Avianto's Journal

140 characters. Instant gratification. What’s not to like?

That is what has been happening in this so-called era of ‘Social Media’. Whatever that is.

Short burst, concise words, perfect choice of words.

Continuous flow of quick snack, tasteless but informative (enough) and hopefully healthy.

Here we are now, 140 characters or less, streaming our life.

Ironically

140 characters. With number in front of it. Like this:

1. The importance of these 140 characters (or less) is to make sure that it is important.

2. These next 140 characters (or less) add the importance of the previous 140 characters.

3. And the next 140 characters (or less) continue…

4. 140 characters (or less)

5. …

Until

50. The last 140 characters (or less).

Law existed to protect people. Law created to make people feel safe. But somehow, it worked the other way around in Indonesia. Law was used to shackle people, to keep people on the leash and to shut down the voice of freedom.

The story so far

This was the case of a mother of two children against the all mighty private hospital with divine and majestic name, Omni International Hospital. The mother wrote an email about her dissatisfaction of the hospital treatment to her, which she claimed was bad and horrendously unsatisfactory. The email, naturally, spread around certain mailing list and published on a couple of website including this one (It’s in Indonesian). Reasonable enough since she said the hospital was not really paid attention to her previous complain. Or not.

Update: The English translation of Mrs. Prita’s email are available; credits goes to Ryan Koesuma for translation and Unspun blog for republishing it outside Facebook.

Somehow, the all mighty hospital felt insulted and sued the mother base on defamation/libel. So, they treated patients like cash cows, which unfortunately a common practice in Indonesia’s medical field, and when the patient complained and wrote the complain so the whole world could see, they felt insulted and sued the patient. Well, as if holding up a body of a deceased person because the family could not paid the bill or holding up a newborn baby because the parents could not afford the bill right away were not enough, now the hospital felt insulted when somebody told the world about their misdemeanor and sued that somebody. What was it? A joke? It wasn’t even funny.

What striked me actually, this fiasco probably would not happened, still probably – there were many way to twist the law in Indonesia, if you had the power and money, if one particular law was not exists. Introducing, the famous Information and Electronic Transaction Law aka. UU ITE (Undang-undang Informasi dan Transaksi Elektronik).

Armed with this law, the hospital sued the mother and the court pointed the mother as the suspect and she has been in jail for 3 weeks, as of today (Source: Koran Tempo in Indonesian). The trial will be held on June 4, 2009.

Information and Electronic Transaction Law aka. UU ITE

When this law was signed more or less a year ago, I was cringed. I was afraid, not because I could be punished by this draconian law but because some of the points were obscure, unclear and could be interpreted in some twisted way. I won’t go far to explain the law, use Google and read it yourself. Some items in that law were actually good and fulfill their purpose to protect the people, but those items, especially those parts about “defamation and/or libel” were so draconian and easily manipulated especially to those who got the power and money. Added the corrupt justice system, which again unfortunately a common knowledge in Indonesia, to the mix then we had a recipe to disaster.

I am one of the biggest opponent of this law, as many of my respected colleague, but as you might remember my writing titled “Commander” around last year – it was a different case but it lead into this law being signed, the department who were somehow responsible for the creation of this law was ignorant. Now, to add the absurdity of the current situation, the Director General of that department, Mr. Cahyana who hold the Master of Law degree, told one of the prominent blogger, Enda Nasution that the court actually misinterpreted the law. Where have you been, Sir? Did we said this law could easily misinterpreted more than a year ago? And your department defiantly went into deaf mode and said this law was for the good of the people? The truth, Sir, your department were plain ignorant at that time and now it’s time to feel the wake up slap in your face.

That comment also made me wondered; so if the law was misinterpreted, did it because the law was not clear enough or the court was not smart enough to interpret the law? Or even worse, the law was not clear enough and the court was not smart enough too. Again, the recipe to bigger disaster then.

Cowards

Added insult to the injury was the response of some people related to this case. Some said, it mean everybody, Indonesian especially, should be careful of what they were writing online (email, blogs, tweet, whatever), even if it was the truth. Sounds pathetic, wasn’t it? I called them cowards. When the bush was beaten, they were cowering down under, afraid to speak the truth and even stigmatize those who told the truth.

These people were the reason Indonesia never soar as a great country it supposed to be. These people put a blind eye to the corruption of power those institutions above showed. These people chose, deliberately, to stigmatize the people who brave enough to tell the truth. These people were the traitor to free speech, democracy and humanity.

