jakarta by day

If you live in Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, where where you on September 18, 2006?

The city was paralyzed due to an electricity black out for several hours, from around 13:30 to around 19:30 PM. Duration may vary, though.

Most people might not really care about the black out. Some may condemn the PLN (State Power Company) for its constant increase of power bill (almost annually these days), but lack of service and power. Some others who reside outside Java Island (this is an overly populated island where Jakarta is located) might as well mock the Jakartans..

IMHO, the energy crisis is right in our door steps..

90s

Ha! Remember these? I was a TV series translator back in mid 90s.

There were around 20 people who work in shift to translate English-speaking TV series into "Bahasa Indonesia".

"Melrose Place" was a huge hit in mid 90s after "Beverly Hill 90210" became #1 in global TV ratings in early 90s (or was it mid 90s.. I forgot).

So, the TV station where I work bought the series and got it translated.

Wonder how those movie subtitle appear on your TV screen? It was done manually.. hell yes!

A movie so-called "subtitler" has to finish a 30 mins situation comedy or other short movie in one day work (eight hours), and a 60 mins movie or series should be done in two days work (16 hours). Different movie genres are divided to those 20 subtitler in my line of work.

Each person has his/her own specialty. A friend of mine was really into drama, a couple of others have perfect ear and listening abilities plus some experience of living in an English speaking country; so movies without written script from the distributor fell into their lap. Another friend was a son of a NAVY commander or so and it made all war movies his daily bread.

Our supervisor made sure that each person got to translate different genre of movies to improve translation skills. In mid 90s, when "MP" aka "Melrose Place" globalized, everybody lined up to translate it. Simply because they loved it.

As for me, who was more into "X-Files" (remember.. spooky Mulder with sexy lips :> ), "MP" was a nightmare.. A full 120 minutes of bad dream since I had to translate two continuing episodes at once.

Guess how long did it take me to translate those 120 minutes of "chick series"? Freaking 2 weeks!!!! W#$(%*#@(_^*@%

The "two weeks labor" somehow paid off as the day after my episodes were aired, everybody at college started to befriends me and phisically notice my existence..

Silly nineties!



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