Chapter 1: the pot melting

Downstairs, in the Human Resources, Jenny Lee and B. B. Geenick are strategically located on each side of the office desk waiting for David to enter. As an immigrant himself, B. B. Geenick garnered huge amount of respects from his underlings largely consisted of immigrants. David highly appreciated his management tactics including always "strategically locate" the late comers, by forcing them to take the only vacant seats left. Geenick used this tactic before in conference rooms, offices, or even around dining tables with customers and often got what he wanted without little notice to the outsiders. David learned from Geenick over the years many such lessons of "paying attention to details" in day to day office activities. David also admired the fluency and smoothness, which Geenick spoke English, as a non-native speaker. If there was any flaw in Geenick's conversations, he opt to let too many repetitions of trivial phrases slipping into his sentences, such as "sort of", "kind of", "you know". There it comes: "David, you sort of know that after the Nord Kia project, we have sort of run out of things to do for some of the developers here at ENS. You have seen Derrick and Dan in UK office being let go last week. We thought the budget crunch was over, but unfortunately we are not out of the woods yet. Ankur told me today that we will no longer have a position for you in ENS in the near future. But we want to talk to you and see what you want to do with your career next. We can inform other employees that you have decided to leave and look for better opportunities, so it will look like that you are leaving on your own terms, and look good on your resume. We will still provide you with the necessary documents to the appropriate government offices so you can still get the unemployment benefits ".

A strange feeling came over to David as two of the most distinctive landmark metal memorabilia's from his short lived stints in the Vancouver high-tech companies. After joining the work forces in the area since the beginning of 2000, at the tail-end of the dot com bust, David noticed two urban legends among Vancouver technology professionals: 1) there are unusually high percentage of Internet geeks in the area thinking technology advancements of the World Wide Web are primarily powered and propelled by pornographic industry; 2) unusually large numbers of employers like to use "looking for a brand-new start" as excuses to help employees with their resume -- in other words, ax them out after getting through with them. And David had not been and was not interested in playing the game, because he was no longer interested in building his resume in this bleak and distressed high-tech community. The Greater Vancouver area has about 2 million populations in the region, but has not even one Fortune 500 company header-quartered in. Same thing can not be said about equal or even smaller sized metropolitan areas in the United States, such as Boise, Idaho; Omaha, Nebraska; Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio; Hartford, Connecticut; Woonsocket, Rhode Island; Bentonville, Arkansas. . . If technology is fueled by anything, David knew fortune was a much more powerful fuel than sex.

David, like many of his fellow Chinese immigrants usually ran out of interests in finding another high-tech job in Vancouver area when close to getting their Canadian citizenship. And the Canadian citizenship along with airline tickets can help them travel the world. For citizens of the third world countries, the world is a funny place these days. Airline tickets are easier to buy than travel friendly citizenships.

With pauses dotted in his initial conversation, David started "strategizing" his responses to B. B. Geenick: "why do I want to tell other people that I am leaving on my own, when in fact I am forced to leave? If it is for the moral of the team, I will cooperate. I have preached to other developers about always thinking as a team player, so I will do whatever it takes for the good of the company . . .". Jenny Lee opened her mouth "David . . ." but, Geenick quickly interrupted her voice and cut in "OK, that's OK if you want to tell other people that you are laid off. Ah… Yeah, that's fine. I just want you to know that Ankur and I, Ah…, the entire company, we are all appreciative of what you have done for the ENS especially on the Nord Kia project. I hope you have no hard feelings and wish you good luck in your future career endeavors. Because of your hard works and great contributions in the past, we will not escort you out of the building like we did when we let other employees go. You will have two weeks to prepare from today and make necessary transitions. That's really all I have to say. You know, it is not easy to say this sort of things. Do you have any questions for me at this point?"

