Seeing ASEAN from the national level (Indonesia level)

So here I am back with the new job! I will conduct the ASEAN and Open Government Indonesia (OGI) research for about 5 months. The former one will discuss about how ready is Indonesia in facing ASEAN Community 2015 and the latter will discuss the commitment of Indonesian government to Open Government Indonesia. It is exciting to work on very new and fresh issue. At first, I thought that i would discuss oh-so-old issue of ASEAN complexities. As International Relations student back then in UI, discussing ASEAN' issue was my almost daily "food". I mean none of IR students of UI who don't familiar with ASEAN issues. We all discussed that and yes it was boring. However, this research i am doing now is very much new idea. I discuss ASEAN deeper on the national level, like what the hell is going on inside Indonesia? Does ASEAN matters for Indonesia people? What's wrong with the on-going coordination amid ministries? And what's the hurdles and why is it hovering only between those elits?

I met a lot of ministerial people, did FGD, will do in-depth interview and field works again! That's the most interesting part, the field work! Usually when i talk about ASEAN, i assume that it only stays in the elits bubble. However, i will go directly to some islands in Indonesia to interview the district governments and the people directly, MY SELF! I am used to field work but this one is very much fresh as i am used to very much pessimist about the issue, so i am going to prove my hypothesis directly. So, i will update you about it again.

Sri.