TIM XU
idealist. intellectual. dreamer. thinker. creator.HELLO
I am, at heart, a dabbler. I'm an economics student at Yale University, and I'm fascinated by the world and its complexity. This is my life.Eighteen yearsNov 12
Today commemorates the completion of the first eighteen years of my life, the first eighteen years after leaving the safety of my mother’s womb. Yet it also marks the beginning of the nineteenth year, and, by our culture’s seemingly arbitrary placement, the beginning of my adult life. Today marks my entry into the hallowed ranks of the grown, of the experienced, of the adult. It also means that my childhood is now, by all means, over. The innocent happiness, the ignorant bliss, the thoughtless giddiness is, by definition, gone, relegated to random moments of synaptic motion, to memory. And so, on the verge of this brave new world that awaits me, I look back, look back at the life I’ve led, the childhood of eighteen years that has, for what it’s worth, made me who I am. This is the story of my life.
I don’t remember much of my earliest years – everything I know has been told to me through stories. I was born in Xi’an, China, the eldest child of a young Chinese couple. My father was a graduate student in Northwestern University in Xi’an, my mother a manager in a local chemical plant. It was at this point that the first major incident happened: my parents left me. At the young, impressionable age of two, my parents obtained Student Visas and left for America. I, thanks to the wiles of the U.S. Immigration agent behind the counter, was not granted a Visa. And so, for nearly two years, I was separated from my parents by an ocean.
In hindsight, I realize that this separation was far more than just physical. I was deprived of the two people who have, for the other sixteen years, given me everything. Even if it was just less than two years, I think that deprivation has made the greatest impression on who I am. I’ve always felt a certain shyness with my parents. I don’t share with them my personal life, my social life, as much I should. I often feel awkward talking about life with them. They give me advice, and I take it and try my hardest to use it, but there’s always a certain disconnect, a certain emotional distance whenever we have the deep, life conversations.
My parents would often tell me a story about when I was two-and-a-half years old. They called me, and my grandmother, who was taking care of me at the time, picked up the phone. A few minutes later, my parents asked for me – they wanted to talk to their little boy. So my grandmother called me over to talk with them. I said no. Why would I want to talk to my stupid parents after they left me all by myself in China and were living the good life in America?
But a year later, I was here. My parents, who collectively had $180 in cash to start their new life, had more or less established themselves, and so I arrived into a relatively stable environment. According to them, one of the first things that I asked them, one of the first words I said to my parents after eighteen months of silence, was, “Dad? Where’s our car?” The car, it turns out, was in the parking lot of Detroit International Airport, outside the city I would spend the next five years of my life.
The apartment was called Deroy, 5200 Anthony Wayne Drive, a highrise on the campus of Wayne State University, where my parents were doing their graduate work. I went to nursery school, where I learned my first English word, “elephant.” My first, and nearly only, friends for these early years were two girls, daughters of my parent’s friends. We didn’t exact get off on the right foot. They were two peas in a pod, and I was the new kid who barely spoke English. I remember complaining to one of the their mothers that they were speaking English again, and I couldn’t understand.
Elementary school started too soon. I cried on the first day, I threw up my first lunch, and my father secretly came by the school four times to make sure I was okay (I wasn’t). But I learned, and I learned quickly. My English problem was soon not a problem at all. I memorized how to spell the most words in my kindergarten class. Mrs. Cameron held this game every year where each student had a ring of index cards with words he learned to spell, and the winner had the most cards by the end of the year. In first grade, the evil lady in the front of the room, whose name I cannot remember, gave us daily grammar problems. I graduated ESL in record time, and even passed into the advanced reading class. Like any young immigrant, English came quickly and easily.
