Chapter 3: Coming to America

 

If tomorrow all the things were gone I'd worked for all my life,

And I had to start again with just my children and my wife.

I'd thank my lucky stars to be living here today,

'Cause the flag still stands for freedom and they can't take that away.

 

And I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free.

And I won't forget the men who died, who gave that right to me.

And I'd gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today.

'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land God bless the U.S.A.

 

From the lakes of Minnesota, to the hills of Tennessee,

across the plains of Texas, from sea to shining sea,

 

From Detroit down to Houston and New York to LA,

Well, there's pride in every American heart,

and it's time to stand and say:

 

I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free.

And I won't forget the men who died, who gave that right to me.

And I'd gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today.

'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land God bless the U.S.A.

 

 

 

While teaching part-time, David was diligently attempting to immigrate to US. With limited financial resources and short supply of social contacts, the only way David figured he could get back on his feet in the transportation industry was by emailing people like a spammer and hoping one or two email would get through to someone who might be interested in utilizing his skills and experiences.

 

One day he received a call from a gentleman named Richard Westwood from Houston. It turned out that Richard Westwood worked with David before, although it had been more than 10 years ago. As David remembered and for reasons not completely understandable to David, Richard Westwood liked to call himself as "Bud". He asked if David was interested in helping him to obtain a patent in the transportation industry as an expert witness. If the trial experience became a mutually satisfactory one, then they can work together on more important projects. They briefly chatted about the old days working together in Soil Engineering, Inc. between 1992 and 1994 from different branch offices of the same parent company. That was the time when cold war was considered as "just over" after the United States won a dominant victory in the first Gulf War against Iraq, with the support of the USSR and almost the entire world.

 

Since the war was so quickly over and the casualty was so low on the US side, also because it was fought with high tech gadgets and TV screens watched live by many people for the first time in history, some people in US started calling it a "Nintendo war". Soldiers returning from that war were so warmly welcomed, prompting some newspaper columnists to write: "this is really unfair for those Vietnam veterans, who fought so many arduous years to find themselves being spit on upon returning, while these Gulf War veterans only needed to fight such a short period of time to receive such a warm welcome." Some other media quickly came to the aid of the US military saying, the Iraqi army was not as bad as they seemed on the Nintendo machine or TV. Iraq actually had the 4th largest army in the world before the 1991 Gulf war. Consider Iraq was not far removed from its war with Iran but the US military was certainly far away from its nationwide military mobilization decades ago, the statistics of the "4th largest army" about Iraq could be true. But in the public eyes, the war must have not been dramatic enough to give the triumphant president another term to the White House. Nor did Collin Powell later follow the footsteps of many winning generals in the past, such as George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Zackary Taylor, Ulysses Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower, to become president, although he was mentioned as a presidential possibility several years later.

 

How could this "4th largest army" in the world stand against the other side with two super powers? Winning that war was easy and America was at its unprecedented glorious status unrivaled even by Rome and Great Britain.

 

After the end of that Gulf War the world decided there was no need for a cold war any more. Both the Russia and the USA decided to sign several treaties mandating each side to destroy certain amount of midrange missiles each year, so there would be less and less intercontinental warheads pointing at each other among nations.

 

For US, many of those midrange missiles were the Minuteman models scattered around the country. Soil Engineering was hired as the environmental consulting firm by US Army Corps of Engineers and US Air Force to sample pesticides and herbicides around the missile silos, before those lands could be returned to civilian use. Bud was a project manager from the Minnesota office and David was an entry level environmental scientist from the Cincinnati office, who was really doing a job of an environmental technician. Soil sampling was very easy, and the tasks mainly consisted of using different tools, such as: augers and hand-held power drills, to dig up some dirt and then to put them into 8 oz jars. Afterwards, samples needed to be labeled in certain ways for record keeping and shipments to the labs. There were many missile sites to sample because there were many "minuteman II" missiles to decommission around Ellsworth Air Force Base (AFB) in South Dakota and Whiteman AFB near a place called Knob Noster Missouri.

 

Since it was a governmental job, therefore one environmental sampler digging up the dirt is not good enough without somebody else watching. Accompanying each environmental scientist, each crew consisted of a field manager from Soil Engineering, Inc., and a representative from US Army Corps of Engineer. Then there were a large entourage of inspection team randomly roaming from crew to crew to "sample" the work of the environmental samplers and insert themselves into photo opportunities. Back then, Bud was a project manager as a member of the "photo and speech" team going from site to site.

 

Besides the usual "how's it going" and "nice weather Hah?", the only significant exchange between David and Bud in those days was this: When stopping near one missile silo, Bud came to David and whispered to him: "David, because I am the stupid, so-called, quote, whatever you want to call it, project manager, I have to pretend that I am training younger employees how to do things. Here, you hold your hand drill this way, so there would be no chance for the diesel fuel to drip into the soil and contaminate the sample. I know, I know. . . the chance of contamination is negligent and there is nothing dripping out, but I got to pretend that I am doing something here". David was deeply moved by the humbleness and honesty of this project manager and said: "oh, that's perfectly all right, please feel free to . . .hmm". David stuttered because he couldn't speak the entire sentences of English without pauses in those years. Bud smiled and completed his sentence for him quickly, which David thought was with a trace of sarcasm, "You mean feel free to point out things? Good! Alright!" Then he went back to his pack of "photo and speech people" and they moved right along.

 

In the past 10 years, Bud and David had both left the environmental industry, one forced and the other at his own choice. With his professional experiences and a wealth of connections, Bud had apparently gone through a much more affluent path than what David had been through. He opened 15 restaurants with the fairly well known national chain "Burrito House", in Houston, Texas area. Now that he had made enough money to retire, he was merely toying with the ideas of becoming an inventor to associate his name with certain patented technologies that can change the course of human history, or at least GPS/GIS applications and vehicles in transportations.

 

After getting re-acquainted with each other, Bud explained to David that he wanted to work with David with very guarded legal minded. He wanted David to sign "non-disclosure agreement" with him first before beginning any work. David love to be legal all the time, therefore he was very willing to oblige Bud's requests. In fact, he guessed that he had filled out more legal documents than most people in this world already just by going across the border from countries to countries. He also suspected that if there is a Google search engine for all the legal documents in border crossings of the world , his name would surface up so much that other people would think of him as a dog with above average hyper-active bladder that had forced him to urinate everywhere more than usual.

 

After signing the simple "non-disclosure agreement" faxed from Bud, David learned the creative idea that Mr. Westwood wanted to apply for a patent in the transportation industry. As a franchised restaurant owner of "Burrito House", Bud employed a large number of delivery drivers who are known for driving fast and furious to deliver on time. His new idea is to attach GPS tracking systems to his vehicles driven by his young drivers as a way of best practical driving guide for the city of Houston in hours of traffic jams. He would publish the driving routes of his fleet dynamically on his web sites and make them also available on PDA, cell phones and Blackberries to help people navigate through rush hour traffics. He believed the first step is to apply for a patent for this idea before doing any real research and development work, so anybody else trying to develop similar applications afterwards would be subject to his possible law suites. In the meantime, Bud was also looking for investors who would be interested in writing him a $5 million check to share the risks in the business venture.

 

Without commenting on the quality of the idea, David felt like Y2K all over again, since what Bud described was exactly the kind of approaches he witnessed among technology companies during the .com period. Since David is an avid Open source buff outside of the corporate environment and office hours, he had doubted the practicality of protecting intellectual properties with patent in the Internet prevailing era. Even in the time of Charles Dickens, the famous 19th century author wrote an article mocking the reality that it took too complicated a process and took too long for patents to be approved, much like how David would describe a green card application process for a P. R. China citizen. It was also said by one famous Microsoft official: "if Microsoft had to study thoroughly whether everyone of its technology had been patented, before starting its product developments, then Microsoft would have not produced any product in the last 6 years".