David felt a block of unease colliding with every cell of his internal organs as if diving into a swimming pool and landed in the wrong position. He had been preparing for this particular moment of the impact. But when the impact actually came, it still hurt quite a lot nevertheless. With voices becoming clumsy and tardy, he said: "ah . . . no, no questions", last time he was laid off in US, he had to ask about immigration status with worries that he had to pack his luggage and sell his house at the price of a moving sale. But now he no longer had such worries because, like most people, he immigrated to Canada as "permanent residents", like "green card holders" in US that can choose to shop at the mall after unemployment as long as money in the wallet permits. Without a green card, if a certain unemployed worker without working visa chooses to shop at a mall for too many days, he or she would become "illegal".

David would lose his job along with -- as Ronald Reagan once put it -- "dignity and common decency", but he did not have to sell his house or become "illegal" before becoming "bankrupt". Geenick extended his right hand for a friendly handshake and David indifferently obliged. Then he shook hands with Jenny Lee before leaving the HR office.

Walking outside of the HR office along with David, Geenick continued to mumble about what a great contribution David has made to Electronic Navigation Systems and the Nord Kia project: "Ankur and I sort of want to show our trust in you, and we believe your integrity and professionalism. You know what happened to the previous laid-off employees and I ask Ankur not to escort people out of the office any more. It was somewhat humiliating, don't you think? And it did not show them the trust. We want to get you some time to prepare for the transition and also prepare yourself, for your future employment and so forth".

Every time Geenick talked to David in private, David always got the impression that the humble Mr. B.B. Geenick was telling him that he, David, was the best manager and the right-hand man of Mr. BBG. But every time when Geenick talked in public, it is a different story. Another office savvy Geenick would show up, and vanity always get hold of Mr. BBG, and made him want to show off his "strong leadership skills" in front of a crowd. At these moments, the "Geenick comments" filled with flashy and buzz words would splash out of his mouth, including criticizing colleagues left and right. And the comments might come with different forms, but were invariably expressing one thing "It was somebody else's fault. The problems happened, because I was not there".

Geenick and Ankur Kumar -- CEO of ENS -- went way back. At one time, they both worked for a local small startup company DDI, which manufactured electronic navigation guidance hardware and software for transportation industries in Vancouver, British Columbia. DDI was later bought by the famous US Fortune 500 company MHP, with different treatment for Geenick and Ankur. Ankur was kicked out and worked for another startup firm, until eventually struck out on his own and founded ENS --Electronic Navigation Systems, which later prospered. Geenick stayed with MHP until later started his own company also. Both Geenick and Ankur would tell everybody that they were the VP of marketing or director of engineering of the Fortune 500 Company MHP instead of VP and director of DDI when introducing themselves. Ankur's company became more successful later on, while Geenick's company only performed sub par and was acquired by someone else. After a cash settlement somewhere with somebody, Geenick jumped ships to come to work for Ankur as a director of software development.

The appointment of Geenick presented an odd wedge in ENS because all the software developers and managers already had a supervisor -- "VP of software development" named Mark Greenburg. David along with his development team labeled Ankur as the "Boss (number) 1", Mark Greenburg as the "Boss 2", and B. B. Geenick as the "Boss 3". Then came 5 software development and QA managers in a small department of less than 40 developers spread out in UK, India and Canada. For David and other software development managers, trying to side with the correct boss at the correct moment, were the interesting challenges for their little careers. It was funny but true that Ankur regarded his 150 employee company as a "large enough company" now that he needed to install bureaucracy and office politics -- oh, "leadership" as he called it. Geenick was brought in.

Mark Greenburg was a native British Columbian, who always worked for eight hours a day plus or minus 5 minutes, except some very rare occasions when Ankur was talking to him around 5 o'clock. He was a registered professional engineer, who was very efficient and methodical with his worker. He reads a lot about new ideas in technology, not for adopting them, but for resisting what he viewed as "unnecessary changes". He almost always brought in his lunches and ate at his desk during lunch hours while squeezing in additional one minute or two into his work day. He strongly opposed to asking any type of over time before a deadline from his subordinates and resent being asked to do so by Boss 1, and later Boss 2. He also strongly opposed to handing pink slips to employees until economy went really south after 9/11. If his beliefs in protecting labor were not out of a kind heart, or the strong BC union ideology, at least he firmly believed that any maltreatment of developers is not a feasible way of sustaining a technology business over the long run. Contrary to his "soft heart" inside, his words were often harsh and sarcastic when talking to developers. For instance, a statement such as "You shouldn't have done that" out of Mark Greenburg's mouth would turn into: "You've done that?" with a wide open mouth and an astonishing look as if questioning "Are you an idiot?" written in his facial expressions.