And at the same time, I grew closer to the two girls, as close as three young children can get. My mind is filled with random memories – images that, for some inexplicable reason, stick out to me today. I remember the Lego pirate set we put together; I remember watching cartoons and playing house – I was always the father and the son (at the same time) – while our parents laughed and played cards in the living room; I remember playing with barbie dolls; I remember the rabbit we picked up from the park and the time I swung a golf club and hit one of the girls in the neck; I remember the Sega Genesis; I remember the Easter egg hunts and the birthday parties and the Christmases; I remember the playground outside of Deroy and the Chinese school and the brand new library down the stone path; I remember the myriad of toys in the basement of our godmother’s house; I remember Amber, another family friend’s cat; I remember the garage sales and church sales; I remember orchard-picking and the accident on the way back, where I cried as our brand new car lay smoking on the side of the highway; I remember trips to California and Florida and Northern Michigan, where the stars littered the sky, innumerable and starkly beautiful. These were memories I cherished, memories that defined my childhood.
I feel like this segment of my life, until I was eight, tempered me. Being with these two girls molded me, softened who I could have been. I was young, innocent, and curious – ultimately unknowing. There was no awkwardness to taking baths with them, to sleeping in the same bed with them. We were little kids who knew nothing of cooties and the pubescent awkwardness that would eventually have its day.
The End of TVOct 16
As printed in my column “Technophiliac” in the Yale Daily News.
The pace of modern life has accelerated with time. As a society, we spend less time sitting down and more time moving from place to place. When we do sit down, it’s most likely in front of a computer. This is especially true for us students — the younger generation — who are now entering mainstream adult life. So where, then, does television fit into this equation?
We grew up watching TV. For me, at least, Saturday morning cartoons became a tradition. After-school shows, too, were hard to skip. Missing “The Magic School Bus” was almost as bad as missing the actual school bus. Yet today, few of us find the time to sit down and watch TV regularly. What was once a daily event has now dwindled to sporadic viewings, governed not by TV Guide but by our own schedules. I may say that I can’t possibly miss the next episode of “The Office,” but when Thursday night rolls around, I often find myself too busy to sit down.
I’m not alone in this sentiment; other Yalies interviewed expressed similar views.
“I don’t watch TV very often,” Santiago Correa ’12 said. “I don’t have time to adhere to its strict schedule.”
But perhaps that sense of busyness is a product of our circumstances. High school and college are certainly a great deal busier than the earlier years of our lives. TV is still filled with a lineup of popular shows, which would not exist if there weren’t a steady viewership.
That said, there’s no denying that television is losing its place at the center of domestic life. The computer, along with the Internet, is taking over. Families that used to huddle around the television set are now split across the house.
Now, just as television replaced the radio decades ago, the computer is replacing TV.
It’s only natural, then, that the next revolution — and, perhaps, the last — in television is at the hands of the Internet. Hulu.com, a joint venture by NBC and Fox, is a prime example of this web-based revolution. It offers nearly every show on NBC and Fox, along with some other channels, for free. Episodes are often released a day after they air on TV. There is no strict schedule to follow, no time to block off for a specific show. There are also shorter commercial breaks — fifteen to thirty seconds rather than the three-minute breaks on TV. Because it’s possible to determine exact viewership online, Hulu can sell concrete blocks of ads, which generates just as much, if not more, revenue as the traditional television commercial.
There’s a fast-approaching future in which TV shows become Internet shows, and we no longer have to get our weekly hour of satisfaction at a specific day and time. There are already “made-for-Internet” shows, such as the made-for-MySpace show “QuarterLife” and Joss Whedon’s serial Web musical “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.”
With the steady increase in Web speeds, the video quality of online content is also quickly eclipsing that of cable. In that future, televisions could stream their content not from cable or satellite providers, but from the Internet — straight from the source. When NBC streamed the Beijing Olympics live from their Web site, the first bell of death tolled for traditional television. As more made-for-Internet shows emerge, the ringing will continue.
The last bell, the death knell of TV, will ring when we are watching live events, newscasts, and even “Good Morning America” on our laptops or cell phones — whenever, wherever we want.
Who is this?Oct 14
So I, feeling in a particularly nastalgic mood, browsed through my now defunct xanga. It was quite interesting, trying to figure out what I was thinking all those years ago. But then I came across this. I don’t remember who I wrote this about. But I wish I did.
