We are The Blogger of the Week!

We noticed a sudden spike in our visitor and looked up the statistics. Turn out that most of it were attributed to link from A.Fatih Syuhud, a senior and respected Indonesian Blogger that actively promote blogging among Indonesian and has been very supportive to newbies. He kindly share his wide readerships (his average visitors in a day are higher than ours in a year) to review a Blogger of the Week (BoW) in a regular column. The seventieth instalment selected KaFE Depok as BoW (to read the complete list click here)

“I am glad and congratulate them, the Kafe Depok crews that the "discussion culture" is still rolling despite the geographical barrier among them. Since, this blessing-in-disguise thing will not only unite them, more importantly it'd benefit others: for Indonesians who are interested with economic matters and to know the voice of young-intellectual conscience; and for non-Indonesians who want to know about Indonesia from its younger-generation perspective. A generation that will shape the Indonesian future…For me as a blogger, I feel even happier to see that Kafe Depok understands very well the "art" of blogging. The art of interactivity and show of humility. Academicians used to be dubbed as the "ivory tower" who used to expect accolade and standing ovation from the bottom without any need to reach out to them”

We are a bit anxious about the BoW since he started his post by mentioning the influential Limited Discussion Group consisted of Cak Nur, Dawam Raharjo and Ahmad Wahib and thus implicitly linked us to them. It’s not like we are tying to introduce some new and fundamental reform in economic thought and practice in Indonesia like what they did in religious thought. But there are reasons why stars used as the guidance in a long journey, they are unreachable yet provide a direction for improvement.

For new visitors, this site was initially meant as post-it board to share thought and opinion among alumni of economics and development department from Faculty of Economics – University of Indonesia doing master/PhD in European universities. As quoted by Fatih Syuhud:

"Kafe Depok is short for kantin FEUI (faculty of economy universitas Indonesia--ed.) Depok where we all shared cherish time of heated discussion on Indonesian economy and social justice as idealistic undergrad. Now that we are separated in geography but (hopefully) more mature and more knowledgeable, we seek to transfer the discussion on line and share it with wider audience. Furthermore, we are eager to unearth from the European way, the kinder, gentler capitalism that care more for social justice and environment, for a better Indonesia."

Hopefully we continue to be more mature and knowledgeable. Thanks again for the appreciation and kind words, we will continuously reach for the star (and write blog post on the journey).