 

With the emergence of Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl, PHP, Java, Eclipse, SQL Server 2005 Express, Oracle Express … the list goes endlessly, more and more technology businesses entities were willingly, or forced, to let users use their products for free. It really seemed like the products or companies that weren't the stickler of the "intellectual property" protection processes were the ones winning the heart, support and checkbooks of the new generations in the technology business and the trend would continue, simply because of human nature -- which is everybody likes free lunch, if there is really such a thing.

 

However, David could not convince his old friend and new found employer to drop his traditional "inventor" thinking, and he did not intend to refuse income opportunities because Bud did not want to turn into a computer geek, so he gladly accepted Bud's requests to be an expert witness for his patent application. The duties to be performed for being an expert witness for a patent case was simple. David only needed to fill in his educational qualifications and years of experiences in the transportation industry, and then signed a statement that he had never seen the existence of Bud's idea in the transportation industry before.

 

In a few weeks, David received another phone call from Bud and this time with a request to conference call a lawyer named Phillips a few hours later. Lawyer Phil presented an inquiry letter from the patent administration branch of certain government branch asking why Bud's patent application was unique and in which area was it different from the ideas of Gupta, Adams, Rodriguez and Kane . . .

 

David assured lawyer Phil, "Oh, Bud's idea are different from ideas coming from all of them" and then he listed the reasons. Gupta's idea mentioned tracking devices, but it was proposing to use simple tracking with cell phone base stations not with GPS. Cell phone networks had many limitations in tracking vehicle positions, namely: not precise enough, no wide enough coverage, non-standardized; Adams, mentioned a server but did not specify the server as a web server connected to the Internet; Rodriguez was really mentioning how to use GIS system to calculate best available routes. It was too theoretical without calibration of the actual on the road vehicles; Kane's idea was actually referring to more expensive technology using satellite communication, suitable for fleets with more sensitive missions such as those for the military transportation, etc. which would be very cost prohibitive to implement.

 

David felt that he was really going to like the role of a technical expert for a lawyer. In today's world, even if someone come up with the exact same idea as that of Bud's, it is still going to be easy to pin point subtle differences between the two ideas, for the simple reason of "there are different ways to skin a cat". Not any two persons can accomplish the same goal with exactly the same procedure even though they intended to. Therefore David felt he could wholeheartedly supported Bud's application for his new and creative idea even though he doubt the value of such a patent.

 

But on the other hand, David wondered when people come up with good ideas that are marginally better than other people's ideas, what is the point of applying for patents? Did Einstein assert patents for the theory of relativity, or did Isaac Newton forbid other people from using Newtonian physics equations without paying him a royalty? Newton probably did, since he was known as a mean human being in the scientific community. He persecuted Leibniz for theory of probability or calculus, one thing or another like a corrupted governmental official. He didn't seem like a nice guy.

 

Maybe, this willingness to share knowledge in technology advancement with fellow human being is completely voluntary. Some people are willing to do it like Linus Torvald, and some others are just very stingy about it. For people who are so "copy right", "intellectual property" and "law suite" oriented for small ideas, they reminded David of another Seinfeld episode where everyone asserted "hey, that's my move! If you want to do it out of town, that's fine" Yada, yada, yada.

 

In the old days, patents were effective in this "town" or "country" domain, therefore each country and area had its own registration, even for the same idea. All the patent offices are still going to last for many, many years to come and they will still collect a lot of application fees from their believers. But what percentage of patents is truly meaningful after Internet and Open source movements? It is as significant as other questions like: "how many scientific research papers are really changing people's lives", or "how many religious studies truly reveal the spirits of the true God", which would get never ending debatable answers. For the time being, David was quite thankful for the patent system though, which was helping him get a few hundred bucks along with business opportunities to associate with Bud Westwood and his other business activities.

 

Similar to patent, software product paid per copy, is another item David started to lose faith in because of the industry changes that he had witnessed over the last decade. In David's view, the models of paid commercial software packages are drastically reshaped by the recent and ever changing Internet landscape. The ease of developing and distributing open source software over the Internet had made it very touch for software developers to work in the old Silicon Valley motto, which was "lock some geeks in a dark room, pour some money over it and see what kind of fruits grow out of it". Since paid commercial software products are going to co-exist with free open source products for a long time in the future, David is not about to suggest everyone of his employers and colleagues to use free open source product yet. Since not everyone would be tech savvy enough to handle open source software well enough, there are still a large number of people in American corporate world believe in software products developed by "locked up geeks" coming from a black box. With reservations about Bud's practice in technology issues, David was still eager to work with him because he was really desperate for some cash.

 

Several weeks later after the patent conversation, Bud regarded David as a knowledgeable, trustworthy and responsible enough professional to cooperate with; therefore he invited David to Houston for a software development project, not only for his own restaurants, but also for the Burrito House franchise.

 

Through introduction of Bud, a not so insignificant franchisee of the Burrito House, David went interviewing with the IT department of the Burrito House headquarter personnel and got the nod to lead the development effort of a point of sale (POS) system. Bud as a technology professional himself in his previous life before working for the restaurant business, became the steering force to define the project requirements for the new system and served as the liaison between David and his team of developers. The team of developers consists of several junior developers from Burrito House and some other short-term but experienced contractors recruited by David among his past colleagues to work from remote locations. With this initial contract to help David getting started, he set out to move back gradually to the attractive American market for his future career.

 

It was said that the American economy is booming again on another upswing period of the economic cycle. At any of these upswing periods, there is usually one sector triggering all other sectors which lead to the new economic revitalization. This time, it was said to be the housing market and real estate sales. High house prices are literally going through the "roof" of the houses, as realtors pointed out. Realtors are funny guys and gals. They are usually equipped with two sets of reasons to say "it's a great time to buy" to their buyers and sellers at any moment. During economic downtimes they would say, "Wow, it's a buyer's market. Housing prices are so low"; and during economic boom times they would say: "Wow, interest rates are so low. Your mortgage will be so affordable no matter how big a house you pick".

 

While the real estate market in Houston was not as active as other adjacent states in the western US, such as California or even Arizona, due to high property tax rates as most people believed, Houston had another commodity price that seemed to be going higher and higher with no end insight -- the oil price. Bud also mentioned Iraqi war and Halliburton as another reason Houston is having very strong economy and could be going stronger and stronger. Comparing to be bleak economy of Vancouver, BC in Canada, it just sounded like every streets in Houston was littered with dollar bills that were just waiting for people to spend a little effort to bend down and pick up.

 

With a duffle bag of cloths and a laptop computer, David started heading south with his newly obtained Canadian passport to start his IT consulting business. He soon found out that Canadian passport was not as convenient to travel to US as advertised. The INS or with the full name Immigration and Naturalization Services of Department of Justice no longer exist. The lack of common sense and bureaucracy of the INS was finally exposed when the agency issued student visas to a couple of 9/11 hijackers after the names of the hijackers were already widely publicized. Now, the former customs and former INS are combined to form the new Homeland Security and Border Protection Agency under the Department of Homeland Security.

 

Because his contract with Bud and Burrito House made him traveling onsite to pay a 2 week visit sandwiched by two weekend days off continuously, David got to travel cross the border once every two weeks. He started recording his favorite episodes of "crossing the border".

 

First weekend, no serious incidents; although he got sent to the interview/interrogation room, but it was a Sunday. Only one non-notable bald officer was on duty. The officer was a supervisor, as he learned later when he became a frequent guest of the office. The supervisor asked David several questions such as "Where are you going? How long are you going to stay in US? Who are you going to work for? What kind of degree have you got?" and then he let David pass.

 

Second weekend, flying back to Houston on Monday, David was not sent to the secondary interview room and passed the border like a normal traveler.

