Work Remotely

These days, many people do their work from home. It’s done remotely using the computer and the net. Not only part time jobs. But also full time ones.

I’ve done both.

In full time remote jobs, written communication is highly important. ‘Coz everything is done by email, YM, and other oneline devices.

It’s quite challenging, you know. You have to make everything clear simply by words. No gesture, no expression, nothing. Only words between you and those other people.

Many might think that it’s easy peasy. But it’s actually risky. Especially with those who don’t have the same level of understanding with you. It’s a hard hard work. You might be struggling.

What to do then? Make sure that your co-workers are on the same level of understanding with you. It helps minimize misunderstandings among you. It doesn’t mean that there will be no miss-communication at all. There might be some. But at least, you don’t have to get stressed every time you try to communicate with them.

Work remotely? It’s possible. With certain kind of people .

Privacy

Tell me, do you have a facebook account? Do you tweet? Or, own a blog?

I do. And, these days, I feel uncomfortable about them. Mostly, the first two. It gets just too personal.

I mean, blogging is different. Not many people blog. And, most people I know, don’t. And, they never took the time to check it out. So, so far, I’ve been having the chance to just express myself. And, those visiting my blog mostly are people I don’t personally know.

But, things are different with the social media and the so called information media — which I think, now has turned into social media anyway. My contacts there are people I know. Plus, they have both in one simple instrument to sign themselves in, mobile phone or even smart phone.

Or, some spend extra time getting online with their computer or notebook — just like I do most of the time, which I might consider to stop now.

Previously, I was thinking about getting myself a smart phone. But now, I’d rather not. I’m quite fine with my current mobile phone. I am not too mobile anyway. I can get online at home like 24 hours a day as I work at home and don’t go out much. And, with my plan to stop or at least reduce the use of social or information media, the smart phone would be useless.

I’d rather save the money to make my other dreams come true.

Back to privacy. Now, I feel like the social media grabs away my privacy. And, on the contrary, it fills me in with unnecessary information about my contacts which are supposed to be their privacy. Isn’t that weird? I personally find it weird.

At the era before social media existed, I was fine not knowing anything about those people I know. I was okay to only know things that they tell me. But, now, their not telling me seems to be a wrong gesture from their part. And, they seem to also think the same way about me.

Sometimes back, a friend of mine hide his/her FB. Deactivate, isn’t it, what they call it? I didn’t get it — especially because he/she told me that he/she had deleted the account. Why would you get disconnected from your contacts? They’re your networking.

But, hey, now I do understand. Things happen. Not only the good ones, but also the bad ones. So, if you decide to hide under your warm invisibility cloak just like Harry Potter did, I think, it’s acceptable.

Look, even in YM, I choose to be unseen anyway.

Talking about being invisible, I took a first step of my staying away from the big world of social media by hiding my wall at facebook. Inspired by my elementary school buddy. And, I don’t get online as much as I did.

We’ll see where this ends up at, where I end up, at this digital world.

[Picture by Stephen Eastop, Melbourne, Australia]

Web Fight for Jailed Mother

Many bloggers write posts on this case. Thousands of people joined a Facebook cause. A mother of two was jailed for a “defamatory” e-mail she sent out about the standard of care in an exclusive Tangerang hospital.

You can read the whole story at the Jakarta Globe, a daily English language newspaper in Indonesia.