“don’t worry. it’ll all be fine — i promise. don’t let guises and whims fool you. i’ve found what i’ve been looking for — you. i didn’t even realize it until recently, but there’s just something about you that makes me feel at home. with you, i can be something other than boring old me. i know the cliche is “with you i can be myself”, but it’s different. for good or for bad it’s different. i didn’t know what i wanted; i didn’t know exactly what i needed until you came along. you made it all right. everything clicked together; i stopped seeing life in black and white. you gave it color. i view everything i do with a new perspective and my motivation has changed. i’m a better person. you made me realize that there’s more to life than i subconciously made out in the beginning. heck, i don’t even know if you realize what you did for me; to me. thanks. i guess it doesn’t matter where life takes me and i guess it doesn’t really matter if you’re even there. but i will never forget what you did for me these few days. you changed me indefinitely without really meaning to. but i must give you credit, because it was you and you alone that did this for me. my life is forever changed; my vision; my view; my life: it’s better now. thank you for being there. thank you for being who you are. i love you.”
-September 20, 2005
Shoot for the cloudsOct 08
As printed in my column “Technophiliac” in the Yale Daily News.
I can count the number of CDs I brought to college on my fingers. Photographs? None. Tapes of old vacations — you’re kidding, right? In this brave new world of digital everything, electronic cousins of these once important physical objects have rendered them relics. The sheer physical nonexistence of digital data, along with incomparable convenience, has permeated the digital revolution into even the most basic aspects of our lives.
But there’s a danger here, a danger in relying on what amounts to magnetic information on wafer-thin metallic disks mere inches in diameter. While there’s a physical tangibility to three-by-five photographs, to CDs stored safely in their cases, such safety doesn’t exist for digital data. A computer crash, or a few accidental keystrokes, can wipe out years of history — that vacation in Hawaii two summers ago, high school graduation, the first days at Yale. The scary part is that the risk is far from negligible, and is completely possible at any moment.
The obvious answer is to back up digital data. I bought an external hard drive for just that purpose, using the Time Machine feature on my computer to store regular snapshots of all my data on a second hard drive, in case my primary drive dies. The chances of both failing must be low enough not to worry.
There’s also a not-so-obvious answer – the cloud. The “cloud” is the colloquial term for backing up data to servers over the Internet. Professional companies — including Amazon and Microsoft — maintain the servers, guaranteeing the health and stability of your data. While storage in these cloud-based backup spaces is often limited, it’s certainly a safe and painless way to back up your most important data. You can’t lose it, you can’t break it: it’s foolproof. Your laptop crashed? No problem — your data will still be in the cloud when you get a new computer.
That convenience and safety has led to the rise of a broader development — cloud computing. In essence, cloud computing transfers tasks usually completed on a local machine to a remote server. This can include anything from video editing — YouTube and Facebook — to photo manipulation — Google’s Picasso and Adobe’s Photoshop Express.
It’s a fast-approaching future. The cloud’s utility expands in parallel with the expansion of broadband Internet. Imagine this: after taking a photo with your cell phone, you immediately upload it, edit out the blemish on your sister’s face, fix the color balance, then present it online — all while taking a stroll through Central Park.
The cell phone is the optimal target for cloud computing; they normally pack little computing power themselves, so offloading tasks to the cloud would increase their use exponentially. Suddenly, you’re no longer bound to your computer for simple tasks. Cloud computing can give cameras the ability to upload pictures immediately — then synchronize them with your computer back home while you take the next picture.
Cloud backup and cloud computing represent the next stage of the digital revolution. With the growth of personal computing slowing and the access to broadband rapidly expanding, it’s only natural to turn to the Internet. Computers made collecting and storing media much easier. The cloud will make computing easier and far more mobile.
EmotionsOct 05
Emotions can be quite the wild animal. I’d spent a month at Yale, happily enjoying my new life, making friends, growing close to people who I’d not known a mere month ago, and having a generally easy transition into college life. I still talked to my friends from high school on AIM and such, but I didn’t really think about the fact that I was two hundred miles away from the kids still stuck in high school, and even farther from some of my peers.
Then I went home.
