NOVEMBER 15, 2014 |  ALEX MEETS WORLD

        His real name is Mohamed, “but I never use it,” he said. Instead, he goes by his middle name, Gil, because, though he is Muslim, he isn’t devout and doesn’t spend much time with the Muslim crowd in Bali.

        “Okay. I’m Muslim but in the idea,” Gil admitted. “My style is not Muslim. Like, I drink beer, have sex, like that. I eat the pork,” and he only attends mosque about once every three months.

        Neither was the busy, money-driven life Gil lived in Jakarta his style. Gil was rich. He was the director of marketing for a company importing beef from Oceania to Indonesia, and even before that job, Gil had always been rich. The company is his family’s. His father is the C.E.O., and his mother is a visa consultant.

          As a child, he lived in “a fancy house” with an indoor swimming pool. He ate at fancy restaurants, and family trips were to faraway destinations like Europe, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, and Japan.

        “Both my father and my mom are rich,” Gil acknowledged. “But I have my own style.”

          Gil’s own style led him, in August, to leave his 25 million rupiah a month job in Jakarta to go to Bali, where for the past five months he has been working as manager of IndoPureJoy, a surf rental and bar at Kuta Beach, where he has been making a monthly salary of only 3.5 million rupiah.

          “I wanna try my life like a beach boy style,” Gil said.

          Beach boy style has meant that Gil has downgraded from a seven bedroom house to a good-sized one room apartment in Jimbaran, a part of Bali that Gil lives in because it is quieter than congested Kuta, and although he lives in a smaller place and although he makes less money, Gil is satisfied, so far, with his decision.

          “Okay. In Jakarta, you have money,” Gil said. “[In Bali], not so much, but you didn’t have life [in Jakarta]. I have a life here [in Bali].”

          In Jakarta, Gil’s life was all work and attending events for schmoozing with Indonesia’s elite upper class.

          “Fancy restaurant, fancy place. Talking ‘bout business and talking ‘bout money, money, money. Ah, I don’t like,” Gil recalled.

          In Jakarta, Gil’s life was “busy”. His job at the company was something that, as a kid, he never had wanted.

          “[When I was a kid,] I just wanna be an athlete,” Gil remembered, a goal he achieved by playing professional and semi-professional baseball for Indonesian and Japanese national teams. His athletic success was both good and bad as the Indonesian government paid for Gil’s schooling ‘til college, but as part of a government regulation, Gil was also required to serve three years in the Indonesian army, a time that he looks back on as the worst of his life.

          Gil also wanted to be an air force pilot, “but my teeth is not really good,” he said, and he wanted to be a government ministerial secretary, but “I don’t wanna be a president,” Gil said. “Nah.”

          After having spent six months of high school studying and playing baseball in Japan, in college, Gil wanted to take Japanese studies, but his psychologist had recommended that he take business communications instead, and so he did at Padjadjadran University, one of the top schools in Indonesia, and thus, he became director of marketing.

          Gil spent most of his working hours marketing the company by having pitch meetings with various distributors. Generally, he would be at his job from eight in the morning until eight at night though it, also, was not uncommon to finish work as late as 10. He’d sleep in his car during the day as a private driver took him from one place to the next.

          “I wanna try the different life,” Gil said, and he had been to Bali before and had been thinking about returning for quite a while. “‘I want to go to Bali. Nah. I want to go to Bali. Nah,” Gil would think to himself until, finally, he resolved to go in pursuit of a lover.

          Gil and his girlfriend split while in Bali. She had run off with some other man, but Gil, regardless, stayed on the island. Through Bernie, the owner and founder of IndoPureJoy whom Gil had met on previous trips to Bali, Gil had acquired work.

          “I was asking Bernie ‘I want to go to Bali, but I just don’t wanna just sleep there, party like that. I need something to do there.’ ‘Why not join us,’” Bernie had offered. “‘Join with me.’ ‘Ok,’” Gil agreed, and, suddenly, he was taken from a world of long hours and strict schedules to the beach boy life.

          “I coming [to work] at nine today. Sometimes, at eight. Sometimes, 11. Sometimes, 12,” Gil said. “If I say like ‘I wanna take a off day,’ [Bernie] say ‘it’s okay.’ This job is same like holiday. Many relax, much relax there. It’s not a hard job. [I] just go to the beach and have a meeting with the hostel.”

          The change has been a “little bit weird,” Gil confessed, but in a good way he said. “I’m always busy [before], but right now, I’m just like nothing to do.”

          And though no other employee at IndoPureJoy has the same background as Gil, his upbringing has made it so that it isn’t too weird to work with his less privileged companions. As a child, Gil’s mother made sure to send Gil to schools for low to middle income families in order to teach Gil to “give honor” to those less fortunate than him.

          “‘Okay, you are lucky,’” Gil’s mom would lecture. “‘But you must see that not everyone is lucky like you.’”

