2003-08-03 - 8:48 a.m.

I discovered Najah's blog (The Malaysiana Digests) quite a while ago, and I have to admit, for a very long time, I thought that I've reading a blog written by a Malaysian-Indian lady (silly me). It was due to my oversight, for I thought 'Najah' sounds like 'Raja' (a typical Indian name) and I often read her articles without even bother to know her background. Moreover, it's very rare for one to find well-written blogs by Malaysian-Malays, particularly in English. It seems that we Malays, including myself, find it easier to converse and communicate to the world in our own vernacular language. Najah on the other hand, look as if she dreams, jabbers and expresses herself better in English…

Najah also appear to differentiate herself from the hoi polloi of Malaysian female/Malay bloggers I've read. Her entries are not as tedious to read (sans the usual "what-I-cooked-last-night-for-my-beloved-hubby-after-I-performed-my-Maghrib-prayer" entries day after day). To me, her blog entries tend to be rather objective to certain issues that are close to her heart, yet with interesting personal insights to it. Much of what she writes are interesting and relevant to me from the private Malaysian female perspective.

Here's my e-mail interview with Najah which I find some of her answers rather enlightening, especially about the differences between Malaysian and Singaporean bloggers…

NZ: Najah, please introduce yourself to our readers. Like, you can start by telling us where you were born and you alma mater perhaps...

Najah: I was born on the 2nd of May, 1975 in a polyclinic on Jalan Ipoh, Kuala Lumpur. I'm the eldest of 8 siblings. I did my schooling in the United States (Philadelphia) and Malaysia (Sultan Ibrahim Girls School in JB and Sekolah Seri Puteri in KL), and did my tertiary studies in Communication Engineering at RMIT in Melbourne, Australia. I'm currently working in a company in KL as a technology planner.

NZ: In your opinion, what is a Weblog?

Najah: In its strictest definition, a weblog is a collection of posts formatted in such a way that each entry is directly linkable and chronologically tagged. Of course, weblogs are more than just entries - depending on what the content is, it can be a personal journal, a technical log, news or a historical time capsule of sorts.

NZ: Can you estimate how many Malaysian bloggers we have out there? Do you think we are a bunch of avid bloggers?

Najah: I have no idea how many Malaysian bloggers we have out there. There just seem to be so many. Some don't exactly declare themselves as Malaysian, but once you start getting into their blogs, you can basically figure it out.

I think Malaysians make wonderful bloggers. We have a lot to say, and despite what we may say about our education system, our national mentality of self-censorship and our entrenched fear of the ISA, we STILL have a lot to say. This makes for a very colourful Malaysian blogosphere.

NZ: Are there differences around the world in the way people Blog?

Najah: Yes, definitely. If you read a large enough sample of blogs, a picture starts to form about what the people of that region are like. Generally, writing styles of a particular age group from a certain country tend to be similar, as well as the things they talk about. A friend of mine, Jikon Lai, was right when he insisted that bloggers are an insular lot, but this is true with any social group. You tend to influence and be influenced by people you 'mix' with and despite the fact that blogs are sites based on individuals or small groups of individuals, blogs are in no way standalone or disconnected.

Reading blogs helps you gauge what's happening at the grassroot level and the issues that touch this group of people most. True, they may not be pressing issues of the nation, but whatever these bloggers blog about are important enough for them to 'continue the discussion' - to borrow a phrase describing the merits of trackback.

One final word on this that I'd like to put on the table: Malaysian bloggers are outspoken. Perhaps this outspokenness may not have anything to do with our education system, rather our national psyche, which in my opinion could have been slightly influenced by the outspokenness of our very own Prime Minister. Having friends who blog in Singapore, I've been informed of another trend, that Singaporean blogs tend to gravitate towards photoblogs, rather than the social critique that we Malaysians seem to naturally fall into step with. I won't comment on the matter yet though…

NZ: What about blogs written by women? Are they different from blogs written by men? Do women bloggers express themselves better than their male counterparts?

