Stocky

Tom is quite stocky, isn't he?

A stocky man with a swarthy complexion snatched Mary's handbag and disappeared into the crowd.

Mary is quite stocky, isn't she?

In the morning of the 3rd of February of 2022, on my way to the pizzeria, I saw a handsome stocky man in a grey tracksuit enter his expensive grey car at the gas station. I just saw a quick glimpse.

In the afternoon of the 11th of February of 2022, I drank black iced tea at the cafe, which was full of standing students. There were Filipinas at two different tables. A stocky redheaded bearded man in grey ordered coffee. A big-bodied Hispanic entered to use the washroom. Later, I was the first customer at a brand-new bubble tea shop nearby, where I ordered taro oat milk iced tea and a blueberry cheese dorayaki.

It was Valentine's Day on the 14th of February of 2022, on Lulu Island. In the morning, I had pizza slices at the pizzeria, where Rose the Filipina was the regular vendor. In the afternoon, I drank black iced tea at the cafe, where I talked to my Anglo-Saxon neighbours Barb and Ken about travelling around this world, Mayan and Aztec pyramids in Mexico, the creole languages in the Caribbean, the otherworldly buildings in the Greek Islands, our common knowledge of prestigious French, and our experiences of the Pandemic, and then talked to Hans the Netherlander about the months-long adjustment phase of the new James Webb Space Telescope, the Jovian atmosphere with lightnings, artifacts of Ancient Egypt, lightning-made glass, and dinosaur bones. At the cafe, I noticed two different round-headed stocky men, who came in and out.

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.

After lunchtime on the drizzling 28th of February of 2022, walking outside, I saw my corpulent white neighbour in black, as he walked, reminding me of fat Maitreya Buddha. At the main road, my stocky Mediterranean neighbour in jeans hosed his car tire. In the pizzeria, I had mushroom greens chicken pizza and a black effervescent drink. There were many handsome students, with titillating hairy legs.

On the 11th of March of 2022, a grey morning, I was at the Lulu Island pizzeria, as three vendors, two South Asians and the Filipina, Rose, were busy making orders behind the counter. I had a Hawaiian slice and iced tea. Then, I went to the grocery store looking for dried anchovies, but there was none, according to the two Filipina workers there, so I bought instead five packets of frozen crab-flavoured wild pollock, or kamaboko, and a bag of frozen sole fillets. Then, I went to the cafe, where there was a long line. In front of me was a big boy in shorts, his meaty legs showing. A stocky man in a grey T-shirt and black track pants came in and out. An old man was reading an old book about the ice-hockey player Wayne Gretzky. Drinking my black iced tea, I sat near a table of a Bosnian couple, speaking Bosnian. The cafe music was multilingual, and I could hear Mexican lyrics,"Llorando, llorando, llorando": "Crying, crying, crying." An old man who was a regular before and had moved to White Rock gave me a little KitKat chocolate bar, wrapped in red paper. In the afternoon, I returned to the packed pizzeria to enjoy a pesto cheese slice and iced black diet cola. I could not sit in my usual corner. There were multiracial girl students, with expensive bubble teas. Outside near the greengrocery, white students walked by, saying, "We rather have salvation from suffering." It was drizzling.

After midnight on the 13th of March of 2022, I cooked a soup snack of instant noodles with pieces of cabbage, asparagus, and dried anchovies which my brother gave me for my birthday some weeks ago. I drank coffee. I prepared my books for a review of my Brazilian Carioca accent in Portuguese and of Russian phonology. When I heard from afar people speaking either of these two languages, I often mistook it for the other. These languages were funny in the way the vowels "squished" or "bloated" like rubber, depending if they were unstressed or stressed. Afterwards, I ate chocolate-laced Italian biscotti. In the drizzling morning after 10 o'clock, I walked to the pizzeria. On the way, on the other side of the main road, running in the opposite direction, was a little stocky boy with dark hair. At the pizzeria, I ate two slices and drank a diet black cola. A couple of city punks with a skateboard visited the Lulu Island suburban pizza parlour. A basketball game was in progress on the big screen, with the sound off. At home, I practiced my Brazilian Carioca accent, as I read aloud the novel Os filhos de Matusalem, or Methuselah's Children, by Robert Heinlein.