A Normal Guy Biography Of Julius English Literature Essay

Normality is often hard to define. A French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, indicated in his book that normal is the most common behavior in society. Julius Tamara runs a jewelry store which is well known through the city in one of the streets that is full of competitors, Jl. Pasir Koja. And this is about how normal he was and he is.

Born in the City of Flowers or Bandung, the third largest city in Indonesia. Julius grew up in ‘not so small’ family, he had 3 brothers and 3 sisters. Being in a moderate family, he seems to enjoy his childhood where he rode bicycle with his friends, playing with sticks, stones and whatever they have at that time. It’s really different from these modern times, there was no television, let alone computer. Radio is likely to be the only electronic based media they have. One funny thing is he seems to broke it a couple of times.

Julius is a bad tempered person, even as a child. He loves to angry very much, this is maybe because he was always being accused of breaking things when he didn’t, so it is some kind of inner defensive mechanism. Say one thing that might offended him, you won’t get it away just like that.

Apart of being a bad tempered person, he was actually just a normal child. Julius laughed when he said he was afraid of dark, ghost and supernatural things. He also wanted to be like what other child wanted to be like doctors, astronauts, soldiers, and many more, even though he never achieved one of those and become something else.

While other families find their children to be troublesome when they are in their teens, Julius is an exception, losing his older brother at the age of 15 is not one simple thing, it’s a trivial matter to a grown up teens but he never found himself troublesome to others except with the bullies. He was talking like a grown up when he was in his teens and he never asked question like why he was born like many other teenagers would probably do. He said that his friends were just finding themselves as they are in their development age. Strange thing, he doesn’t seem to include himself in it.

Despite of what other might say, growing up from a normal child, he was still a normal teenager, he hate bullies but he never afraid of one, he said that he got into trouble with the bullies once and have some childish fight, but he didn’t hit even once, he just let them hit him as much as they like cause he knows that the if he fights back, he’s just getting himself into more troubles and that will made him looked childish. Apart from the bully things, he also fell in love like other teens, he smiled when he said about this, but he never revealed the name.

Like a normal teens, he used to hangout with his friends a lot. If someone asked about who is his best friend, he would probably answer his whole classmate. “We love to do crazy things together”, he said. They used to play a game, “The rule is simple, after the break time when the teacher hasn’t come to the class, we need to drag people from other class to our class and force them to stay in our class until the teacher chase him out and it’s a score” Julius explained further. By the look of his, he really enjoys his adolescence very much, the way he explain things and more.

Apart of that, growing up in a moderate family, losing a brother sure was a difficult thing for Julius, this is maybe the cause why he doesn’t seem to like talking about his family as he likes talking about his friends. He always talked to the point and straight forward in a short sentence. Even though he said it was okay, but for a normal person, it wouldn’t be okay to lose a brother.

On the other hand, the loss of his brother sure was a hell of an experience for him. “This life is cruel”, he said. He knows it very well that he was still fortunate to live in such a family and in such a time, at least it was better than before 1945 which was the Japanese era. This might be another reason why he could develop such a personality in such a small age. One random fact, he never wanted to run away from house and it’s because he knows that there’s no other place to go beside home, and what could he possibly do as a teenager anyway.

Julius was old enough to see the incident in 30th September 1965. An attempted coup led by anti-communist party in Indonesia. This incident cause more than half million of people to die. It was one of the fearful times of all incidents in Indonesia. Not only that, Julius lives through the New Order era where all the Chinese people would need to hide in fear because of the anti-chinese laws made by the government.

As other people would likely to feel, Julius hated the government very much. People live in fear, there is no place for Chinese people to stay in Indonesia, the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta was burned down by a mob. Several of the anti-chinese laws were to limit/restrict the Chinese culture like celebrating Chinese New Year and civil rights, including the adoption of “Indonesian” sounding names. This is the reason why Julius named himself as “Julius” which was not “Julius” before the New Order era. On the flipside, there were fewer corruptions than nowadays.

Julius did finish his senior high, but he couldn’t afford to continue his study to the university as he still has his brothers and sisters. Even if he could afford it that time, it would be impossible to get in a university because of the anti-chinese laws. Not going to university, no problem, he studied business by himself and doing some little business at the same time. This little business of his is actually a simple business trick, buying something at a lower price and sells it again at higher price to gain profit. After some time, he dares himself to open up a jewelry business which is quite a dangerous thing to do at that time. The place where he opened up the store is quite dangerous, there was an incident, a competitor of his was robbed and 3 people were shot. It was not far from his place, about 3 blocks away. The impact was so strong that he closed his business for a week. God really did his job to protect this man at that time. The robbers were actually targeting Julius’ store, but when the robbers asked a person who was selling meatball in front of his store about which one has more profit, he randomly answered the one that was 3 blocks away from Julius’.

Speaking of God, his family has a complicated belief. Julius and his wife are Buddhist, some of his siblings are Catholics and some other are Buddhist, and his oldest son and two daughter move to Protestant while the smallest moves to Catholics, this applies to his siblings son and daughter also which is very complicated. This is the reason why he doesn’t like to talk about religious stuff very much. Despite of having different beliefs, they actually are a very harmonic family. They always support each other when they are in need.

Julius loves to travel to China more than any other place. This was not because he is a Chinese. This is because that China is really a great place to go. “The scenery is very beautiful there, it’s like you’re in a fairy tale”, he explains.

Having two sons and two daughters, Julius still has something that troubles him. Apparently, his sons and daughters are not interested in this jewelry business of his. The oldest son is taking international law, while the daughters plan to make their own business. Hoping for the smallest, but it seems he is interested in IT. “It would be such a loss if this business died” he sighed.