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.