Very soon after Geenick was wedged in by Ankur, Mark Greenburg started to be regarded as the odd man out by most developers, because 1) Geenick and Ankur were buddies; 2) Geenick ate lunch with developers whenever possible and his popularity among developers sky rocketed like real estate prices in the West coast of the entire North America. Hanging out with developers at Friday lunch, was something Mark will never do unless mandated by Ankur. Mark hated the manager who brought in the Friday lunch routine and thought of it as a waste of two hours worth of productivity each week.

At one Friday lunch, developer Leo asked B. B. Geenick what his ancestry was, because nobody could correctly guess it out based on his last name. Geenick replied his ancestors were from Armenia. He is in fact first generation immigrant, growing up in Iran and didn't come over to Canada until he was in high school. One developer from former Czech Slovakia, now Slovakia -- Jozef Chkovsky said: "Oh, Armenia! I know many Armenians when I lived in New York. I used to live in New York City and there were many Armenians selling, crafts, artifacts, rugs … they are all very clever. Very smart business men indeed! People said ten Jewish can not outsmart one Armenian". "That really depends on whether it was a Jewish who made that comment", Geenick smiled, apparently not pleased with the Jewish and Armenian comparison.

Back in the ENS office though, everyone could tell that there is this contest of wizardry going on between two wizards -- Mark Greenburg and B. B. Geenick, one Jewish and one Armenian descent. In one meeting, Geenick would suggest that everyone work overtime for two consecutive weekends to speed up the delivery of the additional requests from Nord Kia management, and Mark would make a superior grim and say "You can't do that forever" while shaking his head as if saying "idiots, idiots, idiots". In the next meeting, Geenick would criticize the existing QA bug tracking system, saying "Why are we focusing on the "priority" of these bugs when "severity" of the bugs is something more relevant to a development unit? In my mind "priority" is the sort of criteria for customer service department to focus on". Then Mark would enter a remark at the time of dead silent after a pause, "then what do you do when Nord Kia did request that we fix a bug that is not so severe, but they have to have it, just for the heck of it? Or else, they will just not sign the acceptance on that feature. You can't control these guys' behaviors" Then the two wizards will go on at it and pulling stuff from their rear for another 15 to 30 minutes, discussing how to use QA to guide development.

"Why do we have so many bugs in our product?" Geenick would continue, "Are they any processes that needs to be in place, should we start doing code reviews among our development teams? I would think code reviews would also help knowledge sharing and buildup camaraderie . . . "Mark would shake his head without saying a word for a moment, eyes closed, while rocking his chair back and forth a little bit, to show that he still out ranked Geenick even though Geenick and Ankur were close friends. Before Geenick stopped, Mark would start: "Geenick, Geenick, Geenick, let me have a word. Code reviews are nice. But they really cost a lot of time, and time is our number one asset now that we can't afford to lose. You know other people have been complaining about software department is always behind, and in fact that is precisely the problem that Ankur brought you in to deal with. Under the normal circumstances or when the Nord Kia project is over, I would say we can do some code reviews, but right now it is just not the right time. We can also do extreme programming, test driven programming, and try out other development methodology, or even use the "agile development", "Aspect oriented programming" and "JUnit tests", "PL/SQL unit tests" these guys mentioned in their lunch hour seminars several weeks ago" Mark spread his eye contacts amongst development managers to look for support, while continuing "At the moment, I don't think we can afford to do code reviews?".

In such meetings, David always tried to offer his best possible neutral looks to both Geenick and Mark -- his Boss 3 and 2. Occasionally he would recall Mark once taught him, "One way to talk to customers is to pile a bunch of technical craps to confuse the hell out of them", wondering whether that is also the philosophy Mark used to deal with developers.

