About Me

About me, well when you ventured enough through these online pages of mine and the links that I have included, I would say that those pages pretty much summed up the things that I am interested in, things that I know of. Some of the pages would highlight my passion, but I believe to know a person you have to live with them for at least three months and have some nice and some not-so-nice surprises.

I am currently between places, had just been in an entreprenurial association that went bad for poor management and would really appreciate if anyone could provide me with a steady job, though I consider my self more of a freelance person.

These are the things that might give you clues of how I might be usefull to you:

First: The things that I have put in my pages, are not done with a simple copy-paste method. I spent the minutes and the hours to produce some of the pages, done some small jurnalistic work on others, took the photos by myself. As for the translations (it’s “terjemahan” in Bahasa), I did that for the purpose of sharing interesting notions to my fellow Indonesian who are not fully able to cope with English. I give credit where it is due, and I don’t take profit which is not mine. I have this passion to be a writer and a journalist, not just a job where someone ought to have, just for the sake of paycheck and status. It’s also the quest for meanings. I just haven’t found the right channel yet.

Second: I am a hardworker for the right reason, if you tell me to knock on every door in the neighborhood to sell a shady power saving device for price twice or thrice the original, and to include the words “I come from partner company of the State Power Company, doing survey and to introduce new device to the masses” in my introduction, with fake papers, fake methods, and a kind of quiz that rewards the poor folks 1/3 cut on the price (which means you still make 100 % profit), then you can call me a lazy fellow with no hope of any kind of future. But if you tell me to knock on every door in the neighborhood to tell them that we can teach them English in exchange for dinner (well, I admit, that’s quite extreme), just give me the papers, and I’ll go the neighborhood and beyond if necessary.

Third: I am not an expert, but I am a careful man in terms of written and spoken words, be it Bahasa Indonesia or English. I have been practicing writing in both languages, and translating texts in between. A national tv station once broadcast a movie with English as the original language, accompanied with translation texts in Bahasa Indonesia. In it, the translator translated the English word “warhead” in to “kepala perang” or “war general” in English. That might seems to be an irrelevant problem to some people, but that certainly would pose a terrible misunderstanding of context. There are a lot of samples to this kind of case, which you may expect not to see if you would have me as your translator or interpreter, be it from English to Bahasa or vice versa.

Fourth: I am currently residing in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, and I don’t have any plan to leave the region any time soon, so anybody from around the world planning to visit this region, by all means, please do come. The local government here have announced a tourism program called “Visit West Kalimantan 2009-2010” a part of “Visit Indonesia 2009” program (grammatical error?). Honestly I haven’t seen how this program could help visitors, I haven’t seen any major improvements in terms of facilities or the readiness of the people. This isn’t Bali or Lombok, so you are expected to help yourself. Lately I have seen some visitors, from India, Japan, and Europe where there were virtually none just years before.

I can do you favors depending on the situations like emergency, or to accompany you on photo hunting, or simply to find some edible food. But I am not a professional, not bound, and I wouldn’t charge you for anything… unless it’s necessary: if you want me to drive you around, we would have to share the gass bill. Don’t worry, I’ve had verbal communications with some good people from Australia, Ireland, and the US. Not in some college room or crash course for tour guides where I should be practicing English that I should use next week, but in situations where normal communications should happen.

And no funny business please, you’ll find a foe in me if you, for instance, try to sell drugs out here. If you want to hit yourself, do it yourself.

I suppose that’s about all of it, I will add other details accordingly, meanwhile you can contact me here (and only here): tumpalponti@gmail.com .

Have a nice day!