About
Author
These web logs, curiously named as Thoughtful Guesswork, are composed by an even more curiously-named writer, Genki Tanod Pantouw, who could tell quite a story just from his name alone. The name/word "Genki" (ゲンキ) is originally from Japanese, roughly means "good health" (元気). The name was given by his mother (natively from Bandung, an experienced Japanese in-flight interpreter) as a manifestation of hope that her first newborn child would be healthy and well. His middle and last name is given from his father's parents, "Tanod" (タノッド) from the grandmother and "Pantouw" (パントウ) from the grandfather who are both natively from Manado.
Early Life
As a boy who was born and raised in Bekasi, a part of Jakarta metropolitan area in Jawa Barat, bearing such unique name was quite a challenge. The name was not as popular as today, thanks to those diaper and sushi brand advertisements in Indonesia, so it took people quite some time to get used to it. He did not have the luxury of "instant recognition" unlike other people who had familiar or easier-to-pronounce names. Some people made fun of the name because perhaps they thought that it was the best way to break the ice. Those comments felt a little too much for him even when he was still in primary school. Got tired to deal with those lame, boring comments, he unconsciously shaped himself to be dominantly introvert; he thoroughly enjoyed being alone with his thoughts, only making guesses of what others were thinking without feeling the urge to verify, paying copious amount of attention to his diction (which made him quite silent), playing single player games, and found the joy of playing guitar alone while listening closely to music. After he went halfway through high school, though, he realized that being too dominantly introvert was unwise.
School was a breeze for him. It was much easier for him to focus on academics without any distractions from extracurricular activities, but he found people with similar interests in high school which made his life felt more interesting. Then he learned to be more active; he developed his interest in guitar and music by performing in an acoustic duo several times, forming a blues-inspired band, and even winning second place in a regional high school band competition. Being in an acoustic duo or a band was relatively simple because all the members already had the same vision and understood their role. He faced his real challenge when he was appointed as bandleader in his class' angklung recital. Long story short, not to his surprise though, he was struggling to get everyone to have a same vision or understand his/her role within the band. He kept the musical composition to himself, did not have a clear vision, and ended up with a messy, musical melting pot which was a nightmare for angklung composition, especially if every player was a beginner. To his surprise, his class won second place.
From Siswa, To Mahasiswa, To a Person
After a swift twelve years of studying diligently in Bekasi, he got his high school degree and got the privilege to continue his academic journey in Bandung. He found it curious that in Bahasa Indonesia, after a high school student, or a "siswa" in Bahasa, graduated and got enrolled in a university, the morpheme "maha-" ("the great-", "the most-") preceded "siswa" to make a distinction. In English, one simply change the modifier from "high school student" to, say, "college student" or simply just "student". In Bahasa, "siswa SMA" graduated to "mahasiswa". He realized that this curious nomenclature might reflect the Indonesian culture and popular belief that mahasiswa, educated men, can (and even are expected to) create impact in the life of a nation, even in politics and government. This was strikingly evident in his alma mater, with heroic history of mahasiswa who fought and rallied against allegedly corrupt and oppressive government, created massive movement and disrupted the political power of the government. With such expectations, he thought, he still got a lot to figure out.
He enjoyed learning to be mahasiswa, perhaps a little too much, that his academic diligence faded for some time. As the result, not to his surprise, at one point his GPA went on a free fall to less than 1.50/4.00. He realized that the mistakes he made in learning strategies only affected some letters and numbers on his transcript, but the mistakes he took when working within voluntary organizations, whether in conception, communication, or coordination gave him much to learn and think about. Then he thought further about this so-called polarization between "academic diligence" and "kemahasiswaan". He tried to figure out what defined a mahasiswa, because he believed that it should not be about balancing those two or prioritizing one over the other; the concept of balancing academic diligence and "kemahasiswaan" was simply too pragmatic for him to define mahasiswa.
With that question in the back of his mind, he fought back to restore his GPA, while preparing his undergraduate thesis and sparing some time to monitor and advise the student organization he was actively involved in. His final year was particularly tough for him, because he needed to take substantial amount of course credit for each semester due to the pileup of failed courses, the courses were theoretically and mathematically challenging, and he was preparing a project to be presented in an international symposium. Surprisingly, his final semester grades turned out having the highest GPA ever in his undergraduate study. This stumped him because he took a full twenty four course credits, the most amount of credits he ever took, while normally others would only take less than fifteen or ten. In his final semester, he also got selected to participate in Japan-Asia Youth Exchange Program in Science and visited Osaka University after document selection and interview with Prof. Nomachi from RCNP. After he went back to Bandung, he was greeted by his undergraduate thesis draft.
After a short yet immense effort, he succeeded his thesis defense and finally went back to his laptop to write the Preface for the book. While figuring out what he should write, the question, "what truly define mahasiswa?", popped back into his thoughts. There were various examples of success stories, such as mahasiswa with outstanding academic achievement and/or remarkable national and international exposure. There were also great examples of successful alumni with major contribution to society. These easily noticable examples somehow contributed to how most part of the society defined mahasiswa and perhaps almost created barriers of expectation on what mahasiswa should do and achieve. He noticed that in reality, however, mahasiswa is still a member of society. Granted, mahasiswa have got the privileges of higher education and maybe some of them (and some parts of the society) thought that it made them special, but he thought that it was unwise to define mahasiswa only based on some parts of their actions or achievements. He believed that every mahasiswa, like everyone else in the society, chose their own battle to fight. Whichever fight they picked, whether for academic recognition, community service, national or international exposure, to provide a better life for their family, or even simply to make their parents proud, their real opponent is their own self, just like everybody else.
Even after he graduated, the answer to that question, "what truly define mahasiswa?", remained ambiguous. After all, he realized that maybe the cognitive journey in attempt to answer that question has lead him to find the real question to answer: "What truly defines a person?" Is it their actions? Their experiences? Their achievements? What they believe in? From his experience, the answer does not really matter. What matters is the journey in attempt to find the answer might lead a person to understand themselves better, to understand their role in life within their family and society, and ultimately just to be better.
You can stalk his digital presence on Instagram and LinkedIn.
"These Web Logs"?
In his pilot blog, he discussed briefly about current web logs trend and what he learned about blogs. It might be an untraditional or unpopular practice, but he decided to:
- refer to his single blog post as simply blog, because he defined a blog as a single record of his rate of change in position, state, or stance in a certain topic,
- name to his collection of blog as Thoughtful Guesswork, and
- make Blogger as the dedicated platform to host Thoughtful Guesswork.
He intends to publish his blogs on the topic of computing, data science in NGO and micro/small business, deep learning in digital rock physics, plus contemporary jazz review, book review, and guitar-related stuff regularly to everyone on the Web, starting on October 2020. Happy reading!