"Are you suggesting that we do not make any changes to the existing processes?" Geenick countered with a sincere but stinging voice. Mark would roll up his eye balls a couple of times to indicate that he did some hard soul searching and probably got the message from the divine being living above, and then spoke slowly: "I really think we have a lot of processes in place, I don't think we need the new ones, but it's just a matter of people following the existing processes that I have written. How many people are looking at the changes that I have put recently into Software Development Help File?"

Mark Greenburg was famous amongst developers for doing two things religiously: 1) asking developers to read the "Software Development Help File" that he authored; 2) ask developers to fill in "weekly objectives" on Friday with an estimate of tasks to be performed in the following week. Not being able to attack what is wrong with these two processes, Geenick would criticize things such as "weekly objective" should not be in Excel format, because Excel is too primitive for project management. Afterwards, Geenick requested developers to enter the weekly objectives in Microsoft Project Professional version with servers support. Fairly soon, Geenick got voices from developers complaining about the new system, such as "Excel format is really out dated" and "duplicate entry into Excel and Microsoft project is really wasting a lot of time for most people, especially for managers". Another round of process changes would be discussed in another round of Wizardry contest featuring contestants "iron chef" Mark Greenburg and the "challenger" B. B. Geenick . . .

Day by day, it did seem that this one Jewish can not outsmart this one Armenian in ENS, while a group of developers largely consists of immigrants watched on. David felt like treading on the thin ice day after day while Mark and Geenick battled it out in the contest of "who is smarter" to win favor in front of developers and Ankur. It looks like Geenick is gradually gaining the upper hand and accumulating style points with his shrewdness and existing personal ties with Ankur. After all, if it was not for the dissatisfaction towards Mark, why had Ankur brought in Geenick? Sometimes Geenick would not show up at work and Mark would be running around the entire office looking for him. It turned out Geenick's wife had called Ankur's wife that Geenick was sick that day and could not come to the office. Ankur's wife would send out an email to all the poor development managers, but forget to send one to Mark. This Boss 1, Boss 2 and Boss 3 hierarchical organizational structure seems to have some poetic humor in a software development company. It is constantly reminding people that hierarchical nature of the Object Oriented programming should not be forgotten. David along and other middle managers were usually at loss when instructions from Boss 2 and 3 happen, because Boss 3 works for Boss 2 on by official ranking, while Boss 3 also could be representing Boss 1 when looking under the hood. It was usually easy to make poker faces and pretend to be making serious efforts to follow instructions from big, medium to small bosses all the time. Like the famous quote from the cartoon character Snoopy "how can we lose when we are so sincere?"

Now this Snoopy was finally going to face the reality of losing in the end, David was not sure whether to miss the comedies or feel the sense of relief. Being kicking out of the ENS means losing paycheck temporarily and all the good times at ENS will quickly become part of thrown away memory, as if sceneries along the highway -- noticed with sufficient attention as every safe driver would, but stow away immediately after passing without even a second thought. There are more urgent matters to take care of in a "pink slip day".

Since David had experienced several layoffs in his career already especially after the .com era, he initiated his usual "post pink slip emergency procedures". Step one: calling wife, warning not to disturb next generation -- his only daughter. "Let's be good liars and pretend that nothing happened while she still doesn't understand".

Back home, David's wife Jade laughed light-heartedly after hearing the news that her husband was laid off. While they were younger, she couldn't gather her laughs when the day her husband was laid off. But now they are both older and wiser, layoff is nothing but another problem to deal with. Their motto about problem has been "if you don't have problems to deal with, you are dead". Plus, Jade has always been an optimistic girl who usually does not have many worries.

She met David in graduate school when they were both trying to get their Master's degrees in Science in one "college of Art and Science", but Jade always claimed her real passions were in "art" not "science". Had she had another opportunity to choose her own life without interferences from her parents or pressures from a socialistic environment, she would have been a good artist by now. She constantly tried to convince David that science is not as interesting as art, although she had to agree it is a better way of making a living. But she kept on warning David that computers would eventually make a dull boy out of him.

