Obliquely

He talks too obliquely like a Chinese.

There may problems with homonyms in a language. I was talking to a friend about how I detested the Western business suit with its "tie" that choked the neck. He thought that I was obliquely referring to "Thai," which was not my intention. In my head, I wanted to use the French word "cravate," but he did not know French. Homonyms may be a problem in effective communication.

A Cantonese-speaking lady fruit seller shouted obliquely that I was something like a "brown lychee."

Tom dared not contradict Mary even obliquely.

The sun was just disappearing behind the roofs of the Rue Saint-Lazare, but still shed its rays obliquely on that little, overdressed crowd.

The blood supply of the lower extremity comes from the external iliac artery, a branch of the common iliac, which passes obliquely downward and outward along the border of the psoas muscle to Poupart’s ligament, where it enters the thigh and becomes the femoral artery.

Looking from outside, the whole Earth may still be like Papua New Guinea, or PNG for short. My fatherland the Philippines obliquely retains its primitive innocence. It is really too bad that literature in indigenous languages there is still scarce. A trip to a bookstore in the Philippines reveals many books in English, but a mere small section in Tagalog. People speak an indigenous language ordinarily, every day, but when they read or write, it is often English. But texting on cellphones and smartphones and in Social Media may often be abbreviated Taglish code-switching. Many Filipinos prefer television, cinema, or videos in an indigenous language, rather than read English, which to them is still foreign cold. Maybe, Roman letters are too rigid for their Asian eyes, unlike the ancient Baybayin script, which nowadays people relegate to tattoos and patriotic T-shirts. Filipino culture is highly aural-oral, today. Today, Japanese anime, Korean dramas, American shows, and so on are dubbed in Tagalog in the Philippines, more so than when I lived there decades ago.

Today, the 18th of February of 2025, I go walking to Tim Hortons several times during the grey-sky day. I drink White Chocolate Pistachio Oat Milk Latte, cold, twice. Yesterday was the first time that I drank it. Yesterday was a day with Latinos: In the afternoon, there was a handsome round-faced mestizo: Caucasoid and Amerindian. He reminded me of myself, like a mirror image. He seemed to interest himself in Chabacano, Philippine Creole Spanish. He was fiddling with his smartphone. We smiled at each other without talking, as if he did not want to speak English with me. Last night, there was a younger Latino with a Latina, talking at a table next to mine. The man mentioned an Esperanto word, "Nikaragvo" (Nicaragua), to which I obliquely replied with "Gvatemalo" (Guatemala). I sensed that he interested himself in Esperanto and Lojban, from the way he was talking to the woman.

Then, advancing obliquely towards us, came a fifth.

Finally I descended the hill, obliquely, towards the trees I had seen.