Award-Winning Blogger to Visit Provinces

The Jakarta Globe, Anita Rachman, January 16, 2009 

 “What about you? Do you think that a woman should be able to cook to be a wife?” 

More than 120 people commented on this question posed by blogger Anandita Puspitasari on her award-winning Web log, or blog, www.nonadita.com, which has a daily readership of 300 people. 

The 23-year-old, known to her fellow bloggers as Dita, was recently named the winner of Microsoft Indonesia’s first-ever “bloggership” award, a scholarship for bloggers. 

The local cyberspace community celebrity beat 115 other contestants aged 20 to 35 to scoop the award, which includes a Rp 15 million ($1,350) cash prize and three fully funded trips to provinces of her choosing, to write about a range of specified issues, including education and the contributions the private sector can make to economic development. 

Despite low Internet penetration rates throughout much of Indonesia, blogging has become surprisingly popular. According to senior blogger Wicaksono, labeled the father of Indonesian blogging, today the nation has 300,000 bloggers, a seemingly high figure given that there are only an estimated 38 million Internet users in Indonesia. 

Dita, a junior researcher with a Bogor non-governmental organization, and who has a second blog at www.nonadita.dagdigdug.com, said she believed readers who sought more personal content are attracted to the blog threads, or individual topics, on her site. 

“Actually, I just write about ordinary things that most people have experienced,” she said. “But I always invite people to share their opinions and I quote other people’s experiences as well.” 

A popular thread on her Web site was on the Indonesian man’s perspectives in selecting a suitable wife. “I want her to be my wife, not my chef.” Anandita wrote, quoting one of her lecturers to support her opinion that women did not need to be able to cook to be proposed to. 

Other threads are more complex, criticizing Indonesian attitudes toward issues such as smoking and government regulations. She also goes where arguably few 23-year-old Indonesian women dare to go, criticizing Indonesian consumerism habits and the strength of the shopping mall culture. 

Helpfully, she also shares her ideas about blogging and the latest and coolest Web sites to be found on the Internet. 

“I think we can use blogs as more than just a place to record diary entries,” she said. “We can build up communications, hold discussions and even organize social activities between friends.” 

She said that her blog was still in the form of a discussion forum. She dreams of further developing her blog and hopes that the Microsoft scholarship would give her the opportunity to share many new things with friends on the Internet.