David loved Jade along with arts and literatures, but he loved computers too and often quoted Will Smith saying "what, you think Denzel is the only brother who could act?" then add "What, you think Jacky is the only Chinaman who could act? One day, you are going to see an actor grow out of those Chinese programmers". Although he had renounced most of his interests related to math, physics and chemistry for fear of becoming a dull boy, he stayed close to computers and was becoming more and more addicted. For some reason, he believed that artists had something to do with addictions.

Tonight, Jade started her "first day of the rest of my life" preach again. "I told you not to work in computer industry any more. You are a bad luck for those techie companies and they are bad lucks for you. Look how many companies that you have ruined. It seems every other company that gave you a job ended up: having no new customers to buy, having no new products to develop, getting closed down by parent company, or merged with others -- in short, belly up -- what have you done to them? You should really be happy not to work for those high-tech companies and they should be happy to get rid of you. Try to be a chef tonight, you can cook the dinner by the way, or try to be a postal worker tomorrow. Doing anything is better than what you have been doing. You will find a better career in no time". "If I am interested in starting any new line of work, I am interested in being a standup comedian in the technology industry. You know, there are not many people making jokes for those software engineers, system/network or database administrators. I don't know how high the demand is, but the supply is definitely close to zero, I know that. In many technical conferences or product promotional events, I have seen Hula dancers in entertainment programs, but never a standup comedian. Come to think of it, our offices are filled with jokes in my line of work. If people think one geek biting off a chicken's head is funny in a circus, imagine a circus with 50 geeks running around everyday. What a wonderful world would it be?" "Don't know much about history, don't know much about trigonometry, but I do know that I love you, what a wonderful world would it be . . ." David ran on with the song which he wasn't exactly sure had the right lyrics.

Jade seemed to be suddenly interested in his husband's newly discovered career and pitched in ideas: "don't forget the time when Geenick booked the flight ticket for you to Stockholm". "What ticket?" "Remember that time when Ankur wanted either you or Geenick to go to Nord Kia?" "Nord Kia" David corrected with an exaggerated Swedish version of the company name. "OK, Nord Kia" Jade conceded on this minor difference, "You told me that Geenick asked you if you could go to Stockholm, since he didn't want to go and wanted to stay with his family, and you said you also wanted to stay with your family, but would consider it, but didn't want to go either. Then you went to the restroom on your way back to your office. Once you got back, Geenick had already called Ankur telling him that you agreed to go and Alice was asking you for airline preferences." "Oh yeah, I remember that now, that was the travel I made on Chinese New Year's Eve and I was the only one with an Asian look in airport lunges from Vancouver, Frankfurt all the way to Stockholm." "That is like a sitcom, don't you think? Especially considering that was the only time he so kindly made travel arrangements for you. If it is not good enough to be in Seinfeld probably, but it can probably make into an episode of The Office". "Oh, you are sounding like George Costanza suggesting plots to Tonight Show guests now, but I just want to start with comedy clubs, not venturing into television business yet", David nodded. "What I had in mind were more along the lines of this". David held up a loosely gripped fist in front of his mouth and started imitating Jerry Seinfeld tone: "Have you seen the commercial run by IBM about the Linux operating system? A 9 year old boy, traveling the world "what he learns... we all learn. What he knows... we all benefit from … The boy's name is Linux". "What can you say about Microsoft?" "A 30 year old boy, who is still staying in school and becoming a big bully, (Laughing machine) He beats you up and takes your lunch and then flip a middle finger at you". "When you flip the middle finger back at him, he said: Hey stop that, that is my move, you are infringing on my copyright. (Laughing machine again) If you want to do any gesture that looks like mine, pay me for $80 a copy or I will sue your ass off". Jade made a timeout gesture and said: "who do I pay for this timeout gesture? Stop, no one knows what a Linux is except techies". "But I am talking about doing comedy shows for technical conferences" David answered. "I don't think tech people will be interested in your comedy during their conferences. Here is another idea, you better learn to dance…" they went on talking about wonderful days ahead of them after layoff.