 

Third weekend, David chose to fly back to Houston on a Monday again, this time he was sent to the secondary interrogation room and ran into a officer with a name tag Curretz. Officer Curretz stared at him intensely and asked "Where are you going" "What are you going to do in Houston". When hearing the phrase "I am going to work in Houston on a project", he turned his tone into a grave and serious one and said: "Did you say you are going to work in the United States? Do you have labor certificate"? David replied "no, I don't. But I am not employed by US employer and I will be back to Canada in just two weeks". Officer Curretz appeared incensed and raised his voice: "are you trying to insult my intelligence"? David did not know how to reply therefore didn't say anything. In the silent pause, officer Curretz stared intently straight ahead with his eye lids opening as wide as possible, turning his head 135 degree left and right as if trying to see whether any of his colleagues noticed what a great border protection agent he was and whether they had heard his punch line "are you trying to insult my intelligence". Failing to catch anybody's attention, he said: "wait here" and took David's passport into other rooms to start doing some serious detective work.

 

While waiting for officer Curretz to return, there were an old couple of Chinese ushered into the secondary interview/interrogation room. It did not look like many agents could speak Chinese. In fact, there was only one Asian looking agent busying somewhere else, therefore a Caucasian looking agent asked David to translate for him, asking the old couple to show their return tickets.

 

After about 15 minutes, officer Curretz came back with David's passport and a piece of paper that wrote: "It appears that you are seeking to enter United States for unauthorized employment. You entry at this time is denied. You need more supporting documents to prove that you are not seeking permanent employment in US." With nothing else to do, and not daring to insult the intelligence of officer Curretz any further, David could only go home to get more documents. Looking at the bright side, he was happy to stay one more day at home, but before going home, he had to cancel scheduled meetings with Burrito House the next morning and ask Bud to fax him a letter to state that he was not an employee of the Burrito house, but an independent Canadian business man.

 

Tuesday morning, David went to the airport again with more documents to prove that he was not seeking unauthorized employment in US. When asked by another border agent at the regular check point what he was going to do in Houston, he simply answered that he was working on a project in Houston. Then he got admitted in without being sent to the secondary interview/interrogation room. Upon arrival in Houston, David had to explain to his customers that US/Canadian border is "like a box of chockalott, you never know what you are going to get".

 

After two weeks, David thought since his wife and daughter had never been to Houston before, it would probably be more interesting if they could come and visit him, instead of his usual back-and-forth trips.

 

Jade and Crystal were excited about the idea too, and since it was still in the summer holidays, they happily flew to Houston to see David. David went to the Houston IAH international airport to meet his wife and daughter and found none of them seemed to be particularly happy. Besides both being tired and a little worn out by the flight, Jade said they were questioned at the border for a much longer period of time than other passengers. Crystal was especially anxious since she could not understand why other passengers behind her were getting quicker green lights than her and her mom. Fortunately, they were not sent to the secondary interrogation room.

 

Jade also described that the border agent who stopped them for intense questioning suggested: in her case, she would be under heavy suspicion if her husband worked in US on business trips without a TN-1 visa. Although David did not think the border agent had a very logical legal mind, since he was legally working for his own Canadian corporation, therefore should not be under TN-1 visa (Trade NAFTA type 1 visa), he still decided to apply for a TN-1 visa, just in case some colorful chocolates decided to ask him to a TN-1 visa again, or use it against his family of Chinese looking Canadian citizens.

 

In his next trip after spending a weekend at home, David dug up his university diplomas and decided to apply for a TN-1 visa at the border. The TN-1 visa applications were always processed in the secondary interview/interrogation room, and David luckily ran into agent Curretz again. This time, Curretz found more than just the word "working" in the phrase "working on a project" to pick on David. He found one of the paragraphs in David's letter from Bud Westwood to be in gruesome violation of the NAFTA guideline. The paragraph stated: ". . . the contracted skilled professional would be working in the capacity of a Software Development Manager . . ." Agent Curretz asked: "what are you going to do when you work in Houston?" David answered: "I would listen to customers' business requirements, develop technical specifications based on those requirements, and then allocate the development work to different developers based on those technical specifications. Then we develop the software and conduct QA testing and deploy the system to the customers. Later they would come up with additional requirements, and we listen to those new requirements and work them into the next release of the product".

 

Agent Curretz started shaking his head and said: "have you being denied entrance to US before?" David said: "yes, by you a few weeks ago". Curretz felt a proud sense of accomplishment that he could defend his nation's border one more time and said: "I hate to do this to you buddy, but I am going to have to deny your entrance again. From what you described to me, you are not qualified for any NAFTA category. You have an MBA degree, and you are supposed to be a managing consultant under NAFTA. But you are going to 'listen' to your customers. A managing consultant does not listen to customers. A managing consultant is supposed to tell the customers what to do, not listening to them" he spoke his last sentence with the kind of military authority of a drill sergeant.

 

David was by now thoroughly entertained by this agent and thinking, he was going to say it, and he did: "are you trying to insult my intelligence"? "No, not at all" David answered calmly: "but without listening to customer requirements, I do not know what kind of software they want me to develop. Do you want me to develop a software product without listening to customer requirements?"

 

Curretz asked David to wait for a while like he did when he denied David's entry several weeks before, and headed to a mysterious office to research again. On the way to the office, he was stopped by a Mexican family angrily asking him how long they would have to wait. This is a Mexican family of 4, one old gentleman, one young gentleman and his wife along with a toddler boy in a stroller. The only female passenger in the group was particularly emotional and couldn't keep her voice down. She asked Curretz: "We were here yesterday. You told us to wait and find a hotel. We are here today again, and you are still telling us to wait. How much longer do we have to wait for you to check the background of my dad?" Curretz answered with a smart manner and a cyclical logic of Donald Rumsfeld in his reply: "it will take as long as it takes, until we are absolutely sure your dad is not the person whom we suspect who he is". He then continued with authoritative tone: "your dad has a common name that is the same as other people with criminal records".

 

David listened from 20 feet away couldn't help but thinking: "not the name crap again". And since he did not submit the Chinese writing of his name at the border and this old gentleman's name must have been spelled in Latin characters, he felt that they both lost a defense of name variation could be lost in translation. But he couldn't fail to notice that his fingerprints were never used to identify him at the border, even though he had submitted his fingerprints since a decade ago to various immigration agencies and had submitted his fingerprints to this exact airport after the "fingerprints for everyone from 3rd world countries, then to others" policy had been announced after 9/11. Some people protested the policy as violating their privacy, but David would have happily begged these border agents to simply violate his privacy and use his fingerprints at will, if they could just cut this "identical name" crap and save him some time and the trouble of missed flights.

 

It appeared that border agents solemnly asked foreign nationals to press their fingerprints in an effort to defend their border if that particular foreign national never had a fingerprint done before, and then just stashed those fingerprints away and never to put them in any practical use. If this is not dogmatic doctrinism and bureaucracy, it is hard to find another example.

 

Through a further raised voice beyond anger, David heard the Mexican woman demanding a series of answers from officer Curretz: "You know that we are flying to Mexico City, we are not even staying in US. We are only passing by. You know my Dad's name is very common in Mexico, what should we do? Change his name?" Officer Curretz was not backing down, and said: "Yes. Your father's name is Jose Garcia, that guy's name is David Chen. People like you guys should change your names if you want to enter United States without trouble. Otherwise we just have to go through what we have to go through to protect our borders". David thought to himself, "Yeah right, what if I show up at the US border with my Chinese appearance and a legally changed very rarely seen name such as 'Kaliff Adihan Wofenwotzen' on my passport? That will be the day, won't it?"

 

"But we are not entering United States" the woman protested. "No, no, no, no, no. People usually get to Canada precisely for the purposes of entering the United States . . ." agent Curretz tried to flex his intellectual power again and the woman flew into rage and started cursing in Spanish, which David had no clue what they were talking about. Office Curretz also started cursing in Spanish too and two of them eventually had to be separated and calmed down by other border agents along with the women's husband. Although not understanding what they were cursing each other of, but David finally started to realize that office Curretz was probably Mexican descent. Earlier David wasn't sure whether he was Native American or Mexican descent merely judging by his appearances. He remembered an old saying: "Sometimes, no other creature could be crueler to the same race or species than one of their own".