          At first, it was awkward.

          “I just wanna move. Move. ‘Change the school. Change the school,’” Gil would plead with his mom, but “my mom said like ‘no. Stay there.’ It’s like different style life. I have everything and they not, so eh. I always say like ‘would you like to play with me,’ and I don’t know how to play with them.”

          Gil’s bedroom was the size of many of his friends’ houses, but over time, “I love it,” Gil said. “I love hangout with them,” and Gil would bring his friends to his house to play.

          While Gil did enjoy the time spent with his less wealthy friends, he said he is happy he had a fancy childhood, and the transition from fancy boy to beach boy has not been so natural for Gil.

          “My money right now is like middle,” Gil said. “But, still sometimes, I need a fancy life.”

          For his first two months as a beach boy, Gil rented a villa with an indoor swimming pool before eventually ending up at the more humble accommodation he stays in now, and to this day, Gil, on occasion, will go to fancy clubs, wear fancy clothes, or eat in an expensive restaurant.

          As difficult as it has been for Gil to switch his styles, the effect on his family has been even greater. They’ve disowned Gil. When Gil explained to his family what he wanted to do before moving to Bali, “the family’s like ‘nah! Why,’” Gil said, but the feeling is not unanimous. Gil’s father accepted his decision and has come to visit Gil in Bali. One day, Gil’s paternal aunt went to the beach to observe Gil, “and after, she call me,” Gil retold. “And we talk together, and [she told me] ‘wow. You have good life here.’”

          Gil’s mother supported her son’s move because it was something that she knew he needed.

          “[My mother,] she know me,” Gil said. “I will happy in Bali, not in Jakarta.”

          Also, Gil’s mother had noticed that, in Jakarta, there was something not right with her son. Sometimes, Gil would sit, “not daydream but like sit down and just nothing to do,” Gil explained. “[My mom] always asks me ‘what happened?’ ‘Ah. Nothing happened,’” Gil would reply, and he told his mother that he wanted to return to Bali. “‘For what,’” his mother would ask. “‘I need peace in my life, different style life, like that, and maybe, I can forget my fiancée.”

          Even now, Gil says that the best time of his life was when he proposed to Maria, but five months before they were scheduled to exchange vows, Maria was killed in a traffic accident. It was a tragedy from which Gil has not yet fully recovered.

          “I’m always still thinking about my fiancée, fiancée, fiancée, fiancée,” he said. “I’m supposed to be already married.”

          Gil is 30 years old now, and he hopes to be married in the next five years. Although he currently has no girlfriend, Gil has thought a lot about his marriage.

          Money from previous jobs, Gil has saved in the bank to help fund his marriage, and he knows already that he wants to have three kids including a daughter, whom he wants to name Katusha.

          “I need a daughter,” Gil said. “I don’t know why I love the girls.”

          But aside from family matters, Gil doesn’t know much about his immediate future nor what he wants from it. He predicts he will stay in Bali “maybe a year, probably more”. He wants to help IndoPureJoy to expand, to become more than all the other bars and surf rental stands up and down Kuta Beach. Thanks in large part to Gil, IndoPureJoy will, next year, legally become a company, and Gil is in the process of securing an office for the business at Kuta Playa Hotel, just across the street from the bit of beach where the bar and surf rental now stands.

          Gil has been meeting with hostels in order to facilitate business agreements between them and IndoPureJoy. So far, he has already succeeded in a number of places such as Warung Coco, C.X., Bedbunkers, Tanaya, and Monostel. These agreements will allow IndoPureJoy to make money from customers both on and off the beach with the eventual goal of the creation of an IndoPureJoy hostel, which 30 to 50 percent of IndoPureJoy profits are currently being put aside for each month to fund.

          In the longer term, Gil thinks that, once he leaves Bali, he will go back to Bandung, the city where he is from, and then, he will travel on to find work in Europe. Gil has an aunt who has been asking him to move in with her in Amsterdam.

          And one day, though Gil does not want to do marketing again, Gil hopes he will be able to return to his fancy life.

          Rather than work in his family’s company, Gil wants to start his own business to “help poor people”.

          “I wanna make the children go to school, not stay on the street,” Gil said.

          He wants a house by the beach as big as the one he grew up in.

          “One day,” Gil said. “But not now.”

          Now, Gil is socializing. Most of the time when Gil is on the beach, he is talking to people, saying hello to passerby, or sitting and conversing with the customers at IndoPureJoy.

          “When I was children, I was always thinking about like I wanna have so many friends, so I like to meet people and talk to people,” Gil said. “I can meet so many people from around the world here, make friendships, like that. That’s why I come to Bali.”

          Gil said he may even want to spend the rest of his life in Bali. He doesn’t know.

          “Depends of my wife,” he said. “Depends of my business too. I still don’t know. [In Jakarta], I have everything in my life actually, but I like run away [because], ah, not my style. Not my style.”