Back to reality, David still had to continue working in computer programming at least for the not-so-distant future. He started looking for other high-tech jobs next day during office hours. He knew this was against his preaching of: "don't lower your professional standards, just because other programmers do not want to maintain theirs". But as a lame duck employee at ENS, he could no longer focus his entire attention to Nord Kia and ENS any more, and nobody expected much out of him by asking him to do anything purposeful. For better or worse, suddenly he found himself becoming the type of employee that he loathed, but couldn't help it. Since looking for a job is not the first time for David, it did not occupy every minute of his day. He still managed to wonder around to transfer remaining responsibilities of Nord Kia project to his successors, and discuss with other developers on how to do small things as usual. He thought "maybe it is better to be escorted out of the office and see how many ways ENS can escort employees out of this building".

Usually, ENS layoff an employee and then immediately ask Jenny to stay with him or her until he or she is completely out of the company perimeter. David did not exactly figure out whether it was because of highly classified documents in ENS or fear of employees deleting source code that prompted the company taking those super cautious approaches. The funniest story about escorting one high-level software development manager -- Craig Johnson -- out of ENS was this: Craig was working on his desktop computer with Windows 2000 Professional version, and all of a sudden his monitor screen went blank. He called IT manager, Allen Palmer, to come upstairs to "fix" his computer. While waiting for his computer to be fixed, Geenick and Jenny called him and carried Craig through the entire "whole nine yards" until finally getting him out of the building. Then Allen Palmer confessed to other employees that he used the Windows "remote shutdown" technology to blank Craig's computer screen and prevented Craig from deleting important files to alleviate worries from Geenick and Ankur. All the techies in ENS had a good laugh about the "remote shutdown" capability of Microsoft Windows 2000 and praised Allen for being so knowledgeable and cool. "That Allen really knows Windows inside out" as Jack Pennington, a.k.a. JP, praising with an imitation of strong US Western accent, although he is really a lad grow up in Belgium and labeled as a graduate from Cambridge UK, "he knows many advanced handy tricks that can protect important source files for us, and we should thank him for that".

Since David has no intension of deleting any files, he felt like hoping for a blank screen in any minute so he could get escorted out of the building and get on with his new lives.

But the game is not over for him, and he had to stay on with the hope of working another day even if it is just for another dollar. Staying as a lame duck manager is a little bit humiliating to David because he felt like he was really not the type of person who wanted to act as "I am not a doctor but played one on TV". In fact he would rather be a good doctor and never want to play one on TV even if he had the opportunity. He told fellow developers "Look at good professionals in sports. Even if you are going to play for another team next season, but if there are two games still remaining this year and you are still under contract with this team, you would go out and play with 110% of your efforts to be a good professional. It's for your own good to build up an impressive resume, but it is natural within you, because you love the game. . ." When seeing junior developers nodded approvingly with admirations for his laudable "professionalism", the other cynical David would spring into his mind and say: "Suckers. Bought into these motivational craps and thought of themselves as millionaire pro athletes". But for now, the corporate David would appear pleased with the responses from younger developers learning the right ways to be "real professionals" in the technology industry. Then the pessimistic David would fluctuate back again and whisper inside: "after my times are up with ENS, if I see them in streets, I would just tell them 'that sorry-ass company was lucky to have you working there' ".

Two weeks passed by quickly. While David huffed and puffed as motivational speaker to urge his team members working on to make software improvements based on lessons learned from the Nord Kia project, he also calculated what to ask from ENS for the severance pay on his last day. "Maybe I can not get 1 year pay or even 6 month pay like those guys from Nike or Intel after a massive company restructuring, but I should ask for a two month pay. At least I should get 2 week's pay as a minimum by law".

