old name of Jakarta. It was a good day to remember, I thought. It turned out that current Indonesian youths had their eyes on these new ways to communicate and to voice their opinions and they had their 2007 Indonesian Bloggers’ Party one day before the Youth Oath’s Day. Out of this blogger party the Ministry of Communication and Information of Indonesia then proposed to set October 27 as National Blogger’s Day.

Coincidence? That’s fine with me. I’m very happy to learn from Ardhi Ksp’s report saying:

Menteri Komunikasi dan Informatika, Moh Nuh yang mencanangkan tanggal 27 Oktober sebagai Hari Blogger Nasional menjamin kebebasan berekspresi dan berpendapat blog Indonesia. Dia melihat nasib bangsa Indonesia berada pada anak-anak muda. Jika kaum muda memiliki kesadaran membangun bangsa ini lebih baik, nasib bangsa ini pun akan lebih baik. Nuh berharap pada tahun 2008, jumlah blogger Indonesia mencapai satu juta. Saat ini masih 130.000-an.

This could losely be translated as:

Moh Nuh, the Minister of Communication and Information who proposed to name October 27 as the National Bloggers’ Day, guaranteed the freedom of expression and opinion for Indonesian bloggers. Mr Nuh saw that the fate of the nation of Indonesia was dependent upon the youths. If the youths have the awareness to develop a better nation, then the fate of this nation would be much better. Mr. Nuh expected that in 2008, the number of Indonesian bloggers could reach a million, instead of 130000 as of now.

While there are more to argue with the statements above, I’d like to see the bright side of it and am happy with the progress they have made so far. One of the reasons I jumped into blogging in Indonesian language was to find out how strong and how loud the voice of Indonesian bloggers could be? I was so sad that I could not get that much traffic I needed to generate a revenue from PPC to help raising money for baby Gratia’s operation. What I need was the traffic to my site or at that time, traffic to convince John Chow at johnchow.com to review the donation effort, which in turn would generate the traffics I need to generate the money. However, as of today, I realized that blogging is a kind of full time job and I could not do it forever. I’m kind of tired with this constant request for donations. But I’d keep my eyes and ears open and my connection working properly so at the time in need, I could solicit the help of other Indonesian bloggers with I love to call Pablo – an Indonesian acronym according to me for bloggers – to help. After all, I’m doing the fund raising to help someone in Indonesia and I hope somebody else would learn this technique and would take over this effort from me.

Finally, while I was still thinking that the Naitonal Blogger’s Day was really a coincidence, and my Indonesian blog was named 28 Oktober dot NET instead of 27 Oktober dot Net, I’d like to point out one thing. If you look at my ABOUT page, you will see that it was published on October 27. I worked the whole day on the 27th to get my domain name etc., and worked all the way passed the midnight to get it online by October 28. The only thing I could say at this time is, I’m very happy that my Indonesian blog was born in Indonesian National Blogger Day + 1, thus, as long as this blog is alive, every year PABLO would celebrate it’s anniversary for me from every corner of the globe. Happy Blogging Pablo Indonesia!