 

Another 20 minutes later, office Curretz came back and handed David another note: "You are eligible to enter the US but your request for a TN-1 visa is being denied at this time because your offer of employment letter does not follow the NAFTA guidelines. You may overcome this decision by presenting an offer of employment letter following NAFTA guidelines".

 

David knew there is no point talking to officer Curretz anymore. While Curretz was refreshing his Spanish skills with Jose Garcia's daughter, David saw a poster on the wall with 3 good looking male and female statue-like Department of Homeland Security and Border Protection agents with amiable but business like images. The images reminded him of the Soviet Union style modeled workers that he was used to see in the high school he attended and so do the slogans after it:

 

"

We are the face of our nation

 

One face at the border

 

Total commitment to professionalism

A world class law enforcement agency

 

Pledge to travelers

 

We pledge to cordially greet you to the United States

We pledge to treat you with courtesy, dignity and respect

We pledge to explain the CBP process to you

We pledge to have a supervisor listen to your comments

We pledge to respond to your comments in written, verbal or electronic form

We pledge to provide reasonable assistance due to delay and disability

 

"

 

Thinking about the posters of the workers, peasants and soldiers that he was so familiar with in his childhood, David thought, sometimes those images did have a shred of truth in them therefore he decided to try to talk to a supervisor.

 

Curretz fetched a supervisor who was average heights, average looking, whom David remembered as the bald supervisor with no notable features who interviewed him on a slow Sunday when he first started working with Bud and the Houston Burrito House. The supervisor first asked what David did crossing the border to US and after David replied that he was merely crossing the border to develop a computerized Point of Sale (POS) systems, the average supervisor seemed reproaching David that he was the kind of Canadian workers that did not need to TN-1 visa. His tone almost questioned, why wasted his time for such a trivial matter. When David explained that another agent had advised him to apply for TN-1 visa and regarded that as a must have, then the average supervisor changed his tone. David thought, like a good NFL referee, one never overturned the rulings of a colleague without strong enough incentives and compelling reasons.

 

He told David that his work in US is in the not very clearly defined areas subject to interpretation. Then David and the average supervisor touched upon the real questions that David wanted to ask him about the decision to deny entry by officer Curretz. David said, "Listening to customer requirements is the textbook first step of developing any business applications. I don't know any computer professional that just develop software without listening to customer requirements. Is office Curretz an expert in software development? And why is he altering standard accepted practice in the software development industry?" The average supervisor replied: "We are not experts in software development, but we are all experts in NAFTA guidelines." In order to prove his point, the average supervisor stared at the letter signed by Bud Westwood and pointed out: "Your letter of employment does not comply with NAFTA guide line because there is no such category of skilled professionals under 'software development manager'. You need to have this letter re-written with the position matching one of the categories in this list". He then handed David a list.

 

David went home to call Bud Westwood and Burrito House, telling them he won the lottery again and would not be able to attend the project meeting scheduled on Tuesday morning. In order to make minimum adjustments, David asked Bud to change the wording into "the skilled professional would work as a Software development manager under the NAFTA category of 'System Analyst'" instead of being confused as a 'Managing Consultant' so he could listen to customer requests instead of lying to the border agents. There are usually signs such as "if you provide false information to the officers of the United States, you may be permanently disallowed to enter United States" posted both at the border and in US consulate offices. At that moment, entering United States to work is still a big deal that David can not afford to forfeit.

 

In order to save time, David went back to the airport hoping to catch an afternoon flight to Houston so he could still have chance to attend the Tuesday project meeting if everything worked out well. This time, he ran into another officer named "Gurretz" who even looked similar to officer Curretz. Gurretz pointed out the letter of contract employment for David was still not in compliance with NAFTA guide line. Instead of working as a "Software Development Manager under the NAFTA category of System Analyst", the letter should simply be working as a "System Analyst under the NAFTA category of System Analyst". David wondered whether "repetition" is no longer a grammatical error anymore since he took the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) which was required for most of the overseas students coming to USA. But like anywhere in the world, people with a little bit of authority at the moment is always right. Before David said anything, officer Gurretz found another error in David's TN-1 application. He asked David to show him all his diplomas and David did. There was a Bachelor of Science degree, a Master of Science degree and a Master of Business Administration degree from one university in China and two universities in Ohio. Officer Gurretz asked, which one of them show evidence that you had qualification to be a "System Analyst"? This was truly a checkmate for David, because none of his diplomas actually had the words "computer", "system" or "analyst" printed on them. David explained the Master of Business Administration degree he obtained was with concentration area in "Management Information System", which was precisely related to the kind of job duties that he was going to perform in Houston Burrito House franchise. David also explained that universities usually do not print a student's major or concentration areas on diplomas. "If the universities do not print your major in the diploma, do you have a resume to show that you have worked with computers and are proficient to work on information systems?" Gurretz asked. In a last attempt to get through the border that day, David said, "if you have any computers connected to the Internet, I can show you the work that I have done and I also have resumes posted online. I can even solve your computer problems on the spot if you have any. You are also welcome to call any universities that I have attended or any companies that I have worked for to verify my qualifications".

 

Office Gurretz refused in sarcasm: "You are the one who is trying to enter United States, not me. The burden of proof is on you. I don't have the time or obligation to help you prove your skills".

 

So there is not much to do for David but gave it a last try of asking to see a supervisor.

 

The poster of "we are the face of our nation" is still unchanged, but this time the face of the supervisor was changed. This supervisor had a black patch underneath his right eye that looked like from radiological treatment for skin cancer patients. He was of average heights and also bald, but he seemed to have much more concise language and answers. He walked out to David and said: "Are you the one who wanted to see a supervisor? Go back home! This conversation is over". So went the "one face at the border" jingle in that poster.

 

Going back home was something David more than happy to do, if not for the sake of bringing some food and money back home. David's ever-optimistic wife Jade was at it again and tried to persuade him to find an easier way to make a living. "I told you that demands for computer programmers are getting lower and lower, at least in North America and Europe. You should start writing a novel with all the stories that you have seen at the borders of different countries. Look at that John Grisham guy. He had a good profession as a lawyer, but the even a lawyers profession was no match to his career as a novelist. Let along your computer programmer profession."

 

David always enjoyed inspirational talks of his Zig Zigler styled wife and said, "Thank you Mr. Zigler, but I think people are probably more interested in stories about lawmen and cops than stories about computer programmers and scientists. People like to see guts spilling all over the screens and then they think they got their money's worth." "Enng, wrong answer!!! Like Will Smith said, don't think Denzel is the only Brother who could act? Everyone can do his or her piece and get some audiences. Look at that Hidden Dragon and Crouching Tiger? How many times had you seen similar scenes in your childhood, and how could you understand its appeals and popularities in the West for that crap? Believe me; any kind of garbage has values if you try hard enough to sell it. If you believe in God, science, computer, and your miserable life as an immigrant all have some values in them. Why don't you learn to pray?"

 

"Not again." David tried one more time to resist becoming a covert into Christianity. It had become a family routine for Jade to appeal to the power of the deep and then ask David to pray with her. But David always refused, because he did not want to forsake many years of belief in science and human wisdom. In fact, he found Christianity offered nothing new from bits and pieces that he had learned from other religions, ideas and isms or philosophies. He felt there is really no need to shutdown the venue of learning everything else for the sake of Christianity, and unfortunately, Christianity is one kind of monotheism. Maybe, Christianity had the strong appeal to the Chinese and other people in the East for the same reason how a bad movie such as "Hidden Dragon and Crouching Tiger" could win Oscar in the West, simply because not many people on this particular side of the Pacific Ocean had seen it many, many times and analyzed it thoroughly before.

 

Similarly unaccustomed to and still with appeals of freshness are beliefs such as: America is the land of opportunities and champion of freedom, equality -- to simply put it "the shining city on the hill" as president Regan once said. The hodgepodge of American history that David learned from time to time simmered together and formed his American dream of that night.