When David pickup the phone and asked the question on the last morning of his life at ENS, Jenny Lee said "David, the past two week that you have been working with us is the period for your severance pay mandated by law. I tried to explain this to you the other day when Geenick and you were in my office, but never got the chance." David could do nothing but utter "Geenick" like Seinfeld pronouncing the name "Newman".

Ironically, 12 years ago when he was laid off from a job for the first time, he had no idea about the concept of a severance pay and asked for none. Therefore he was pleasantly surprised to receive a check for two weeks from his employer explaining to him that severance pays are based on seniority. He could be paid more if he had worked longer or had a higher salary, etc. David figured with 12 more years of seniority and now working in a Canadian province that proclaimed to be always friendly to labors, he should at least get two weeks of pay. But this time, he got paid much less than 12 years ago in Hamilton County, Ohio, one of the only three counties in US, famous for being conservative and almost always siding with employers. In fact, Ohio is so conservative that it was considered the state that handed George W. Bush his second term, and Hamilton County was the most conservative of the state that voted republican presidential candidate Bob Dole in 1996, when rest of the state elected Bill Clinton.

Suddenly, David felt that he had enough about the "polite" and "worker friendly" image of Canadian employers portrayed to other new immigrants in ENS. Where is the social system that ardently praised itself over the "capitalistic" United States? Where are the compassion for the struggling poor and middle-class?

David was so furious that he even thought about skipping the "farewell lunch" arranged for him by his co-workers. On a second thought, he felt it would be too rude to dozens of other innocent and friendly developers. After all, he needed the opportunities to socialize with them so he can have more social occasions in the future, after his ENS days, to say to them: "that sorry-ass company is lucky to have you still working there".

From that day onward, David thought it was people like Geenick and Ankur that turn the song "Oh Canada!" into something like: "Oh Canada, it is really not as good as it sounds".

Comparing to its southern neighbor, the advertised good healthcare coverage on paper brings about a long waiting list that is often intolerable. It was said in British Columbia that people with benign tumors would have little chance of getting them removed. For people with benign tumors that are turning into malign tumors, they would need to wait so long, that most of them would choose to go to a third country to get it treated before something bad happens; Now David saw the so called "better labor law" regarding severance, not only carried worse terms on paper than that of US, but also turned out to be even worse when executed by sleaze bags such as Geenick and Ankur.

On his way walking out of ENS after the "farewell lunch", David ran into Geenick and had yet another unexpected conversation with him. David opened the dialogue with a complaining voice: "Geenick, was my performance worse than other laid-off employees in the past? I have just heard I will not get one penny of severance pay after today. I am in effect treated worse than those employees who were escorted out of the building". "Ankur was sort of trying to show his trust to you, you know, and I kind of questioned whether that was appropriate or not", Geenick said while David recalling his Boss 3 made the complete opposite statements in a group meetings behind Boss 1's back after the "Craig Johnson instance". He criticized Ankur with the appearance of a noble human being, who was about to go against his boss for the sake of justice. He said remotely shutting down people's work station and escorting them out of the building was inhumane. Now he was telling David that he had been supporting Ankur for the "inhumane" treatment because they had just given David a even "inhumane" trap.

Tired of Geenick's double dealing, David continued to walk out of the door and Geenick asked "where are you going?" "Out of here, why should I stay"? "If you want good references, you'd better leave on good terms". David shook his head and couldn't help but feeling pity for Geenick -- one of the self proclaimed "movers and shakers" of the Vancouver high tech community. In China, these people are called "frogs in the bottom of a well, they can only imagine the sky is about as wide as the opening of the well" (井底之蛙，坐井观天). In India, these people are called "frogs in a pond that think the pond is the ocean". David told Geenick slowly, "I have worked, on average, for one employer a year in the past 10 years, thanks to the age of employee and employer disloyalty. I have plenty of supervisors who can give me good references. I know Robert Smith, Bob Harrison and Tom Kennedy, and that's plenty". David turned and walked out of the ENS door, amused by his imaginative supervisors. Trying to make up names is a seemingly easy thing to do, but in fact, not so easy for immigrants. And now, David is determined to immigrate to another guest country to try his luck.

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