I remember online classes.

I remember TikTok food trends.

I remember dalgona coffee.

I remember Melona soju cocktails.

I remember the Buldak 4X spicy noodle challenge. I didn’t win.

I remember empty highways.

I remember wildfire skies.

I remember COVID-19 tests. They stuck thin plastic swabs up your nostril so far it scrambled your brains and swirled it around for ten seconds, then stuck it in your other nostril as you fought sneezes. This was before they used cotton swabs.

I remember mask fishing.

I remember “fake news” and “The China Virus” and “Kung-Flu.”

I remember Vicha Ratanapakdee.

I remember Xiaojie Tan and Daoyou Feng and Delaina Ashley Yaun and Paul Andre Michels and Hyun Jung Grant and Suncha Kim and Soon Chung Park and Yong Ae Yue.

I remember Pak Ho.

I remember Christian Hall.

I remember Chinatowns like ghost towns. People avoided it like the plague. Family businesses that were generations old closed.

I remember people crossing the street instead of passing me on the sidewalk.

I remember my first rave. Yetep, Said The Sky, Mitis, and ARMNHMR were playing. It was in Bill Graham on Valentine’s Day and there was Orange Tesla in my veins. There was a giant heart floating in the sky and I think I fell in love with laser beams.

I remember lychee ice Puff Bars.

I remember Flum Gio litchi ice. It was shaped like a nipple.

I remember greening out and fainting in the kitchen.

I remember bloody noses. I had to get the vein cauterized.

I remember the rose garden in SJ.

I remember sunsets at Land’s End.

I remember the best bowl of pho I ever had. The rice noodles were wide and so soft that I melted into an ooey-gooey mess inside.

I remember baking pizookie and making mango sticky rice.

I remember Dogecoin. I lost one thousand dollars.

I remember my sister’s 8th grade graduation. It was outside under a white tent and my heels kept sinking in the grass.

I remember my first roommate. She was a vegan that worked at Trader Joe’s and was an “human rights activist” in her small white town and knew a “black lawyer” and liked to write about POC’s experiences #BLM #StopAsianHate and call it “uplifting marginalized voices.” She had a twin sister whom her parents loved more and still talked about her ex that broke up with her on Christmas day and popped a Xanax every morning. One time, she walked down to the Brooklyn Promenade and dissociated for hours. She was a people-pleaser who couldn’t handle confrontation or communication and ended up screaming in my face.

I remember my 21st birthday. I was in quarantine, because I had COVID.