I was in high school gym class, in a group of 8 and we had to split up for basketball. The teams gravitated towards girls vs boys, but I suggested we mix it up. As we headed outside to play, we instead started to run towards the parking lot, where I remembered that my old lab members were having a sleepover reunion. But as I reached my car, I remembered that I had tae kwon do at 4:15, and since I hadn’t gone in a long time, I wanted to see if I could rush home and get changed in time.

As I neared home, I realized that I would be 10-15 minutes late at best, and they probably wouldn’t even let me in at that point. I decided to just relax and see what happened. Home was an apartment, and as I went to the bathroom, Merry came home. I hugged her and told her how pretty she was, and she encouraged me to go back to the reunion. So I headed out.

It was night now and dark when I got back to the parking lot, which transformed into a nightclub, and people were seated at several large tables. A few were mildly happy to see me, but others ignored me, which made me feel a bit awkward. But I sat down gamely. Some people were eating, others were sleeping already, and others were on their computers.

After some stilted conversation, I walked off to a corner, which now became a bright white room. I was watching some basketball skit videos, and for some reason I had also become addicted to eating keyboard keys. So I was slowly popping them off the keyboard and eating them one by one. A tall black man walked over to me wearing a Harlem Globetrotter’s uniform, and we started talking about basketball. Mid-conversation, I realized that the keyboard hadn’t been cleaned and I could see dirt on the next key! So, I started popping all of them off into a bowl, with the intention of cleaning them. But as I did so, I remembered that the keyboard belonged to MD Anderson, and they would want it back. So I got a bit nervous and stopped eating the keys.

The man morphed into a muscular white guy but who had a deformed head, kind of triangular shaped. I suddenly recognized him as a boxer whose apartment I had apparently lived in for a year when I was in grad school. I tried telling him about it, but he spoke in a very strange kid-like way, which is when I remembered that he had suffered brain damage in a fight a while ago (hence the head shape). He was wearing boxing gloves and was about to head out to another fight. I didn’t think that was a good idea, but kept it to myself.

I was in a tower where each floor was a different restaurant, but it was laid out like a large tree, so you had to climb from floor to floor. There was one level where you really had to climb from “leaf” to “leaf”, where each “leaf” was about 3’x6’ and you had to crawl to fit and not fall down. The owner was old with whispy white hair, and there were quite a few customers so I had to wait. I kept thinking about how he had to climb this every day at his age and wondering at it.

After, I boarded the local train/subway and could see the stops as if I were above the train. But at one moment, I was inside the train and the conductor opened the door while still moving, and I could see that we were parallel to another train with a small platform in between. The conductor motioned to me and said that there was enough time to get on the other train and get back. I hesitated, then decided to go for it – for fun. But as soon as I stepped out onto the platform, he closed the door! I mouthed to him through the window “you tricked me!” but he mouthed back “I didn’t trick you!” The time had just run out.

So, I got onto the other train and figured I would just get off at the next stop and take the train back the other way one stop. When I get out, I was in an enormous, glorious Russian train station with extremely high ceilings and glowing with golden walls. There were few people, and really only a giant confusing billboard with the many routes. I tried to find the station I needed to get back to, which I think was Irkutsk, but I couldn’t find it, even though it was in English! I saw a few attendants standing around, but they only spoke Russian so were no help. I was really starting to panic.

Some time soon though, I was driving a rental car and could see it top-down like a video game. The roads were crazy but it didn’t get too bad until I reached a huge roundabout. There were arrows pointing out in every direction and it was so confusing! I picked a direction that seemed to continue my original route, but cars were going every which way! Suddenly, it was abrupt chaos as it turned into a 20-car pileup and I could see that my car was very smashed. I was really panicking, but as I tried to move the controls, the car mostly healed itself and I was back on my way, just really slowly.

Next I knew, I was in a hotel nearby with my mom, sister, and a strange man. We were lounging on the bed watching TV, then decided it was time to go to bed. So I got up to turn off the TV, and found that it was part of a multi-component unit that included a lamp, stereo, and other things. They each had their own switch, but there was also a master switch which I pushed. My mom asked if I wanted cereal, and I said yes. It was some kind of frosted strawberry granola, and my mom said that she had another bag flown in from America! Then I woke up.