 

His dream first started as Dr. Martin Luther King stood in Washington DC giving his famous "I have a dream speech": "… Despite of all the difficulties, I still have a dream that all men are created equal". Then a voice from the above said: "all American men are created equal. American women are created differently. For many other men with passports and citizenships from other countries, they were really created with sub par standards and we really don't give a damn about them …" Then Dr. King continued to say: "today we come to the capital of the nation to cash a check ..." the voice outside of the dream started speaking again: " how could any immigrants ever cash a check in the country that does not acknowledge their existence? They would be lucky if they were not branded as criminal . . ."

 

Then his dream drifted to a tiny place called Point Pleasant, Ohio about 5 miles west of Cincinnati along the Ohio River where he saw a small ill repaired nearly abandoned house that was labeled as General U.S. Grant's birth place. The "rag to rich" general was the perfect example of an American citizen rising from humble roots to the highest pinnacle of the American dream. He described himself in his dying bed as: "I wonder if a man's next life is as unpredictable as this one. I never wanted to acquire ranks in the regular army, yet they came. I never had ambitions in politics, yet I was twice the president of the United States. And now I am writing a book". That was a book that would be labeled by Mark Twin as "a book that will always be remembered by all Americans as long as the Mississippi River flows to the sea". Some historians said "American needed the Great Civil War between brothers. A horrible fire that had never been seen before welded America into a nation stronger than ever". There were more facts about the leader of the union soldiers fought for the so called "emancipation of the black slaves". He was a son of a butcher born in a state considered back than as a frontier state. He was an average student who never liked West Point, but only graduated with an average grades and generally regarded as a failure before the age of close to 40. He was as common as an American there ever could be. If he showed passion and sympathy towards slaves, southern soldiers after the war or even horses through out his entire life, he did not like Chinese at all.

 

After the attempts to build equalities of races, at least on paper, through freeing slaves, Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, which listed Chinese along with lunatics, idiots, and leprosy patients as types of people not allowed to become US citizens no matter what kinds of contributions they have made in US. Even if General Grant didn't particularly disliked Chinese personally, but since others wanted to pass some law to exclude Chinese, what did he care? One day he wanted to banish all the Jews from serving in the Army, and he did that personally, what did he care?

 

It took another hundred years for former slaves from Africa to achieve fairly descent equality in the US and true equality for immigrants from all origins is not even on the agenda and probably never will be because of human nature.

 

Another voice ran across the dream voice with the quote from Malcolm X saying, while other people are enjoying the American dream, black people are experiencing American nightmares. Then there was another voice from Paul Harvey news and comments running cross the radio: "Jonathan Brown a US citizen of Wichita, Kansas was denied health benefit after unemployment while Jose Gonzalez of Orange County California a legal immigrant continued to gain health benefit after his unemployment. Can I become a legal immigrant? Paul (sounded like the word "Poor") Harvey, good day!" Oddly, David dreamed of himself talking to Mr. Harvey in the secondary interview/interrogation room in the airport, asking "Mr. Harvey, how do you like this room every time you want to enter the United States? I would be more than happy to let you take my legal immigrant status."

 

After waking up, David decided it no longer worth the trouble going to United States to look for further economic opportunities and he only wanted to try to apply TN-1 for the last time with the same documents plus a resume as officer Gurretz requested the previous day, however ridiculous the request was. If he still got denied entrance, he would have to tear apart the contract that he had signed with Bud Westwood and Burrito House and simply asked to go to his hotel room in Houston to retrieve his cloths and dirty laundries and start looking for work in some other countries. Last time he checked, it was still quite free for Canadian citizens to enter United States for visits as long as they don't "work", which always made Department of Homeland Security and this Trade or Border Protection agency allergic.

 

The next morning at the border, David ran into another average looking older agent who granted his entrance out of the reason: "since you have been here two times yesterday for this TN-1 visa, I am not going to give you any more troubles". It was a welcome change for David, but this made him even angrier about his being denied entrance the previous day. Did that mean the law could be compromised if an applicant tried multiple times or did it mean officers Curretz and Gurretz were simply picking on him even though he was a legitimate Canadian Chinese born business man trying to enter US for normal and legitimate business activities? He showed his resume to this new average looking agent for review and was quickly dismissed as "a resume does not mean anything. It does not have official stamp or signature", which was also the reason David thought it ridiculous when officer Gurretz asked for it the day before.

 

So David got granted a TN-1 visa to enter the United States for a year. He traveled to Houston for two weeks and came back home to cross the border again. He got sent to the secondary interrogation room for further questioning again, this time after a TN-1 visa. Since he had done everything he could, according to all the US/Canadian border legal documents he had read, including the TN-1 visa based on hearsay from some border agents, he totally ran out of clues as to what to do next to be able to travel like a normal business man. He waited outside of the secondary interview/interrogation room, closing his eyes and started thinking about the Korean movie 大长今. Since it was a movie about food and health along with good 'o politics, one of the lines was particularly refreshing in his mind. It was a doctor teaching a group of medical students saying: "if you want to be a good doctor, the first thing to do is to keep yourself healthy, so you can treat others. The first thing to keep yourself healthy is to learn how to breathe appropriately. Remember to breathe out as long as you can until you can no longer breathe out, then all the bad mood and bad karma would be gradually pushed out of your body. Then you would breathe in by natural tendency because air is one of the basic human needs".

 

David closed his eyes and tried to breathe out as much air from his lung as possible, until his lung started automatically breathe in because of the newly formed heavily negatively pressurized vacuum inside. It didn't take but seven or eight times, before he almost fell into sleep, when he heard a female agent waking him up, instead of the usual loud speaker: "hey David Chen, trying to fall into sleep on me?" David was surprised at such an opening dialogue and was almost going to say: "I do not try to fall into sleep on any female except my wife", but he quickly remembered this is the US/Canadian border and an airport. As one bus driver said before when approaching a US/Canadian land crossing: "you are approaching the US border, please take all your bags with you and go through the border before carrying them back and put them on the bus again. Remember, border agents do not have sense of humor and that is why they do what they do. Don't joke with them".

 

In almost any airport in the United States after 9/11 there are always loud speakers repeating "airport security is a serious matter, any joke concerning security may result in your arrests". One New Year's resolution for David in the year 2005 was not to joke about anything in any airport. Treat airport as a Chairman Mao's portrait in the era of Cultural Revolution in the 1960 and 1970's China. Those are a few things more Texas than Texas to be messed with.

 

The female agent with the last name of Johnson took David out of the secondary interrogation room and told him that too many people were already there; therefore she wanted David to step out of the secondary interview/interrogation room to conduct the secondary interview. Outside in the usual lineup where every passenger waited for the usual primary interview, agent Johnson closed her booth and asked David the usual questions, such as what he was going to do in this trip to the US. David gave the usual answer that he was working on a project trying to build a POS (point of sales) system for the Burrito House in Houston, Texas. The Q and A session continued on. At the end of the interview, David asked: "Does every Canadian business man going through the border to conduct business need to go through what I have gone through lately? Do you 'randomly' select them to the that secondary interview room 8 out of 10 times whenever one makes a trip to spend a weekend at home?" Agent Johnson paused for a moment and then said: "I see. You do get into this secondary interview process a lot. What can I tell you? You have one of those names that make you suspicious". David wondered which "Da Chen" from China or any Asian countries had made the news before, but couldn't remember any. To avoid name duplication, he wondered whether he should legally change his English name into the European style of "Wagnalee Kagnachi Woogentaden" or the Asian style of "Fa Kem Eethey Kan Tej Jo", both were names when he try to say "f*** them if they can't take a joke" in the "no tiki no washee" style Chinglish that he learned "from the environment for the environment".

 

But David wasn't going to get too hang up about the name this time and he asked: "I know that after 9/11, many visitors from many countries are required to press their fingerprint at the border if they haven't done so before. I am sure my finger prints are filed many times in your computer systems over the last 15 years. But it does not look like my fingerprints were ever used to identify me". I am always misidentified as or obscurely identified as one out of 200 people with the same name as mine. Is the finger printing requirement merely a matter of formality that looks good on paper for PR purposes or is it only used to trace where terrorists entered the border after problems happened? Does the Department of Homeland Security and Border protection have any plans of using fingerprints to actually use them practically, before terrorist attacks actually happen?"

