It’s hard to get focused!

I've got a wandering mind, and it would not be a helping tool to get a blog which focused only in some topics, especially when the blog I'm trying to write is a blog of a citizen reporter.

This time I'll just presented all the small pieces that troubled my mind. Sometimes I feel like an artist whose dream is only to have a quiet day to write all that bother my grey cells.

It was long time ago that I kept asking myself why I could not be just like any ordinary Indonesian (full time) housewife. Stay at home, enjoy having my family...Why I should always look for some voluntarily work or activities while I knew that having only one source of financial support should make me more careful with the expenses. Why didn't I work to help financing the family instead of giving away my time for voluntarily work? Actually I was not without filter. I did things that would not consume a lot of time. There were a lot of other interesting voluntarily work I did not take because of my time limitation. Green mapping was something that took my interest, but their meeting were usually at night after office hours (If I'm not mistaken...sometimes memory faded with age...).

Then, why I became a citizen reporter? The question "Why are you a citizen reporter?" was asked by Claire George since June last year in Facebook, but I couldn't answered it. I thought I would like to say something about Indonesia to the world, but I do think it is also a way to express myself. Actually I was asking myself the question in one of my previous post "what am I trying to proof?". A part of me was thinking that I'm doing this because I'd like to present Indonesia to the world. The international media did not always put their objective views on Indonesia. The national media sometimes did not have enough pages to cover interesting stories. There are also some questions hanging over my head, because we do have a lot of clever scholars but why were we stuck in the same problem over and over? (e.g. flooding, traffic jam, etc).

I think my brain is easily provoked by news and reacted! I'm not really well today, but I open this blog to write because I read the news on Hillary Clinton admitted her "mistake" in recalling her visit to the Balkans. How could she made such an error? Being under "sniper fire" were not an ordinary experience. If she was not under that traumatic experience, then, how could she imagining things when interviewed? This is not a small "mistake"! A president has a lot of burden to remember when giving her or his instruction. A lot of problem will raise if we do have a forgetful president or even a politician (which make me unsuitable for being a politician), because they will easily forget the misery felt by the citizen during the previous period.

Actually a lot of subjects are dancing in my mind. But I am now trying so hard to focus on my translation work and my other daily obligations.

I was preparing an article about professionalism, but I do need to concentrate to make a good article. Time is a luxurious need for me right now. There is also another article about the demand to raise the basic salary for the professional journalist to start from 4,1 million rupiahs (around U$ 400), it is talking about press idealism and the basic need for living cost. Actually I was comparing it with my experience helping my husband as an entrepreneur in a construction company. Yet, I do think I need to rewrite the whole article.

Being a citizen reporter can really take all our energy. There were stories about poverty around us. Or my curiousity towards all the issues that were close to my previous working environment. The water and sanitation seminar is really compelling me to come as this year is the International Sanitation Year, but I do need to be wiser in managing my time.

My meeting with the Minister of Research and Technology was also making my brain cells working...I was not really a person who cared about the nuclear electricity, my only concern was because I lived near a center of nuclear research here in Serpong. The chance given to the Kompas daily's readers to meet Mr. Kusmayanto Kadiman, the minister of Research and Techology, made an impact as I saw a French program from TV5 that familiarized the nuclear electricity just a day after that meeting. While agreeing that we do need other source of electricity, and that nuclear are going to be an important source of energy, I could not just accept all the explanation given by the minister. I was thinking that we do have plenty of solar energy, and we do have it throughout the year. Yet, as I'm not an expert I need to be more careful to say things. Today I read in Kompas that PLTN (nuclear energy for electricity power plantation) is the wrong solution. I also knew from Hidup (a Catholic Magazine) that 28 scholars were signing petition against PLTN on February 23, 2008. One of the reason is the safety of the plantation because we are located in an area with a high risk of earthquakes. Sometimes things like this is confusing. As a minister who has a vivid back up of scientists in his department I think he would not just make an important decision without thinking ahead. Yet, even without the risk of earthquakes I always doubted the "human error" that could make that dangerous leaking! This topic would not really "touch" me (except when there was a small explosion here in Serpong) if I weren't a citizen reporter.

So...let me try to focus myself on being a good mother first, the term super Retty always reminding me of the household works that were a bit unattended as I was busy entertaining my grey cells!