Najah: I only briefly looked for the gender differences as I was preparing for INFOSOC. From a Malaysian perspective, most she-blogs are personal in nature. While there are a few that go into the social commentary or special interest mode, we tend to intersperse this with things that touch our lives, or report it from a very personal angle as opposed to a third person commentary.

The best analogy would be a day out with friends. In a male-dominated group, the conversation tends to go around topics like cars, gadgets, and politics, while in a predominantly female group, we tend to talk about relationships or work (from a relationship angle). I know this is very stereotypical, and that there are exceptions, but from my own personal experiences, this has been the case. As such, it's not surprising that blogs, which is merely another form of expression and communication, also mirror this trend.

NZ: Do you think in general Bloggers are dying for lots of people to read their content, or are they just finding an outlet for themselves only?

Najah: In general, I think bloggers are not die-hard attention whores. We are all trying to develop something, whether it be our writing skills, mental agility, thoughts and ideas or just vent. It's all a very self-serving activity. Some do it for altruistic reasons like furthering a cause, but at the end of the day, it's still their cause that they are furthering.

Personally, I think it's a bonus that people read what I write. I never thought I'd make friends through blogging. I just wanted to get news to my loved ones on the goings-on in my life and make footnotes to myself on things that matter to me. The fact that what matters to me seems to matter to other people is great.

NZ: To you, what is the definition of a good blog?

Najah: If I had to rate a blog, what keeps me coming is the person and how they communicate. There are those who are very reserved in their blogs. Just like meeting someone new, you tend to not want to continue a conversation with someone who answers in mono-syllabic words and doesn't make eye contact. Making eye contact online requires an honest sense of self and a desire to express one's thoughts as well as a certain level of confidence and 'thick skin'.

Command of the language that you choose to engage the world with matters, but it isn't the be all and end all of blogging. I've read blogs that are not so eloquent, but have enough heart and soul to keep me reading.

Some bloggers whose strengths are not literary still manage to attract readers through the design, functionality and organization of their site. Placement of things that matter to them, links, and images all say a lot about who they are and what they're trying to communicate.

NZ: Would you agree that Weblogs have increased the masses of content out there? But there are so many contents out there, so how does one differentiate between relevant contents and the ones that shouldn't be published in the first place?

Najah: Yes, weblogs, i.e. the format that it's in now and the tools that are available, have done wonders in populating the Internet with content, especially those from the masses. Rating relevance and propriety on the Internet, however, is akin to telling someone what they should talk about and how they should go about it.

At the end of the day, the liability and accountability is the onus of the blogger. A blogger is part of a larger community, society, nation or region. What is 'proper' with respect to a particular blogger depends on what part of the world he is in. For Malaysians, we cannot blog (as ourselves at least) without understanding our responsibility to ourselves as Malaysian citizens. There are laws that govern our conduct and contrary to popular belief, the internet is not lawless. It all boils down to being responsible for our actions.

NZ: In your opinion, what sorts of folks normally start up blog projects?

Najah: All sorts, especially if you have something to say. A familiarity with the internet helps you make that first leap, but I've seen people whose first real encounter with the internet came from blogs. It may be that the desire to say something that gets you started, but it is the desire to engage the world that keeps you going.

NZ: What are the advantages of communicating by blog?

Najah: People can't tell you to shut up. They can try, but trust me, it doesn't work.

NZ: Can you tell us how you got started with your own blog project?

Najah: I used to comment a lot on other people's blogs, namely Aizuddin's VOI. Aiz and I always have arguments about things in real life - constructive ones, and it annoyed me to no end that I have to say things via HIS site! :-P

But seriously, I used to write under pseudonyms in various online magazines and as I grew more confident as a person, I started writing and, subsequently, blogging as myself. It's a great feeling to be able to publicly own your ideas. I saw how blogs can make that whole experience of putting your ideas out there so much more enriching. The medium is great for feedback and discourse, and that's what I really like about it. Enough to get me started at least.

NZ: What is your blog's mission?