I went home for my high school marching band’s annual home competition, to help out as an alumni, and to see everyone again. When I got home and saw my brother, I felt an upwelling of emotion hit me. It’s almost like the feeling you get in a really sad movie when that heart-wrenching moment happens near the end. In my obliviously frenzied life at college, I had forgotten how much I missed him. My parents, too, escaped my emotions while I was away. I’d forgotten what it was like to be able to speak freely and openly about my life without fear of prejudice or misconception.
And then I saw my friends, especially the few I shared my greatest passions with. These were the people who shared my love for the band program and the group of teenagers bound by it. The people who I spent countless hours talking and laughing about the one thing that permanently brought us together. The people who grew into themselves alongside me, who helped shape me into the person I am today. The people who crossed my mind too few times throughout the first month.
So we talked. We talked about our lives in college or high school, we talked about the band, we talked about each other and ourselves. We laughed like we were still part of the same group; we felt our kinship reignite with each hug and each smile. And when I sat on that old, creaky gray chair again, I watched, with pride, the legacy I helped leave. I watched the kids enjoy high school like I did, enjoy each other like we did. I remembered, if only momentarily, our proudest moments over the years. I remembered our shared joys and sorrows, triumphs and failures. And I realized, again, that I didn’t love the program for what it gave me; no, I loved the program because of the people within it, the people who gave me far more than any of them know.
And that’s why I felt that same upwelling of emotion after it was all done. Driving alone through the darkness after saying my last goodbyes, I felt it. In the frenzy to start a new chapter in my life, I had forgotten what it felt like to be with the people who defined the last. When the day ended, as we scattered to our new lives across the country, I really missed it. We’re confined now to sporadic days over the course of the years during which we can come together and relive a special time in each of our lives. And so I missed it.
We created something special in our four years in high school, a part of which will always be in my heart. And as for those few with whom I truly shared this love of mine, I know you feel it too. Our lives are diverging, traveling on paths spread too many ways, but our hearts, or at least the small part that will always remember, still travel together.
I miss you guys.
I download music illegallySep 30
As printed in my column “Technophiliac” in the Yale Daily News.
I download music illegally. I tried to be legal, to buy my CDs and use the online music stores legally. I want to support the bands whose music I enjoy. But the very thing the music companies use to protect themselves from piracy – Digital Rights Management (DRM) – pushed me into the murky waters of the black market.
Here’s the scenario: I went onto the iTunes Music Store and clicked “buy” next to a song. The word itself suggests that I’m buying that song. A legal, market transaction. A full transfer of ownership from the big boys at Warner Bros. to me. I want to put the song where I want it, play it when I want to, have full freedom and full ownership over my 99-cent property. But that’s not what actually happens. Thanks to DRM, what I’ve got is essentially a rental. I can only burn it seven times, have it on five computers, and I can only play it with an iPod or through iTunes.
To the casual observer, this seems only annoying, and certainly not deal-breaking. Most Yalies I talked to expressed indifference, saying it has no immediate effect on their online purchases. But I argue that DRM isn’t just annoying; it’s absurd and dangerous, even. Time is the greatest factor here. How long do you expect your purchase to last? I assume it’s forever, as is the case with every other good on the market. But that’s just not the case. For example, what if I stop using an iPod? Gadgets and trends change rapidly, and in ten years, I could be running around New York with another mp3 player in my pocket. It’s also not unimaginable that I’d be on my sixth computer in fifteen years. The moment any of those happen, I lose the song I purchased. At 99 cents a pop, that’s not spare change.
Worse, still, is the fact that the DRM-driven music is so tied to the seller. If a store shuts down its servers, like Wal-Mart did a few days ago, all of its customers are suddenly left with locked music that cannot be unlocked. Basically, DRM has made it so the music I buy isn’t really mine, but rather some convoluted entitlement to use the music where and when the music company wants me to. It’s not my property.
The music industry defends the use of DRM as an anti-piracy measure, a way to prevent people from uploading the files back onto the Internet and sharing it with others for free. Yet the measure isn’t a complete, blanket protection. CDs are all-too-easy to rip into shareable files. Even the DRM itself isn’t
perfect.
Most Yalies interviewed agreed that circumvention is terribly easy. “It’s easy to get around it,” Charlie Sharzer ’12 said. “You just burn a CD and load it back onto your computer.”
