Wind Flower

The bell just rang and J and I ran so fast to the school gate. We were desperate for the weekly ritual, catching little frogs in the rice paddies. We must be there before the sun went down because we wanted to pick some watermelons too…

I’ve lost all the contacts from my childhood. Yet some of the faces still emerge from time to time in my late night dreams. I cried when J had to move away due to J’s father’s debt. What would be worse than losing a good buddy in the eyes of a seven-year-old?

Have you ever cried in your dream? And suddenly you woke up and found out you were really crying. It happened to me once while I was away on a business trip in Hong Kong. It hurt so much! I dreamed of my very good friends in the United States. It hurt so much because I had missed them dearly.

A picture of wind flowers gently rocks my deepest memory of childhood. The generous Catholic sister waved her hands, telling me in Chinese that I could pick the ripe grapes in her garden. I always heard those sisters speak English or some language I didn’t understand. I told Sister Anderson I wanted to learn English. She gave me a book about wind flower. I remember she taught me the first sentence: Wind flower is beautiful but there is a story behind the beauty…

How hard would it be to unfold the mystery of brain? Is it possible to build an intelligent machine like Jeff Hawkins thinks? Would the energy support the machine function like the one in our brain cells? What is the role of mind or heart in this mechanism of intelligence? A machine will not have mind or a heart. And how do we evaluate the intelligence of a machine? Can an intelligent machine possess human-like linguistic character? It would be thrilling to do a profound research in the above questions.