Jakarta 6.00am July 11, 2007

It's six o'clock in the morning, I had very little sleep last night, as per most nights, becuase I worked till 2.00am on my websites and then got to bed and had a great idea for one of my sites which I had to write down in case I forgot it in the morning - barely a few hours away!

I can't even sit calmly and have a cup of coffee before I check my e-mail. All systems are fired up, ADSL is online and now while the computer boots-up I have my first sip of coffee.

There, I've done it, my first blog paragraph, and here I am confessing to the world (or at least those people bored enough to come to this website).

How did this crazy addiction begin?

Well it all started quite innocently at first, like most addictions I guess. People don't start out hoping to become addicted. Addicts are victims, not criminals. I just started using the Internet socially with a few of my friends. It was fun and I never dreamed that it would become so addictive that it would take over my life. A warning for young children!

It all started by creating a personal homepage to show to my friends and perhaps to find a few new ones. At this stage I was still not really showing any signs of addiction except that my partner, who owned the computer would sometimes get on it first and I could feel myself becoming anxious. I think this is really the first symptom anxiety - "beware!".

For the first year or so I was able to live quite normally hiding my inner anxiety from my friends and collegues. I think the only person who was really suspicious was my partner because I was slowly taking over her computer. However at this stage I still enjoyed going out as long as I knew that I had the computer at home "if I really needed it". I was also getting an enormous amount of satisfaction from work at that time teaching English. I was able to use the Internet and teach others how to use it in the name of English language learning. "I sure hope that none of my students developed the addiction". That was the beginning of Pen-Friends.Net which I created for my students to find international contacts.

However, the excuse that I had been waiting for, a sense of purpose, a mission, a goal, first came along when I started working as an education consultant in Indonesia.

The outcomes of our education project, like the outcomes of most projects in Indonesia were headed for the storeroom. That's what you did with information in those early days, you stored it! Things, I am glad to say are slowly changing and in fact the issue now is getting enough information out. Most education sectors are now beginning to synthesize information and are trying to make the outcomes available to the public.

Well anyway, here was the opportunity I was waiting for, a chance to satisfy my craving while "improving the world". I could now call my addiction by another name "dedication". It even had me fooled!

I started out with a single site (SSEP.Net) which was purely to contain the content from the outcomes of our project. However, when I started to scour the Internet for useful links to other worthy sites my search quickly reached a dead-end. With the thirst that only an addict can appreciate I then decided to fill the void - at least with one website (all I could afford, domains and hosting were expensive then [1998]).

And this is where it all really began to take over my life. A simple first taste (SMUN.Net), which became instantly popular because it was truly interactive in that I would place peoples registrations on the site and answer questions from educators and students which at that time in Indonesia was rare or didn't exist. However, the reaction from the field was worrying, students from the private sector schools and the SMKNs (vocational schools which were still a relatively new form of education then) complained that there was no place for them despite the fact that I quickly included them in the text on the website. They wanted their own identity, their own domain, hence Pendidikan Network was born. Not by plan but by default. 'Clearly' there were no options available to me except to develop a number of websites. An e-addict's dream!

I will be away from reliable Internet access for about 2 weeks (an e-addict's worst nightmare!). I must remember to pack my anxiety pills!

Meantime send in your blogger links, visit my education sites on the left (and practice your Indonesian), and be good to your mum!