 

David was afraid that he went too far on irritating agent Johnson, but to his surprise, agent Johnson found an answer for him once and for all. "Oh, speaking of using fingerprints, it is not as accurate as using iris of one's eyes as identity. Have you considered applying for the Nexus Air program? It is the kind of program designed for business persons like you. You don't have to wait behind the regular lines which cost valuable time waiting for the same questions over and over again. You could simply blow pass the line and get to the security screening part, which I imagine for you, time is money right?" David was slow into believing the existence of such a program and expressed his doubts about suggestions of applying for yet another travel document: "I have read the brochure about the Nexus Air program before. The pamphlet said it is still a beta program which will end in the April of next year. If I apply for it what will happen when the program ends?" Agent Johnson replied patiently: "well, it actually will not end next April. The only reason it is a beta program is because there was no budget to found it under none-beta programs and the money for the program had to come from somewhere. But don't worry, the program would be extended indefinitely, I am sure of it".

 

David thanked agent Johnson for the best tip he had obtained for a long time and then got through the US/Canadian border for that two week span. Afterwards, he immediately set out to apply for the Nexus Air card and found that it on paper could be granted to Canadian Citizens and Canadian Permanent Residents. Theoretically, he could have tapped into the wealth of opportunities in United States before even becoming a Canadian Citizen. But practically, he wondered how feasible that would have been had he tried to apply for the Nexus Air card earlier. There was one final step that he had to get through at the border which was one last interview for a while in an endless series of interviews. Before actually getting the Nexus Air card, an agent would ask him why he applied for the Nexus Air program. When David replied he needed to travel frequently for business purposes, the agent asked more questions about how often, and where he would travel to. David replied that he needed to travel to Houston, TX for the foreseeable future and would like to travel to other places for future business development activities and get more customers, the agent turned on a deadly serious face and said: "remember, whenever you develop a new customer and want to travel to that new destination, we want to know about it and you will need to update us about the changes".

 

David thought: "so much for all men are created equal, right here American business men are created with superiority than business men of any other nations. How many other countries ask American business men to report back to the border when they develop a new customer?" But for now, David was happy that after obtaining a Canadian passport, and a TN-1 visa and finally a Nexus Air card with all their associated costs in time and application fees, he could finally travel like a normal business men the way he learned in US educational systems and corporate America. How ironic?

 

After no longer getting haggle at the border as he used to, David noticed that his attention started to focus more and more on the works at hands. At least, he no longer need to spend the beginning of the week, pushing back the disgusting images about how the border was crossed and then spend the end of the week, resisting worries about how the border would be crossed again. Agent Johnson was right, that Nexus Air program was truly designed to save time for business people. Crossing the Canadian/US border at the airport now is almost as easy as traveling within Europe or among 50 States in the United States.

 

With time passed quickly, the first version of the POS application was fully developed for Burrito House. With everybody in Burrito House seeing an application taking shape, with toys like credit card reader, bar code scanner replacing manual works, everyone was praising Bud Westwood for introducing David and his team of contractors for their technical savvy and software development skills. David had an ill feeling that when things were too good to be true, it probably was. Right in front of his own eyes, the Nord Kia project in Stockholm, Sweden took a year to iron out all the bugs and ENS finally received the full payment of the project with an "conditional acceptance" document signed with a list of 10 "conditions".

 

That was one of the best case scenarios for an ordinary software contractor's project. It was called "conditional acceptance", but it was an "acceptance" with full payments nevertheless. There were "10 conditions" outstanding, but $15,000,000 were paid in full and conditions were no more than bargaining chips for Nord Kia to get free maintenance works and post sale add-on developments. David figured the Burrito House project would probably take another half year to get "accepted", since business people usually are not good friends when starting to talk about cash and payments. But for now, he really enjoyed the suddenly warmed up friendship with Bud Westwood and Burrito House. Bud even went so far as to ask if David wanted to work for him full-time in his Houston office. David courteously refused the offer since he was not fully convinced of Bud's commitments in investing in technology business. After all, Bud owned businesses in other trades besides technology, and he had only information technology works to survive. Also he found Bud had many interests in art and singing some times as a baritone or tenor. He was afraid that he this happened to be a high note Bud was singing and afterwards, all music would die and he would have no means to make a living working with Bud.

 

As an important franchisee of the Burrito House, Bud was looking good in the Burrito House headquarter during the period. As a good marketing professional, Bud started inflating the bubble of the new POS application within the organization, showing off all the flashy functionalities the new application had. David was not exactly sure whether to stop Bud or to encourage him. Software engineering was always the kind of non-flashy and tedious work in the eyes of the programming geeks. Even though every one of the functionalities was developed according to customer requirements, software applications would always have many bugs within after the first pass. To complicate things, when customers and contractors start talking about "acceptance", two sides usually disagree on what had been said in the documentations regarding software functionalities. David felt this "mission accomplished" sign would be taken down as soon as he started asking Bud for payments as a subcontractor, and Bud in turn started asking the Burrito House for payments as a contractor. For now, they are just enjoying a sort of honeymoon period with Burrito House management.

 

Usually, David was given a company car that looks exactly like a delivery vehicle but without company colors and paint sprayed on it yet. One day, he got a flat tire and had to turn in the company car. For the ensuing several days, David had to ride with Bud to and from work and Bud for his convenience, asked David to leave hotels for several days and just stay in his guest room in a suburb called Pear Land in the Greater Houston area.

 

They talked about many subjects through those several days of riding together. The talk started from many electronic gadgets in the old Mercedes Benz of Bud's car. In David's eyes, Bud Westwood was a wealthy enough person to be called "rich", but is among the poorest kind of rich persons in the United States, with his whole family driving Mercedes Benz, but invariably driving close-to-10-year-old Mercedes Benz. His passion was probably not on cars anyway, but rather on many electronic toys that he could get his hands on. There was a shining object distracting David and that was the screen saver of Bud's satellite radio.

 

David asked: "How do you think about satellite radios? Do you really listen to that many channels like you channel surf a cable TV?" Bud answered: "I like it. I can not possibly try that many channels. I mainly use it to get Fox News".

 

David: "Oh, Fox News. Right wing people usually say it is truthful, objective, do you also feel it is in the middle, moderate, unbiased also?"

 

Bud only answered: "I think it is still in the middle, but there are several prominent broadcasters of the station with strong Catholic beliefs, which is what I like."

 

David: "Are you very religious and conservative?"

 

Bud: "Well, I don't go to church every Sunday, if that is what you were asking. In fact, I haven't been to church for quite a long time now. When I was a kid, I used to be very religious and it was just because my parents were that way. Now I only pray to God when there are extreme difficulties in my life. I just say: 'God, God, please get me through this' and that's pretty much it. But I can't stand Clinton. I used to like him because I'd like to consider myself a moderate conservative. But I started to dislike him when he refused to salute some of the top generals in the military. Being born and raised in a military family, my parents took me all over the country and even stationed in Germany for a while when I was a kid. Not saluting other military man as a commander in chief was just too much for me to bear."

 

After driving another while, they started sitting in the daily social problem that nobody really care to talk about anymore in Houston -- the downtown traffic jam. People just continue with their conversation or other routines with high blood pressure, occasional curses and rare middle fingers.

 

One of the common topics colleagues talking to colleagues was about other colleagues. David found that Bud possessed the strong resentments towards the IT staff that are commonly found in non-IT staff, especially among individuals who like to play with new tech toys. David found it funny that he took a "not there's anything wrong with it" approach to brand almost every male IT employee in the Burrito House main office as homosexual, even though he had quite frequent contact with them. As most people do in other people's car, David just nodded and chimed in when hearing points that he felt agreeable and shut up when he couldn't agree. Occasionally he expressed some disagreements just to show that he had an independent opinion and was still listening.

