fruit flavored tea

On Valentine's Day, at the office. I met a senior, when passing through a corridor heading one of our meeting rooms. I said hi. He smiled. And then there was the warmest conversation between us.

That was, as long as I could remember, the FIRST conversation I had with him. I've been here for two years, but we've never really talked each other. I know him, of course. Most everyone in the Indonesian blogosphere know him, at least his name and his blogs. He is one of the nation's famous bloggers.

At that short conversation, I asked him about the news I've been hearing around the office. He's going out, resigning. And he confirmed it. "Yes," he said. "On March."

We, once again, are losing one good man. He told me that he's planning on being a "full time blogger". "But I will still write," he said. I wondered what it would be like. A full time blogger.

I wondered because I've never really heard something like that, here. Maybe he has reached a level where being a blogger while, at the same time, a journalist, is hard to do.

I can understand. Sometimes there's this tension between the two status. A blogging journalist is often faced to a confusion between writing as a blogger (whom is free in many ways), or as a journalist. The problem is ethical. A journalist is provided with nearly unlimited access --thanks to the company-- to sources.

The "ingredients" he or she collected, as a journalist, should belong to the media company. Ethically, a journalist should not post a writing as a blogger, while the ingredients were based on his or her previleges as a media worker.

Or maybe he has another reasons? Well, we'll hear from him. As for now, so long, Mas. You're making history.

(to Mr. Budi Putra)