All these times I simply used twitter whenever I have anything to say or comment about my life. But now I think I want to write something here for a change.

So, I’m apparently been doing so many things at once lately. I’m working full time at the Ministry for Development of Disadvantaged Areas, as the minister’s special staff on international affairs. I’m also in the Newfield Asia coaching foundation program. Not to mention my Mandarin class. And lately I’ve started something, applying to universities for my master degree.

I’ve applied to Harvard Kennedy School. I just sent the application two days ago. I applied for their Master in Public Policy program. I’ve told everyone I know about this, and most of them are happy for me (but exactly how many of them actually believe I’m going to be accepted is a different story).

Now, if you know me even for a little bit, you’d know I’m a full-time IT geek. I taught computer class to my classmates when I was in high school, I went for an IT degree, I was a part-time programmer, I started my own IT company, I’m an Apple User Group moderator, and I have bunch of computers in my home. I know IT, I speak IT, and basically I breathe IT. So why public policy?

Well,  it started in 2007. That is when I started to get involved in the government business. That year I took an offer to be an expert staff in the house of representatives of Indonesia. I was introduced to the system that basically allows all of our activities to be in motion. For the first time, I was in touch with the process of planning of a document. It was a 9-months-long process. For me, it was a grand orchestra of people, proposals, meetings, negotiations, and much more. Local governments, central governments, private businesses, organizations, and many more are the working either together or separately but still in sync. You may not realize it, but that document we call APBN (national budget), also affects your life.

Our national budget is a tool to build this country. Our life is affected by it. A simple example would the very medium you are using now, the internet. How much you are paying now for this internet access, is affected by our national budget. You see, the national budget specifies how much taxes are to be collected in a given year, including taxes to be collected from your internet provider. That cost is definitely going to be passed on to you.

All this work attracted me. I like to be inside the system that keeps our nation running. So in November 2009, I took the jump from the legislative branch of the government, to the executive branch of the government. I took the offer to work for the Ministry, and now I’m totally hooked.

Working for the house of the representatives was all about planning and monitoring. Working for the ministry, the spirit is executing the plan. So in the ministry, I get the chance to actually do something.

I handle the international affairs in the ministry. I represent the ministry in international forum, build and maintain relationships with different countries, and oversees projects funded by international donors. It’s exciting to work with people from different background. I work with local governments, private companies, world bank, Indonesians, Americans, Spanish, Austrians, Chinese, and more. Everything is done to reduce poverty in Indonesia, and I like that.

However, I realize I have yet to master the domain of public service. Being in the position of a decision maker is not to be taken lightly. Whatever decision I make in Jakarta, affects the lives of the Indonesian people. With great power, comes great responsibility, said Peter Parker’s uncle. Now, I’m not a public servant. Furthermore, everything I know about governance is gained through experience. Not that it’s wrong, but if I want to be able to be more effective in doing this work, I would have to learn more about governance and public policy. I think I might as well learn from the best, so that’s why I applied to Harvard.

Will I be accepted? I don’t know. I’ve done my best to show my passion in the application. Whether the admission board see that I’m fit to be accepted or not, it’s up to them. Whatever the outcome, I will still continue on this path. It’s a different course in my life, and I like it.

Ever since I’ve started living in Jakarta, I have always been in the service business. The first thing I tried to do (unsuccessfully) was selling a Hospital Information System as a freelance. I failed selling it to big hospitals, but I moved on. I then tried selling different kind of things as freelance sales until I got my first big break in 2007, when I got a contract to build a Data Center for the Police Force.

I got good commission out of it, but I lent most of it to someone who I thought could return it quickly (with handsome interest, of course). Well, that was too good to be true. I still consider it as a stuck-investment that will eventually pays off, but one of my best friends assured that I might as well consider the money is gone.

So, I was back in square one.

Then, in mid 2008, I got my second big break. But then I decided to get married, so about one-thirds of the commission I got went for the wedding. One-thirds of it I keep for my savings, a married man has to be prepared, you know. And the rest of it went to what I consider investments.

One of the so-called investment is to lend it to (yet another) someone whom I believe is going to pay me quickly (Uh-oh, de ja vu), and the other one is to trade stocks. Guess which one already paying off today? The stocks, of course.

While I’m still waiting for the other “investments” to pay off, I keep getting profits from the stock market. This is because I have a competent partner in the field, a high school friend who went to school for this kind of stuff. He executes the trades, I simply need to approve or disapprove any trade.

I get around 3 to 5 percents per month out of the stocks. It’s good enough for me. But then I thought, many people I know would love to get that kind of return on their investments. The highest rate for bank Cash Deposits interests are at around 10% p.a., so that’s less than 0.8% per month.

So, I decided to offer them a chance to invest in the stock market. Me and my friend would take commissions out of the profits we get. We would need to setup a new company to manage the investments. I think it’s doable. I will sell our investment products to close friends and acquaintances, where I can give my personal guarantee to take care of their money.

I’m still considering between two investment package to offer, though. Would people prefer a set rate of return, i.e. 3% per month? That way, I will then be responsible cover the difference if at certain month the investment is less than that. But they will be missing out of a chance to get more if the investment performs better, i.e. 5%. Because I will take the 2% above the specified rate.

Or would they prefer, whatever the return, simply take my commissions out of it, and they receive the rest? That way, if the investment is performing poorly, I have no obligation to them. But they will get more if the investment is performing above average.

This is where I stop writing and start thinking.

*Image taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Banknotes.jpg

Since id-mac is looking to update it’s logo, I had a plan to launch and announce the new site to id-mac on the last day of the new logo submission date, June 14. But I forgot that id-mac has its email system hosted by google apps and the person who has the access to google apps configuration page is another core team member, Yuza. So, I have to wait for him to set up the email system before we can redirect the dns information to the web host. So then the planned date passed by.

I took advantage of the delay today to make the logo voting system. I was planning to have a survey at polldaddy.com for members to vote. But the only problem with polldaddy.com is that a free account can only have 100 people responding to the survey. So if 100 members already voted, I would have to make another survey. The voting system I created is set up within the WordPress system as pages. I use runPHP plugin for WordPress and set up a MySQL database. The database keeps the members’ email, the votes, and the time the voting occured. This way, not only all the 3700 members of id-mac can all vote within the same system, but I can also make sure only the members can vote and they can only vote once.

It took me about 4 hours to develop, and I really like it. I hope the new site can be accessed soon, because the new logo was supposed to be chosen by the end of this month. I want to give members 7 days time to vote, so June 20 is the deadline for the new site to be up. When the new site is up, it can be accessed at http://www.id-mac.org

So I had nothing to do this late at night, I checked their website to see if there is anything new. As I glanced over this video, a thought passing through my mine.

What makes it funny watching this video is because people do not go to Starbucks carrying their desktops. We have laptops for that. These days, laptops are so popular. People using them everywhere. But I can see in the future that laptops are considered antique and too big to bring to cafés. Imagine in the future the above mission is carried out with laptops, and people in the future think it’s funny. I hope I can join that mission, even though I may will be very old by then…