Vicky

Ronnie and Vicky rode past on their bikes.

Ronnie and Vicky rode by on their bikes.

On Lulu Island, the Cantonese neighbours, the mister and the mistress have four grownup children, Sherman, Teresa, Edmond, and Vicky. Their entrance is festively decorated with red paper and logograms. Sherman has been to the PRC. The latter three children have children of their own.

In Bangkok, my Auntie Vicky treated me, my grandma, and her Thai lady friend, who was married to a Frenchman, to a fancy restaurant at night.

He told Vicky that he wanted to go out with her.

Whilst drinking my Oat Nog Latte at Starbucks café, this grey-sky morning, I was talking to Afroz, a worker at Kin's Farm Market on Lulu Island, which I frequent to buy exotic things (to others) like lotus roots, Japanese yams, kumquats, dragonfruits, longans, jujubes, Hawaiian purple sweet potatoes, passion fruits, star fruits, etc. Afroz is what he categorizes himself as a "generic Indian Muslim." He was from Uttar Pradesh. His last city was Mumbai, before he left for BC. His daughter has been left with her grandparents in India. Afroz lives with his wife, a caregiver, in Vancouver. Afroz has an MBA from India, but he says that it is difficult to attain his dream job of doing marketing. I told him that my Auntie Vicky from the Philippines was working as a manager for Tupperware (a plastic container company) in India, as she lived in a "palace" with servants. I could not visit her at that time because I was working. (She also worked in Thailand, which I did visit.) It is the 8th of December of 2024, today.

The next people I ran into were my gorgeous sister-in-law Vicky, Mrs. Mike Mulvaney Jr. with the caramel-colored hair—very pregnant—again—and her little girl Chrissy, my firstborn niece, for whom my heart always gave a lurch.