But the fact that DRM forces users to circumvent it seems to defeat its purpose. It’s clear that the industry is not handling anti-piracy correctly. Rather than building satisfaction with customers, they use DRM to shackle them, which signals a paranoia and a lack of trust and respect for the customers.
The bottom line is that DRM does not work. It has not prevented those who pirate music from pirating it, and it has only annoyed the legitimate costumers. That itself should signal to the music industry that enough is enough. DRM is dead.
Hectic day!Sep 17
Tomorrow (or today, if you’re gonna be a stickler) is going to be extremely hectic. Classes are the same as every Monday and Wednesday, my heaviest days by far, but still not that bad. But it’s the various events that follow that make the hecticness.
After my Literature section in Harkness Hall, I have half an hour to walk half a mile to my faculty advisor’s office. I’ve heard that he’s a nice guy, so I’m looking forward to this meeting. Afterwards I have only fifteen minutes to return to where I was, for an Economics Discussion Section in Harkness Hall. From there, I go straight to Linsly-Chittenden Hall on Old Campus, where, at the Maya event, I’ll grab my pizza dinner. If I’m still hungry, I can grab a quick bite back in the suite before heading off to the Yale Daily News building for the journalism training workshop.
I’ll have to leave that one slightly earlier in order to make my way to Payne Whitney Gym for Intramural Table Tennis. After that, I finally get a breather back in the suite, before heading over to Phelps Gate for a two-hour long game of Frisbee Golf with the YPMB. When that’s done, or before then, I’ll collapse somewhere near the vicinity of my bed and sleep until 9.
Why does everyone schedule everything on the same date?
YaleSep 05
I have been on this beautiful campus for exactly a week, and it still does not cease to amaze. It’s been a breathtaking journey, day by day, through halls rich in history, courtyards and paths beaten by footsteps of the brilliant men and women who came before us. Each day is a pleasant, unassuming voyage through an almost surreal, magical environment.
Sitting down for breakfast in Branford’s Dining Room, I’m surrounded by the smiling façades of the former Masters, illuminated by several chandaliers hanging from an arching ceiling covered with dark, rich wood. I then take a walk across Cross Campus, the rather large and imposingly stunning Sterling Memorial Library to my left, and the bustle of construction on Calhoun College to my left. A few large trees provide a pleasant shade from the hot morning sun, and their gentle swaying adds a symphonic element to the soundtrack of footsteps and conversations. There’s a few boys playing a quick game of two-hand touch on the grass in front of Sterling.
As I approach Commons, there’s a modern sculpture and a much older-looking memorial. Its gold-gilded inscription is clear even from a distance. “In memory of the men of Yale, who, true to her traditions, gave their lives that Freedom might not perish from the Earth,” it reads, along with a date attributing the memorial to the brave men who fought in World War I. I enter the rotunda, a beautiful domed vestibule with a rich blue ceiling from which are hung many more chandeliers. I pay little attention to the inscriptions on the wall, the names of every Yale student who gave his life in defense of his country. The moment of tranquility is broken quickly as I exit the rotunda and face the busy corner of Grove and College Street. Dozens of students race across the wide intersection as drivers wait patiently for an opening to continue.
A short walk later, I find myself reaching into my backpack for my notebook and laptop. Davies Auditorium is a large, modern lecture hall with comfortable, cushioned chairs and small retrievable platforms for note-taking. Professor Mark Johnson takes the floor and takes us through the beginning of modern chemistry, from Lavoisier to Newton to Dalton. He lectures with energy and humor. There must be over a hundred students sitting in the lecture hall, but it’s to be expected for General Chemistry.
After class is dismissed, I walk down College Street back to Vanderbilt Hall, my version of home at Yale. I have a moment of solitude at my desk as I organize my notebooks and peruse the news. Nobody liked McCain’s speech. The Mets won. Soon, I get a call from a friend, inviting me to lunch. I accept and leave Vanderbilt, nearly forgetting my keys on my desk. I briskly walk across Old Campus, under towering trees swaying and rustling to what seems like a perpetual wind. A few minutes later, I’m surrounded by chaos: lunch at Commons. I manage to make myself a sandwich and grab some yogurt before sitting down with a few friends. I have gotten over the majesty of the cafeteria. I no longer wonder if this is what Harry Potter sat down to everyday at Hogwarts.
