Ting-Ting’s problems sleeping are now illustrated by a classroom lecture where she has fallen asleep. All of the girls in class have potted plants on their desks and the teacher is taking about how, if you feed and nurture the plants too much, they won’t grow. She spins this into a broader theory of life, that there may be something in biology that requires a struggle for growth to take hold.

She calls out Ting-Ting as an example, because her plant hasn’t sprouted, and then jokes that she is probably up all night feeding it, which is why she is asleep and the plant hasn’t grown. The classmates all laugh and Ting-Ting, perhaps unaware of all that’s been said, smiles shyly.

While Ting-Ting hasn’t been up all night feeding the plant, she has been up feeding her own anxieties. Between that and her extreme focus on the happiness of the people around her, sometimes to her own detriment, Edward Yang is hinting about the change necessary in this character for her to fully grow into an adult.

The scene then shifts to an ultrasound machine, Xiao-Yan and A-hi getting a glimpse of their new child in the womb. But the movie does something very creative here that is difficult to pick up on a first viewing. We are hearing a woman’s voice while watching the ultrasound. The character is talking about, of all things, video games and how the games have the potential to do so much more if they turn away from the shooting genres and pay attention to the more nurturing aspects of human existence, leading to games where the characters become virtual friends, extensions of ourselves.

The scene then cuts to a board room and a man starts speaking in Japanese and the subtitles aren’t being shown. What’s going on? It takes a few more seconds to realize that he’s speaking to NJ and his colleagues, so this must be the Japanese game developer they were talking about. And we’re not seeing subtitles, because that female voice we just heard overlaying the ultrasound was a consecutive translator, someone who waits for the speaker to finish a thought before relaying a large chunk of text.

To finish up his remarks, the game developer talks about trying things that haven’t been done before and how he would welcome a partnership to do so. The colleagues applaud and give some platitudes about the remarks before the meeting breaks up.

When they go out into the hallway to discuss it, NJ’s colleagues seem disappointed — they don’t like the cost attached nor the risk involves. NJ, on the other hand, liked what he heard and thought it was worth pursuing, even though he was the most negative about the idea before the meeting. NJ notices the developer playing with a pigeon who had flown into the office, so he doesn’t hear their idea to have NJ take the client to dinner to buy time while they look into signing on a copycat game developer instead.

NJ agrees to meet the client even though he’s offended by the idea that he should go because he’s the most honest looking of the bunch.

Back at his desk, NJ is listening to music, lost in (romantic?) thought again, when the colleague who exchanged business cards with Sherry comes in. He mentions that he recently talked to Sherry on the phone. He passes on some background that her husband is in the insurance business in Chicago. Then he tells NJ that she told him to say hi — and he nudges NJ to give her a call “as an old classmate, not a former lover.”

This makes NJ smile … which heightens the irony of him being chosen to represent the group for his honesty.