Homebound

During the holiday season, the center's volunteers serve up meals-on-wheels, feeding homebound seniors and the homeless.

Being homebound has led to unprecedented usage of streaming services, causing concern among EU officials that it could strain internet bandwidth beyond capacity and trigger a crash.

Meals on Wheels volunteers deliver daily hot meals to adults over the age of 60 who are homebound.

In the afternoon of the 23rd of February of 2022, at the cafe, I sat at my favourite corner table to drink my iced green tea, which on other times, I alternate with iced passionfruit tea and iced black tea. Hans the Netherlander hobby astronomer sat at a central table. There were young people with strange hairdos, like samurai top knot, or big and curly, or long and red-tinted. Homebound, I had to use the washroom in the pizzeria, where there were Eurasian students.

On the 26th of February of 2022, I tried to keep my day simple. Before dawn, at the corner convenience store, I drank a cold canned Thai tea drink and ate a pizza submarine sandwich. In the chilly, grey-sky morning, I headed to the cafe, whilst I practiced meditatively by scribbling Japanese Kana glyphs on my hand with a finger. I drank iced black tea at the cafe, whilst the typical early-morning clients were there, a Caucasian and an Oriental. A robust man in a black, red, and white jacket and dark-grey rugby pants entered to get coffee and exited, as he talked on his smartphone. Homebound, I took the long route across the vast green school field, seemingly an Animist-Buddhist experience of being on a different planet, the northern snowcapped bluish mountains being visible beyond.

The 2nd of March of 2022 was somewhat uneventful. I went to the pizzeria in the morning. There were some old folk with white hair. Homebound, I saw on the sidewalk an Oriental boy squatting, wearing orange and yellow. He got up and walked away. Some landscapers were at a yard. There was an orange-vested handsome labourer fiddling with his machine tool by his vehicle. For lunch and dinner at home, it seemed special with steamed tofu and fish on rice.

In the morning of the 5th of March of 2022, I ate at the pizzeria and drank iced black tea at the cafe, where Rob with now long brown hair, with a black sweater and orange worker pants, entered to greet me and Don, sitting at separate tables. A brown man in a white T-shirt and sleeveless black vest came to get coffee, his muscular arms writhing. I spent a minute in the woods. As I approached my house, I waved to Derek my Filipino neighbour in a green tracksuit, his mesomorphic silhouette showing. In the sunny afternoon, going back to the pizzeria, I saw, on the other side of the main road, a whole Jewish family with children, all wearing Sabbath synagogue attire. I waved to Gurpreet the Sikh at the gasoline station. At the pizzeria's front, a thickset bicyclist in black parked and locked his bicycle. I ate a pizza slice and drank a cold diet cola. Northbound, homebound, I could see the snowcapped mountains. Near my home, I waved to my Fijian multiracial neighbours, the grandson Darius and his grandmother Moli, whose name meant "orange" in Fijian.

Before dawn on the 6th of March of 2022, I walked in the dark to the corner convenience store to buy two cans of Thai tea drinks, two packets of instant noodles, and a bag of fried pork rinds. I drank the orange-brown Thai tea drinks outside the store. As I was homebound, in the dark, a car stopped as a passenger came out to urinate, and then he hopped back into the car, and then the car fled. In the sunny morning, I walked to the cafe to have iced black tea and a banana loaf. Waiting for his coffee order was a tall bearded man, not thin, with red-brown hair, with a black tuque, black sleeved shirt, black pants, and brown sandals. Taking advantage of the spring-like weather here on Lulu Island, I ventured a third time promenading before noon, to the pizzeria for a pizza slice and a cold diet cola. On the way to the pizzeria, I waved to Gurpreet the Sikh at the gasoline station. A Eurasian girl in a dark-blue-grey jacket, grey-black pants, and white light sweater entered the pizzeria to order a pizza. On the big screen was a basketball game in progress. As I was homebound, a bicycling Eastern man in a green jacket and grey sports pants halted in the middle of the alley.

On the 7th of March of 2022, I left my Lulu Island house around 10:10 in the morning to walk to the pizzeria, where I ate two pizza slices and drank cold black diet cola. The big screen television was blank. The place was silent. The vendor was an East Indian from Mumbai, not the usual Rose the Filipina, as it was the case on Mondays and Saturdays. As I was homebound, a mesomorphic man in black outpaced me, as he mumbled a song, of which language I was not certain.

In the sunny morning of the 24th of March of 2022, I was drinking iced black tea at the cafe. A tallish handsome man in a tracksuit speedily came in and out to get his coffee. I went to the sandwich shop to eat a tuna sandwich and drink black coffee. I saw Michael the Dane-French on a bench outside, as he did his ritualistic crossword puzzle. I told him that my paternal grandmother, who died at 99, had the same hobby. Then, Michael recounted the time he visited his New Brunswick paternal grandmother, who spoke in Danish for an hour; he could barely understand. Then, "like the flick of a light switch," she switched to English. She died at 94. In the afternoon, I ate pizza at the pizzeria. Homebound, I saw Michael again in the alleyway. We noticed a majestic eagle was flying above in the sky.