Blogger Indonesia of the Week (94): Pramudya A. Oktavinanda

If you used to visit many English speaking blogs written by North American or European bloggers, you’d be amazed by three things: the quality content which is triggered by passion in writing and, secondly, regular updates.  Thirdly, quality comments. Have a look, for example, at Informed Comments a political blog run by Juan Cole, a professor of political science in Chicago University. The blog is updated almost daily, quality well-researched contents and very well written visitor’s comments.

In Indonesia such blog as Juan Cole’s that fit those three criteria are a rarity. I think for the time being, an Indonesian blog which fit the first criteria is very good enough. And one of those rare quality content blog is a blog run by Pramudya Azhar Oktavinanda. He, according to the intro in his blog, is “An Indonesian capitalist lawyer, a self proclaimed legal genius, an avid reader, a devoted gamer, a tasty foods lover, a part time traveler, and a day dreamer.” His self-proclaim geniusness might not be too exaaggerated as he was Universitas Indonesia’s Best Outstanding Student in 2004.

He calls himself a Capitalist Lawyer as he believes capitalism is the best system so far to “enable the society to gain the most optimal prosperity and welfare.”

Avid Reader

What does make quality content blog? A lot of reading.  One cannot write a good blog post, unless he/she has a passion in reading.

And because of that avid reading tendency, Pram could write well anything in any topics. In one article he even wrote about Islam, a subject irrelevant to his major. In a blog post entitle “The Illusion of the Islamic State“ he categorically stated that dreaming of establishing an Islamic state is a problem in itself instead of solving it. He concludes:

We have reached an understanding that the concept of Islamic state is mostly derived from experience not religious doctrine. As a consequence, there is no use for discussing the formal structure of the Islamic state. Don’t waste our time preaching the greatness of the Islamic state and the promise that it will bring, instead, we should really focus on how we can manage the state to provide better service to the people, and I am certain that this is relevant for the current Indonesia.

Sense of humor

As a lawyer he should be and must be a serious person. Especially when he is in action doing his duty. As human being, however, he has a sense of humor too, both words and deeds. You may see his good sense of humor when he performs an Arabic dance here or watch it below:

Top Domain Blog

Pramudya’s blog is very good one as elaborated above. That’s said, If I am allowed to give advice, I’d recommend him to have a top domain with his personal name like pramudyaoktavinanda.com with hosting still in blogger.com. Thus, no need to worry about bandwith issues. Having top domain would make his blog more personal as well as look more easy-to-remember. His friend, Mova Al Afghani has used just that: top domain with blogger.com hosting. He may learn about this Blogger costume domain here.