Posted 18 July 2007 @ 04:52
Updated 18 July 2007 @ 05:42
JAKARTA, 18 July 2007 - When Singapore's Dr Love invites you up to his hotel room, you don't say no. And once you're inside, he doesn't disappoint. The doctor has plans for educating about the entire world about sex. He starts with pointing at his laptop - and Indonesia. People there can send questions via cellphone text messages anonymously. An avatar called 'Nova' - a virtual character with artificial intelligence - will give an answer.
Some people might get a personal response from a team of people behind Nova, but all the queries will be compiled and responded on the website of 'Love Airways, where all people can log on to and learn. "It's a boarding pass - it's like a journey," the enthusiastic Australian-trained doctor tells as he logs on to the site. Supported by Fiesta, a major condom brand in Indonesia, the site also features a forum related to sex where users can ask each other questions.
"The best solution is not just to tell people what to do and not to do, but rather to create a big forum using multi-media... This way we get the real questions," says Dr Love. "It's about real content. It's about sex education made by the people for the people. The world has been running sex education campaigns presuming that people will follow what the system wants - but we don't actually know what is on the ground, qualitatively," he says. Surveys related to sex, he complains, have sample sizes too small so that the answers are unreliable. "Talking about sex is pretty much taboo still in Asia," he says.
Indonesia already has relationship advice available in the media as well as commercial public seminars offering advice on sexual health. Nothing however, packaged quite this slickly. The people are given the opportunity to ask questions anonymously, which will help public health educators find out what communities really want to know, he tells. Dr. Love is upbeat about the prospect of Indonesians getting involved, saying they are more relaxed about such things than their Singaporean neighbors.
"The Singaporean threshold of good quality sex may not be the same as the threshold of good quality sex in Indonesia. I think the people here are more relaxed. They understand quality is very, very important," he says. And is Dr. Love fearful of ruffling feathers among the small band of radical Islamists in Indonesia? Not at all. "Number one, we are not aligned with any religion... We are not bringing foreign content to impose on the culture," he responds. "I don't drive the content, they will drive it themselves."
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