After lunch is Introductory Microeconomics with Steve Berry. The lecture hall is absolutely packed. He’s a brilliant man and a wonderful professor. He mixes his own brand of humor and irony into a lecture introducing us to the basic concepts of economics and, specifically, microeconomics. It’s enjoyable, but I harbor a secret hope that some people decide not to show up next time.
Next thing I know, I’m walking down Elm Street with another friend, empty backpack in hand, towards the Barnes & Nobles that serves as the University’s bookstore. Minutes later, I emerge with a strained back and 400 dollars poorer. I figure that it’s the price we pay for education. We visit a mutual friend in Swing Space. We pass by the club soccer team practicing on a patch of grass, shaded by more rustling trees. Swing Space is far away from the center of campus, but it’s air conditioned, has an elevator, and each room has a little kitchenette. It feels comfortable, and the Calhoun upperclassmen don’t mind it. We stay for an hour or so, before heading back to Commons for dinner.
This time, we’re there early and the place is deserted. There are many portraits lining Commons, all but one with dark backgrounds and old men with an array of facial expressions. The only one with a light background is George H. W. Bush. The dinner is rather delicious: turkey and mashed potatoes with gravy. I get some yogurt again.
Slowly, night falls over New Haven. I spend some time in my suite, deciding between studying and watching TV. I end up doing neither, and heading over to a friend’s suite to hang out. We talk about what classes we’re shopping, what homework we have, and just have random conversations about random things. I meet friends of friends who become new friends. We relax in rooms, all of us not eager to begin doing the ever-increasing pile of homework. There’s a party in a suite upstairs. It’s crowded and hot, but we stay anyway to socialize.
Almost without realizing, it’s 1 AM and I’m outside of Lawrence Hall with a few friends. They say they’re hungry. I agree. Ignoring the effects to our health and our weight, we make the short journey to Yorkside pizza. It’s almost closing, but we each get some slices anyway. It’s good, but not as good as A-1 pizza.
A few minutes later, I’m alone in a shower, washing off the day in preparation for the next. I try not to wake up my sleeping roommate as I remove my contacts and prepare my cell phone alarm. As I lay in my bed, staring up at a ceiling I can’t see, I reflect on the day that just passed. I don’t consider what mark I may leave on this 300-year-old university. I don’t consider what mark it may leave on me. Rather, I just sit and appreciate the wondrous beauty of a campus and a university I have just begun to explore.
Never give guns to stonersAug 19
In fact, you shouldn’t really give guns to anyone. But that’s beside the point. I went to the movies earlier and saw Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express. Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and, especially, Robert Downey, Jr. were pretty hilarious in Tropic Thunder, but they really can’t compare to Seth Rogen and James Franco in Pineapple Express. If you haven’t seen the trailer, the film’s a classic Apatow about a pair of stoners who are on the run from the drug lords. This eventually involves a laugh-to-tears chase scene and guns. Lots of guns. I’m not going to elaborate more – go to the theater and check it out for yourself – but it really verifies what we’ve seen already: movies make stoners seem like the funniest idiots ever. It’s like America’s Funniest Home Videos on crack, literally, for two hours. So, kids, don’t do drugs. Just go to the movies and watch stoners beat and shoot each other silly. Hey, maybe it’ll give you a natural high.
Off to China!Jul 27
In exactly twelve hours, I will be sitting in the cabin of a small commuter plane on the tarmac of Newark International Airport. After a short, one hundred minute flight, I will layover in Toronto for three hours before boarding a Boeing 777 direct to Shanghai, China. Once there I will stop in Nanjing, where my father’s family is, then in Xi’an, where my mother’s family is, and then finally in Beijing, where family friends have secured tickets to several less-than-population Olympic events. I’m sure it’ll be bustling and crowded, but it’s still exciting to attend the Olympic games. I’ll be back on August 14th, tired, jet-lagged, and ready to watch the more exciting parts of the games on TV.
