Richmond

The threat to Richmond was ended.

The name of the new species — Thapunngaka shawi — recognizes the Indigenous peoples of the Richmond area where the fossil was found, using words from the now-extinct language of the Wanamara Nation in Queensland.

Before seeing the doctor today the 18th of August of 2015, I have vacationed for a few hours at the Richmond Public Market. It's like a big garden atrium that looks like 22nd-century tropical Southeast Asia. At Captain Wa, I buy white rice with fried squid, fried fish, and fried tofu. It all tastes like fried chicken because I've been devouring fried chicken for some weeks now. At Peanut's, I get a Sour Plum Bubble Green Tea. At QQ, I get a Cold Mint Bubble Green Tea. At Peanut's again, I get a Lychee Bubble Green Tea. Then, from there again, I get a Starfruit Bubble Green Tea. They're all delicious!

On the 10th of March of 2015, it is a walking day to a doctor's appointment. In the morning, I visit the local Roman Catholic worship centre. It is a brown mid-20th-century building. I gaze at a Mexican Santa María painting in the hallway. There are words in Spanish. The banners in the high-ceiling main chamber are purple, signifying support for Lojban and things Lojbanic, perhaps. By lunchtime, I am at the Richmond Public Market. I take the stairs up. First, I drink a plastic glass full of Sour Plum Bubble Iced Green Tea from a bubble tea vendor called Peanuts. Second, from the food vendor Captain Wa at a corner, I eat Noodles with Lemon Chicken, Tofu, Lotus Root Slices, as well as complimentary Hot Tea. Third, I drink a Starfruit Bubble Iced Green Tea from Peanuts, again. Fourth, having taken the escalator down, I buy a strange sinographic dictionary of a strange Asian Mainland tonal language. Fifth, having gone up the escalator, I drink a Mint Iced Tea from a bubble tea vendor called QQ Bubble Tea & Coffee. (The Q maybe is support for my Xoqolat.) The cold mint drink reminds me of my drinking mint at a café in Versailles in France, years ago. The Richmond Public Market is like a big garden atrium, as if in the middle of a tropical jungle. It is full of Kanjifolk.

It is my 51st birthday today, on the 12th of January of 2017, and I am at the Richmond Public Market with my Apple iPad mini, as I use the free "guest" network. The atrium is decorated with red lanterns for the coming Chinese New Year. I have eaten from Captain Wa a dish of noodles with fried tofu, white glossy fish, and reddish fatty pork skins and meat. I have sipped a glass of cold Sour Green Apple Green Pearl Tea from Peanut's Bubble Tea. Later, I have a cold Mint Green Tea from QQ Bubble Tea and Coffee. Then from there again, I have a cold Winter Melon Tea. From Peanut's, I then have a cold Lychee Green Pearl Tea. I sit, as I wait for my doctor's appointment.

On the 14th of April of 2015, I walk to the Richmond Public Market, I first climbing the stairs outside. Inside, the wide atrium-like building is like a garden in a jungle surrounding, I imagine. Already quite hungry, I trot to Captain Wa, the food vendor, to get noodles with squid, fish, and tofu, as well as hot tea. As I eat, a handsome First Nations man in a purple T-shirt walks by. Then a handsome, stocky Jewish fellow walks by. A few minutes later, I begin to thirst, so I get a cold Mint Bubble Green Tea at the vendor QQ Bubble Tea and Coffee. I sit by the stairs to sip. A threesome family sits eating nearby, the man being black, the woman being Oriental, and the child being a hybrid. Addicted to Bubble Tea, I get another one, this time at Peanut's. It is a cold Green Apple Bubble Green Tea. It is delicious. I take the escalator down. On my way to the washroom, I notice a big aquarium full of probably giant red Alaskan king crabs with barnacles on their legs. They remind me of extraterrestrials, somehow. At the bookstore, I buy a heavily illustrated green botany book in sinograms. I left it on top of a box a month ago and it is still there. It is $14. I take the escalator up. Addicted to Bubble Tea, I spend my remaining coins on a cold Lychee Bubble Green Tea. It is delicious with even bits of white lychee flesh.

On the 11th of December of 2022, at the teahouse, I told Greg that if I had a car, and I don't by choice, I'd frequent places like the Richmond Nature Park and the George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary, as I am an animist syncretically.

I woke up early today. I started my café-hopping here on Lulu Island just after 5 in the night-like morning. I walked to Tim Hortons to have a Green Tea with Oat Milk and a Sausage Egg Cheese English Muffin. Pushpak the South Asian vendor was not there today. I was the only customer in the vast chamber. Then, I walked to Starbucks. My baristas were Nicole the Filipina and Jessica the Vietnamese. I was drinking a Brown Sugar Oat Cortado that comes in a cute, little ceramic mug. It tasted like jackfruit to me. Jessica from afar whispered loudly and solemnly, "Richmond is not like Asia." A regular, a big white man with white hair, sat with his tablet computer at a table near the washrooms. I thought that he was playing games on it. It was the 23rd of January of 2025.

I walked to Tim Hortons café at about 5, then later at 9, this chilly but sunny morning of the 29th of June of 2025. I enjoyed an Earl Grey tea with oat milk, a Sausage Egg English Muffin, an Iced Coffee with oat milk, and a Scrambled Egg Sausage Potato Box. I was thinking there at my table about my adolescent days when I was fascinated with enclosed shopping malls, like Lulu Island's Richmond Centre and Lansdowne Centre, as well as Vancouver's Harbour Centre Mall, and reflecting on future space colonies on Luna, Mars, Saturn's moon Titan, and Neptune's moon Triton, as I tied the ideas with the speculative fiction that I was reading and watching then. Of course, that time was before the advent of advanced Artificial Intelligence that we have today and the observance of the years passing by with such slow progress in crewed space travel. I have had to adjust my vision of the future, accordingly. Maybe, AI will help humans to that end? Or, maybe, AI will be the major player?

Be cheerful, Richmond; for the wronged souls Of butcher'd princes fight in thy behalf: King Henry's issue, Richmond, comforts thee.