The first part of the dream, I was playing a computer game – I could see the map of the rooms, but when starting to play I would go into them. The idea was that you had a team of people, each with different skills, and you had to figure out the order and combination of skills at each point in the room to take out a bunch of enemies. I can’t remember them now, but something having to do with rollerskating in one room, for example. The rooms were very brown and wooden, kind of old-timey. And I kept saving and reloading, but at one point I couldn’t find the latest save, and so I kept going back farther – and though we’d succeed to clear a room, I would realize that we had lost a lot of progress because it was an older save. I remember that many of the rooms were quite heart-pounding as the enemies would get closer every time we failed, and I would have to reload before they got us.

Soon after, I decided that I needed to code a program that would manage the saves and also the use of certain skills in the game. I had some old code written the old way from years ago, then more recent code from ChatGPT. But I was still having problems even with its help. So I started a chat with a programmer and sent them my code to ask for help. He replied that it looked like AI-written code, and I had to clarify that yes, I used some AI, but what I really needed now was some human help with the logical steps to beat the game and improve my save file structure.

In the second part, I was at a museum with Max and Lia, and it started off in a very narrow room with stairs and lots of wooden cubbies filled with soft toys and blankets for kids to crawl around in. After that, it opened up into a bigger area with plastic balls and other things to play around in. But time was getting late, and I told them we had to leave soon. Right then, a nice African-American couple came over and offered to watch the kids while I went to another part of the are which was like Sea World. I don’t remember it well, just that I had fun for a long time. By the time I got back, though, I was late by about half an hour compared to what we had decided on. They were really upset that I took advantage of their good nature and called me selfish, because apparently we had also agreed to go a show together afterward. I had to say sorry so many times, and that I had just lost track of time. But just as they were beginning to relent a bit, I realized I had something to go to for work and so would miss the show, and that that would make them even angrier.

So I panicked and ran back in to the museum and through the narrow room with the stairs and out to the entrance area, which was small and white and just had a couple of chairs and a rug in it behind the welcome desk. But I was shocked to see that my aunts from Hong Kong were seated there, Yee Ma and Sam Yee! I pretended to remember that they were coming to visit, and I hugged them and tried to switch to Cantonese, but it came out pretty poorly. As they were chastising me for being late and for my Cantonese, I saw a guy sitting on another chair who I didn’t recognize. I asked and they angrily said that of course it was my cousin Bee-Juy… and his baby! In real life, I haven’t seen him in over 15 years, so I couldn’t recognize him either way, and in real life he doesn’t have any kids. But anyway, as I circled around to say hi, I saw that both him and the baby had an extra pair of smaller eyes at the corners of their regular eyes, and it was pretty freaky, but I stay cool and greeted them and congratulated him on having a baby. I told them all that Lia and Max would be coming out soon.

As we prepared to leave, more and more HK family members appeared, and soon we loaded onto a bus. Even my parents and sister ended up on there, as well Merry and the kids. We were all chatting with my extended family, but I kept an eye on the bus driver, who was Russian for some reason. My suspicions were correct as, suddenly, he swerved left into the grass, down a little ditch, and then back up again, very violently, all just to cut a corner. But then turned right onto the road, meaning that cutting the corner didn’t actually save us any time! I got up to confront him, but as I walked towards the front of the bus, it stretched out more and more, and there were huge ornate wooden rooms – beautiful and stately – in between, and I could see my mom and sister in there talking with some people. I marveled at how such an enormous bus could travel so smoothly and contain such amazing architecture. When I reached the front of the bus, it had now become a large home kitchen area, and in there was my apparent grandmother-in-law who was Russian and cooking a huge round slab of traditional Russian bread. She was very old and frail-looking, but barked orders at me and I helped her cut it into pieces. Some other of my family came in after she left and asked me what I was doing. I nervously replied that when it comes to bread and grandmother-in-law, that it was “her way or the highway.” They looked at me like I was a loser. So I quickly grabbed the bread and carried it back to the back of the bus.

There, it had become a kind of dining room with lots of large tables surrounded by chairs, and the Russian part of the family was all there in traditional clothes and celebrating. They had set up big tupperwares full of dipping sauces for the bread, one red, one white, and one green. I couldn’t help myself and started trying the sauces, but was disappointed that they didn’t really coat the bread well, being too liquidy, and that they didn’t really taste any different from each other. My mom came over and said that we would be having Chinese food soon for our side of the family, and so don’t eat the Russian food. I pretended that I hadn’t had any. As I walked back through the bus, I could see that Lia and Max were playing with the other cousins’ kids, and so I was happy.