Critics

So, by writing this, I directly and indirectly criticized the medical institution, justice system, a government department and a bunch of cowards. Will I get sued for defamation and libel? It possible. Even though I am just stating the truth, I am not fabricated any facts, known facts, about the corrupt system of justice, the money seeking practice of medical institution and the ignorance of a government department. So if the worse thing happened then all I can say is the country I always love is going back to the way it used to be, a repressive, totalitarian and draconian one. What a step back and for that I am feeling very sorry…

While waiting for the hammer to fall, these are some call to action links (all in Indonesian):

• Put the banner to free the mother, Mrs. Prita Mulyasari
• Facebook Cause: Support for Mrs. Prita Mulyasari
• Facebook Page: Say No to Omni Tangerang Hospital

Some of you asked me, why given up a good living in Jakarta with managerial position, good salary and good reputation to go to New York with middle position, decent but minimal salary and no reputation? On top of that, why made a move when I already in my 30s and still not married. Well, sometime I also asked myself, why?

Career

Career-wise, my decision was a step back in career point of view. I was already in managerial position, 8 digits salary (in Rupiah, of course) and had a huge network among multiple disciplines and industries. It was a good career and I was on my way to the top. Here in New York, I was working as a middle position knowledge worker, slightly above standard rates salary and no network at all. In other words, I was pressing a reset button in my career path.

I left my career and the opportunity to climb the higher ladder of position. I even abandoned my 3 years of teaching career.

Rent and Commute

Living in New York is very expensive, especially the rent. Most people were paying around 30%, even 50%, of their salary for rent only. Another 25-30% went into tax. At the end, people were getting 40-50% of their total salary to pay bills, food, entertainment and saving (or investing). That was not much and it would take a good judgement to spend the money wisely. Living like the girls (and boys) in Sex and the City and Friends TV series was a myth. Unless you were born or stayed in Manhattan for more than 20 years, I did not think those TV series lifestyle would be affordable for most New Yorkers. That would be another story, I was still surveying and writing about the reality of rent price in New York.

Commuting was another story. Currently it took me around 45 minutes to commute every working days to the office using bus and subway. Almost the same when I was living in Jakarta. The different was I did not need to drive and fight with the traffic. Hopped in the bus/subway, found a good spot, read or sleep during the commute. Less stressful and more opportunity to rest or read.

Living Standard

Other than rent, New York is actually quite cheap for living, if you know the right place to get what you need. Lunch for $3-$5 was not unheard of, dinner for less than $10 was possible and for sure it would be cheaper to cook on your own. Groceries were cheap, again if you know the place, and there were a lot of bargain shopping around the city. Especially in this bad economy, almost all stores were cutting their prices so people could afford to buy their stuffs. If people could not buy anything then the economy would halt and it would cost more damage than it already was. It would take some experiences, experiments and street smart skill to live as comfortable as possible without sacrificing too much.

Sure, living in Jakarta was way cheaper than living in New York. Rent price was affordable for a start. Lunch for less than $1 was still available, right? Transportation was also cheap, around 30¢ for one busway trip (it used to have a monthly ticket without discount rate but somehow that convenience was eliminated). Phone and cellphone rate, electricity, water were cheaper too and no need to pay for heating.

On the other hand, according to my ‘Starbucks Economy’ point of view, living in Jakarta was also expensive. Using my standard not-so-scientific comparison for the price of a single cup of Starbucks coffee it would goes like this: It was $1.65 for a tall black coffee here and it was Rp. 18.000 in Jakarta. It was practically the same price! Lunch/dinner in the restaurants could cost around Rp. 50.000++ per person; which translated into around $4.5++ here; which of course a bit cheaper. Car price was enormous with or without insurance. Clothing price were varied, branded clothes practically had the same price as here. Electronic price was a bit cheaper but not much, especially computers. Books were on the same ground and most of the time, even more expensive than the original printed price in US dollar (of course to be fair, add around 8-9% of sales tax in here).

Dropped the rent price and suddenly living in Jakarta was as expensive as living in New York. To be fair, it was not exactly the same but I was just trying to share my view.

Decision

Combining all of the factors above, the question raised again: Why the move? Why bargained everything I had for something uncertain? Why now?

There were no easy answer to that questions. The only thing I could think of was; I want change. Three years living back in Jakarta was teaching me a lot about how low people expectation of good quality of life could be. “It’s Jakarta, traffic is always packed, police are always corrupt, raining always means flooding, what do you want? It’s Jakarta”. Was it? Or was it because people did not know any better?

Maybe that was my main reason, I wanted to know more about the world. I wanted to grow, I wanted to experience something new, something great and something different. Even if it meant to throw my current comfort away, I would do it anyway. No regret, no remorse and embraced the unexplored.

Now I really understood the deep meaning of Frank Sinatra’s song, New York, New York:

I’ll make a brand new start of it – in old New York
If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere
It’s up to you – New york, New york!
It’s New York, the city that never sleep and I am living in it.

Welcome to a brand new life!