 

It seems like IT workers all over the world were pretty much developed in similar patterns. They started out as kids trying to be cool. Then after getting into colleges or universities to learn to be cool, they started to identify what "cool" really was. When David taught one year in a community college to train Internet and network technicians, he found the surveys showed that number 1 interests for 80% of his students were either "women" or "drinking". The way these students wanted to impress women or their fellow students were to hack the world. Soon, they realized that hacking the world was only the "dare to dream big" type of motivational speech, which are encouraged by nobody else, except Hollywood. Hollywood also encouraged that geek in "The Italian Job" to date Cameron Diaz in "Something about Mary", and last time they checked the price tag, Cameron Diaz made almost as much money as Michael Jordan. Hacking to steal several dollars had been proven successful, but hacking to steal millions of dollars had not happened anywhere yet. Most an IT scripting kiddy could do was to vandalize rather than getting real monetary gains. If forced to get several thousand dollars quickly, armed robbery seemed to be more feasible than hacking. Upon this new realization, their love for hacking and computer technology vanished.

 

When getting close to graduation, many "computer science" or "information systems/technology" majors found they had to obtain some kind of "industry certificates" in order to get a job. So the best of the students scramble around, burn some midnight oil, or steal some time in the classroom by hiding "exam cram" books underneath the desk, to prepare for the exams before graduation, so they could obtain some "certificates" in time for the impending job interviews. While quitters of computer science would just walk out on the trade, the average computer students try to get certificates after graduation by burning midnight oil, steal some time from employers while working part-time at an entry level computer technician's job at local computer stores, or the Wal-Mart computer and electronics department.

 

But computer was still not as important as dating at this point of life for these would be IT employees and they still put partying and drinking as their number one priorities of their lives. To their pleasant surprise, they found supplies of girls that looked like Cameron Diaz were actually increasing, because no matter what many girls' nature hair colors were, they could always dye them blonde. While Internet was booming in the last decade, hair-dying technology advanced even faster. Some guys even started dying their hairs blonde.

 

With newly regained confidence in "coolness" discovered in hair colors and remaining confidence in "hacking" capabilities, this new generation of IT employees enter the work force to meet David's generation of old "unpleasant smells".

 

The entrenched generation seemed to be anybody, including accountants, scientists, engineers, artists who just happened to knew how to program a little, or change computer systems a little, or design web pages, and happened to be on the right spot at the right time, with very few changing their hair colors or that of their spouses'. This old "unpleasant smells" generation looked several waist sizes wider, 50 pounds heavier than the newer generation on average, and they truly smells worse, especially when they talk.

 

There are good reasons for the bad smells, because as people get older, metabolism normally slows down without being noticed. For IT employees who develop routines and sub routines for a living, many would simply eat the same amount of food as they did year ago, without giving a second thought those food could not be consumed as fast as before, thus the accumulated remnant fat in the waistline. Sitting in front of computers all day puts enough pressure on stomach even without any stress from work, but now, there are slowly accumulating fat like glaciers bearing down on one's stomach, therefore many IT staff would eventually develop stomach problems of some sort, if not careful. When the stomach finally lost its youth, the smell of a portable garbage dump start to surface and no Listerine or mints can seal the bad odor. The smells would relentlessly seek ways out up or down; hence there is this generational decay, physically and mentally, among IT professionals.

 

When the new generation meets the old, the old gassy generation would start to "train" the new employees with stern warnings and severe restrictions, disguised as "friendly advices". Many of such advices started from "Forget what you've learned at school. The first thing I had to do after getting out of school was to unlearn myself -- in order to be successful". This "in order to be successful" part usually came after a pause, in order for it to sink in. Even without trying hard, it seemed always easy for the older generation to "shock and awe" the new, because after all, computer and IT was all about tips and tricks in the eyes and ears of the audiences and even calling the same thing by different acronyms could be tips and tricks too. The new IT employees usually got pummeled by the entrenched IT employees with fancy terminologies and forgot to throw back punches with their own sets of tricks and tips. If being assigned as a referee, and to be fair, David knew that many IT employees of his generation did not obtain formal certificates and did not know in many subjects as well as someone fresh out of school. But those employees could decorate their wall with dozens of certificates of "2 day courses" in various technology subjects and silence the youngsters who even dare to contemplate challenging their authorities, at least when the youth was still young.

 

When the youth was no longer a youth, the youth would have become one of the old.

 

After a few years, now the used-to-be "new guy" IT employee worked along side other experienced IT employees and become an experienced one. They all lost the ambitions to hack into anywhere being it for curiosities -- like an average kid, for noble courses -- like the Matrix guys, or for criminal intents -- like the Italian Job gang. Hacking into the city traffic grid is out of the question, umm, umm, umm, can't do. They finally realized that even with the systems that they know all the usernames and passwords, they could not connect successfully all the time and ironically, that was why their employments existed -- often to fix connection problems for not being able to connect with proper credentials, but only very rarely, to fix problems when unexpected connections were made.

 

Experienced IT employees finally understood that IT is like many other professions in the real world as oppose to the superficial glamour, fashion or "coolness" of the outlaws and dreamers, as common boys and girls understood it portrayed in the Hollywood movies. The part of IT that builds connections for expected connections includes jobs like those of real estate developers, blue color construction workers, plumbers and electricians. The part of IT that defends against unexpected connections is tricky. It is like the work of security guards, but the demands for this line of work is highly dependent on how many cyber terrorists there were in the world, and more importantly in the public minds. Since cyber terrorists likely to become old and lose their interests in "hacking", professions in this line of work not only need to learn to defend attacks, and also need to learn to sell "fears" to the general public like those in the insurance business. One of the things they had done was to ask Hollywood to make movies about how likely it would be for hackers to cripple the traffic grid of an entire city in "the Italian Job", or steal identities and ruins someone's life like in "the Net" and so on.

 

As IT become a profession like any others such as real estate or insurance, only the ones that are destined to excel in those professions would remain to be passionate about their career choices. For the others, "it's a job", "who cares", "I am busy", "damn… what now?" are the most common thoughts in their minds. They look at other "crazy" employees who still like their jobs and think they must be "insane", with the logic of the anti-hero Yossarian described in the novel Cache 22. "How could these morons get so excited about 'creating user accounts', 'change permissions', 'automate processes' or 'write scripts'?" they ask themselves.

 

In the traffic jams in Bud's car, David listened to all familiar problems Bud's were complaining about, which he had seen in the past 10 years day in and day out in various IT departments cross the world. As a contractor and a subcontractor, they of course hoped that Burrito House IT employees would express more enthusiasm on upgrading equipments, systems and software applications, so they could gain more profits from, like the good 'o times of Y2K. But since selling is always a hard nut to crack, they could only crack a few jokes about how IT employees commonly react to support requests.

 

Bud: "No body seemed to be taking initiative in Burrito House IT department to streamline the operations in the restaurants. It seemed that everyone was just punching in time to get retirement money, and nobody was thinking about going extra miles to help anybody else".

 

David asked: "Is that what employees are supposed to do? I mean 'punching in time to get retirement money'. You are a business owner for too long and you probably forgot, Oh, now I am a small business owner too and I shouldn't think like that, but that is probably the true career goal for most IT employees or any kind of employees. Look, if you sell them a new system, then they would need to learn a new system and probably operate two systems in parallel for a while. All these would be extra work to ask a poor guy or gal to perform with no real benefit to him or her personally. No matter what they tell you in their interviews, most people in this world only work for the Benjamins, and that was why communism failed in a world wide scale, no matter how lofty and noble the idea was and no matter how diligent and dedicated a small portion of people worked toward it".

 

"Oh! Right, you grow up under communisms did you? How was it?" Bud suddenly appeared interested with sparkles in his eyes, which reminded David that Bud seemed to have always been a cultural kind of guy. When they worked in South Dakota in 1992, Bud asked him why the features of the American Indians looked liked that of Chinese, while performing his duty to send his team members to the small airport of the Rapids City. At that time, David answered his questions that Chinese and American Indians both belong to Mongolian sub species in the sense of anthropology. But he was still speaking broken English back them therefore they didn't talk to much about culture. This time, he decided to do a much better job explaining communism to Bud based on what he remembered from high school text books in the 1980's and from what he had read after coming to US.