I was going to high school with my friend Bryan – not back in time, but at my current age. I guess I passed for a teenager? Anyway, we were on a train to there and an older woman, maybe 50s, was talking to us a lot and making us feel uncomfortable. So we just chatted with each other and tried to ignore her.

When we got there, we went straight to the cafeteria. There were a lot of students, all girls, volunteering in the lunch line, and Bryan started chatting them all up. He was very suave and brash, and I marveled at how confident he was, and vowed to try it myself later. All up until the last girl. Now, I knew that he liked a particular girl who volunteered there, but wasn’t sure who – but now it was clear. He got so shy, and so did she, although she tried not to show it. It was really cute! I noted that she was a bit plain-looking, but that made sense because Bryan himself was a bit overweight (well, that was my thought process anyway). He got a big plate of food, but nothing looked good to me so I only got a small bag of Cheetos.

We went to sit down, but for some reason Bryan kept passing by a whole bunch of tables, like he was looking for something. Up until that point we were talking a lot and acting like best buddies. But then, he sat down across from a boy and girl and they started talking, completely ignoring me. I felt very weird – it seemed like maybe he owed them money or something? So I pretended I wanted to go get more food and hurried back to the line.

This time, I saw off to the left a special cabinet of food, like one of those freezers bins in the supermarket, but not cold. Instead, it was filled with a clear light brown liquid, and I could see floating inside were hot dogs! The buns were quite wide, and I recognized them from watching tiktoks (in real life) where vendors in the middle east dip your sandwich in the meat cooking liquid before serving it. So I was intrigued even though it looked kind of gross. I slid open the top and by then, there was a dry section, so I scooped up a bread version – now the filling was ground meat – but I saw off to the side that there was also a puff pastry version, and I love puff pastry. So I grabbed that too, and now I was excited. Two of the actual lunch ladies were leaning casually on the bin now, and appeared to be Middle Eastern, and were encouraging me to try the food, but I couldn’t quite understand them.

So I found an open table and sat down. By now I also had a Twinkie somehow. I was ready to start eating, when I noticed the hot dog bun and Twinkie were wiggling and twitching, just like a larva! It was really disturbing, but I cut open the hot dog bun and I could see it was just the heat escaping. I was relieved, but that didn’t explain the Twinkie… Right then I noticed there was a girl with pink hair lying on the table and she was talking to me and looking at the Twinkie. I realized she was with a group of bullies sitting at the next table over, and that she was trying to intimidate me by taking my Twinkie! She didn’t seem to see the twitching, so I just told her to be my guest and have it. I was grossed out. But, I still really wanted to try the puff pastry and took a big bite – only to find that the meat was actually extremely thin and basically floated out of it. I couldn’t really taste anything.

The bully table got mad that I wasn’t taking their bait, so the leader started trying to scare me. But since I was 45 instead of a teenager, I just laughed and told him stop trying to act so big. He challenged me to a fight at night at the train station, so I said ok. I walked away to find Bryan, but he was gone, so I decided to try and copy his earlier style and went to chat with the girls in the lunch line (by now I was a teenager again). I worked up the courage and started talking all coolly to them, but they mostly ignored me.

Then it was night and I was walking up the stairs to the train station, getting ready for the fight. But it turned out that instead of me and the guy, it was our little cousins who would fight for us, around 7-8 years old. But of course, they didn’t know how to fight, so they just pushed each other around for a couple minutes, then everyone laughed and said good job, and it was over. For some reason, not only were all the bullies there, but also their families, so I started to realize a lot of the parents were Asian. I even heard some Cantonese, so I took a guess went over to the head bully, who looked Chinese and first told him that it was a good fight, basically trying to act like his buddy instead of a bullying victim. He said yeah, and then I asked him if he knew Cantonese. He answered in Canto, saying that he could kind of speak it but not well, and I lied that he was almost better than me, slapping him on the shoulder to indicate that we could be friends now. I thought it was a slick move anyway, but it seemed to work. That’s when I woke up.