Things I notice after living and working for around two weeks in New York:

• On the street and public transportation, English was not the major language. Almost everybody was talking with their own language here; Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Germans, Polish, Yiddish, Tagalog, Indonesian, Malay, French and others are just a fraction of multi cultural reality in New York.
• Everybody was jaywalking. I mean EVERYBODY. If you were not jaywalking than you better step aside because New Yorker would push you anyway.
• iPod and/or iPhone was ubiquitous, in the subway, bus and even the street. Most New Yorker were listening to song, watching videos, playing games or even browsing the Internet from their iPod/iPhone.
• The public transportation (Subway and Bus) was superb. As a public transportation lover, I finally found my heaven. It’s not as clean and time-concerned like Germany but still, it’s so reliable and it’s 24 hours. Who could complain about that?
• Most New Yorker are courteous. Maybe you heard differently but from my own experience, they were quite nice to each other.
• Food were abundant. Eating out was not a big deal, you could had from $1 hotdog to $20 pizza or even $100 cuisine. Halal food was not a problem here, they were everywhere.
• New York was very dynamic in every sense. The people were diverse, their movement were just amazing to watch and their behavior were varied.
• New York also full of strange people. Almost every time I was using subway, I encountered strange people. There was a lady who keep on running inside the subway muttered strange thing like she’s being hunted down. Another lady was reading a newspaper and for every 3 minutes look at herself into her reflection in the subway’s window and talking in strange language. Those two were just a small sample of strange people I’d encountered and I bet there would be more.
• All and all, New York was a fun place to live. Yes, it was very busy and very crowded but it also so dynamic and diverse it made me feel very comfortable and falling in love with the city instantly.

Living in New York was an adventure. I did not even seen half of the city, maybe only 20% of it, so I might be wrong about my feeling for this city. But so far, it’s been a very good experience and it made me feel so much alive absorbing the vibe of this great city.

I’ll write more about this city and once I got my paycheck, I would buy a new camera so I could share the visual of New York. So until then, keep on reading because there will be more stories to share.

Last Tuesday was my last day at Carat. I will take another leap of faith to another venture and building a new kind of life. It’s been only a year I worked with Carat but it felt like a long time because there were so many things happened during my time there. Starting a new division was not an easy task and one year was a really short time to get things going really well. I hope what I did was sufficiently enough for that new division to keep rolling without me. After all, it was practically a one man show during my time.

Media Approach

One thing I love about working with Carat was the experience and the challenge. I never had a stint with a media agency before so I was quite thrilling to learn a different way of seeing and approaching “interactive media”.

I came from an interactive production background, I saw things base on user experience, I did things accordingly to user’s requirement and needs and trying to make user could finished their tasks or goals. It was purely a user centric approach to get things done. It was a basic “how”.

However, media approach was quite different. In the end it still back to the “how” but the approach added another layer on top of it, the “why” layer. Interactive media was all about usage, there was no point of building an “interactivity” nobody use. Media was all about marketing effort to reach people.

Traditional media like television, newspaper, magazine, radio, billboard and others were channels to deliver the message from the advertiser (commercial or non-commercial) to people. Traditional campaign relied on one way communication and using media as its loudspeaker. Interactive (or digital) media like internet, mobile and digital installation had the ability to “interact” with people, which means multiple way communication and both or more parties were using the loudspeaker both way. That particular character brought every parties on a equal footing. Good news for customers and advertisers who care for the customers but bad news for most advertisers since most of them were not ready, even prepared, to deal with the reduce of power. To make things worse, there is a common understanding that if you need to advertise heavily then your product (whatever that is) is not good enough.

People used interactive media to achieve something, to get things done or just to have fun. The advertisers want people to aware of their message, to make people at least tried their products or to boost their sales. So the basic question was “Why people want to use interactive media which actually a part of a marketing effort?”.

Different Ball-game

In the near future, as near as next year, it will be a different ball-game for the advertisers. Of course it will be so naive to predict the death of traditional media, especially in Indonesia where traditional media still hold the biggest influence but it also very naive to ignore the rise of interactive (digital) media to influence the people especially those who had digital access privilege.

Advertisers just not had to listen, they also had to respond. It may help to has a dedicated ‘digital media task team’ in the company to handle this new and growing level of interactivity. It will not be easy since the current economy situation forced most advertisers to cut down the budget or even the employee. Although, doing it correctly and elegantly will has its own reward when the economy started to recover again.

A simple magic mantra would be “Join the conversation”. It was an easy things to say but in reality it was not easy to do.

Epilogue

I was leaving Carat. I was leaving a simple legacy, an Interactive Division (which is now part of the Diversified Division) and its network in the media provider and partner. I was learning a lot of things related to the media industry and business. I was happy and grateful to be a part of an exciting and challenging company like Carat. Now it’s my time to move on. New company, new challenge and new country.

It’s about time.