Najah: Change of perception. I think our media (print or otherwise) are still stereotypical of our cultural biases. I'm not out to challenge the establishment or anything remotely militant like that, but at the very least, I hope to challenge how people see my little corner of the world.

NZ: You seem to be enjoying your writing your blog. Your blog, The Malaysiana Digest, are filled with so much information sometimes I wonder where you find the time to scour all the information listed in your blog. It can't be money, because they are all written for free. So, what motivates you to work on your blog?

Najah: To be perfectly honest, this is whole exercise is me trying to discipline myself to do something consistently. I go through my archives and I see things - like how I have grown as a person, the friends I have made, the conversations that go on, the snowball effect some of the things I put out there have had on people. I like it. It's all very intriguing.

NZ: Have The Malaysiana Digest developed in the way you expected? Did you allow yourselves any expectations?

Najah: No, not at all. I didn't even expect my friends to read it!

NZ: What is the most challenging aspect of managing The Malaysiana Digest?

Najah: It used to be the tool I used; I was on Blogger for a while. But as soon as I moved to Movable Type, it was smooth sailing all the way.

NZ: Najah, you were interviewed during the recent INFOSOC, together with three other speakers who had lobbied for blogs to be included in INFOSOC. However, it seems only three speakers (Aiz, Dinesh and Jeff) were featured in Star InTech. Were there any explanations for this oversight?

Najah: Just to correct your statement Nizam, it was the PROMUDA ECM (energy, communication and multimedia) team that lobbied for blogs to be included as an 'alternative' track session at INFOSOC. For your information, PROMUDA, as part of its unofficial 'national service' charter, ran 5 tracks at the conference which included more 'refreshing' topics like blogging and online games.

Explanations on the oversight have been offered at length by various parties, so I won't comment on them. Suffice to say that I do hope that the parties involved were truly sincere with their explanations, and that only time will tell. I do have my theories which I am more than willing to share with you over a cup of coffee one of these days... J

NZ: What was your most embarrassing blog moment?

Najah: None so far.

NZ: Had any negative experiences because of your blog?

Najah: None so far.

NZ: Weblogs are considered as - 'Journalism's New Life Forms' by some. Do you think that Weblogs represent a new model of journalism that threatens to render many journalists obsolete?

Najah: It's obvious through various debates around the world that journalists are threatened somewhat, mainly because bloggers are operating in a space and format once thought of as the sole realm of the news media. If we go back to what journalism actually is, it's just a bunch of people telling the world what's happening, and enough bloggers are doing it with enough frequency to challenge the novelty of traditional delivery of news.

I have to caution those who think along these lines, that while some bloggers can replace journalists, most bloggers never intended to encroach into this space. It's a happenstance effect - I see something, I write about it and enough people read what I write. But I wouldn't call it journalism in the traditional sense. It's just me on a very public soapbox.

I think that if the traditional gatekeepers of news feel threatened, they need to look hard at what the public wants and, like any industry, adapt to suit these changes. Some of the modifications may be as simple as increasing their frequency of updates, or in the case of some magazines, changing the format to include a lot more interaction and avenues for feedback and debate.

Some changes, which may be more difficult in our country, may involve the fact that Malaysians have generally become more discerning consumers of news, choosing to read the likes of the Asian Wall Street Journal and International Herald Tribune over our local papers. It could be that there is already a trend to of distrust and the inability to satisfy our curiosity with the world around us that was exacerbated by the boom in local blogging.

NZ: Should there be any comparison made to traditional media at all?

No. Generalisations are not applicable when it comes to blogs. If any comparisons have to be made, it should be on a case-by-case basis, between traditional media and blogs that were started with the intention of being a source of news.

NZ: Do you think that Weblogs are just fads... that it will fade and die out one day?

Najah: The question to this answer: will people ever stop having something to say?

I think blogs will evolve as the technology continues to develop. It may take another shape and form, just as blogs are just another manifestation of the need for people to communication and express themselves.

Oleh Nizam Zakaria

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