 

"Well, according to true communists, no body really ever lived under communism yet, no matter how Richard Nixon or Joseph McCarthy referred to the other side of the iron curtain as "communism". The idea of Communism was ironically triggered by the discovery of North America by Christopher Columbus in 1492. Since he found this vast piece of land sparsely populated, or as Daniel Webster called it "peopled by roving barbarians", Europeans started thinking about what to do with this continent. One British Thomas Moore came up with some ideas about his predictions of America and wrote in his book called Utopia. That was credited as the first fictitious design and beginning of the Communism by all the communists. The central theme of Utopia was that people living in Utopia were going to be nice to each other and be willing to work for others without asking for rewards. The state or the country with its vast treasure chest was going to take care of everybody justly and fairly. Since the reality was everybody always wanted to work for pay, such theory scenario of Communism was labeled as non-scientific communism. But Europeans regarded Utopia as future of the Europe like it or not, just as Americans look at California as the future even though majority of them abhorred the state.

 

Then industrial revolution advanced scientific theories dramatically in the next couple of centuries after Utopia. Fast forward to the 19th century, there came a guy called Karl Marx. He told everybody that even though reality revealed that people always worked as little as possible and asked for as much pay as possible, but with the multiplication of productivities, it would be possible one day that too many things were produced in the world that people could just grab what they wanted as long as they were all willing to work without demanding pays. His thought was similar to what professional sports coaches like to say today when motivating players: "leave 110% of the effort on the field, then everything and everybody would be well taken care of".

 

In order to make his theory "scientific" as oppose to "non-scientific" communism, Marx divided his theories into three parts.

 

The first part was his theories of social economics, with its most important point being: "productivity makes a society the way it is". Marx's social economics theory included a lot of formulas which calculated how unfair capitalists where exploiting the poor workers. But those equations appeared to be mostly pseudo-science, because he totally discounted the roles that capitals and managements played in the processes of creating productivity.

 

The second part of the Marx's theories was the philosophy in which he used to derive his conclusions. It basically said everything is "black" and "white" at the same time. He used many pairs or English words or German words, whenever he felt handy, such as things are: "evolving but recognizable (like a static object)"; things are recognizable as a single entity and can be isolated, but entities are always magically related to some other entities in the universe and can not be isolated. He also discussed that the world consists of materials and spirits and they are both affecting one another. In general, materials determine spirits. This part of the theory reflected a breakaway from religions. Such things were quite fashionable to do at that time, as people were getting amazed by science and were getting increasingly tired of the Medieval Dark Ages and tried to stay away from churches.

 

The third part of the Marx's theory was the most controversial part, which incited violence. He stated that since workers were the ones actually did produce all the goods in this world, they would likely to be willing to work without demanding rewards when productivity are in surplus in a society. Capitalists on the other hand, since they did not have the habit of actually doing the real work, would not turn into the kind of nice persons who are willing to work without demanding rewards no matter how big a productivity is in a society. Therefore workers must use forces to bend those capitalists into nice persons when productivities are big enough for the ripe condition of Communism.

 

Later, workers in Europe starting from France. . ."

 

"Those French again" Bud murmured "I hate the French" as was trendy to say in US these days.

 

 

David continued "tried to bring communism to their cities or communes without thinking about whether their productivity was in absolute surplus to supply the entire world. Since this practice deviated from Marx's originally theory of Communism, they called this type of countries or small communities as under 'Socialism'. Vladimir Lenin was credited among communists as 'advancing' the Marxism theory to allow small areas, rather than the entire world or at least the entire Europe, entering into socialism and calling themselves as entering the beginning stage of Communism. Of course, the West simply said Lenin was a spy sponsored by Germany to overthrow the Russian government as part of the World War I effort. When the socialist revolution happened in Russia, the country was in a state of near starvation, rather than having too much stuff to consume and too much time to waste.

 

So Lenin's contribution to communism was to encourage all the poor countries to think they were ready for communism. I actually think countries that are rich enough to have Jerry Springer show fits the profile much closer to what Marx described as being ready for Communism, but Marx failed to predict that in such countries, workers would be busy griping for pays being too little while unemployed would be busy watching Jerry and therefore had no interests to force capitalists into blue color workers. This was a secret that George Marshall discovered after World War II and proved with his implementation of the Marshall Plan, which effectively stopped the spread of Communism.

 

Eventually, the sad states of affairs for communists was that only poor countries were willing to receive Communism, which by definition of Communism did not have enough productivities to realize the ideal. But some poor countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam and North Korea simply built socialism and called themselves communism, pretty much like those IT employees who clicked on a Linux, Oracle, SQL server application once or twice and put these terms on their resumes to impress recruiters and potential employers to get interviews.

 

Out of the three main theories of Marxism, I think social economics was partly reasonable. The part about capitalists unfairly profiting from workers were miscalculated or exaggerated, but the Marxist theory about productivity determines social structure and interpersonal relationship were very accurate, I felt like I almost lived through the events unfolding right in front of my eyes.

 

"

 

Bud like many Americans was alien to the idea of productivity determined the social structure of a society. Many of them think their great founding fathers came up with the great idea of democracy and built this wonderful place they are living in ever since. While David was talking, somebody made Bud hit the break hard in order to avoid a collision, he did not hear clearly what David said and asked: "Did you say Karl Marx was right on something?". "Yes, what he said about productivity determined the social structure of a society was very true".

 

Bud couldn't stand David saying Marx ever said anything right in his life like many Americans who grew up picturing the guy as a 9 headed monster, said: "Come on, what could have Karl Marx ever get it right? The guy was a fool and a drunk and a murderer, probably like Hitler. You were just brain washed when you lived under communism".

 

It was a familiar scene that David had seen while living in US and Canada for the last 15 years. His landlord in Toledo, Ohio first said he never voted, and after learning there were some sort of voting in China, insisted that he was sent to the voting booth with a gun stuck behind his back. Then when he worked for a newspaper in Cincinnati, Ohio, his co-workers would mention again and again that he had never known what voting was every time he went to the election board to connect Ethernet cables helping with the coverage of the presidential or midterm elections. When he lived in Canada, some superior Canadians would again mention the weakness of his personality was rooted in the fact that he never got opportunity to vote. How ironic? The Chinese voting system was exactly the same as that of the Canadian's. Voters get to vote for their local officials and these local officials would gather in their secret place to vote for some other people to go to the central government. In fact David only voted twice in his life. Once as a Chinese citizen with a blank vote and then as a Canadian Citizen with another blank vote. The only differences between two bank votes were, when he voted in China as a college student, he heard that some of his prankster college buddies unsatisfied with the Chinese political system back then, scratched off the names of the printed candidates and filled in the names of some Americans such as Marilyn Monroe or Catherine Hepburn. But when he cast a blank vote in Canada, he was no longer curious about how anybody else voted. He saw the great ideal of democracy being discredited like a myth, similar to how left wing ideals were discredited.

 

He answered Bud: "Yes, I was thoroughly brainwashed by Communism in China, since I have always strived to be the best student that I could be and tried to remember everything the teacher told me. I was a fool and believed everything I heard with only doubts that the outside world would probably be different and better. I didn't know how different and better it would be and when I saw the outside world, its wonders far exceeded my expectations.

 

I was willing to be thoroughly brainwashed again and worked hard to scrub every wrinkle of my brain surface when drips of 'democracy', 'freedom', 'Western Philosophy', 'American / European history' or any of that good stuff trickled in. When I now talk to anyone with association with China, they invariably tell me that I am brainwashed some even go as far as saying I am 'white washed'. When I defended US as a country with many polite people, many Canadians said I was 'brain washed'.

 

But let me tell you the surprising thing that I have found about democracy after spending half of my life living under it: it is another form of government that can fool its citizens just as easily and as diligently as any other forms of non-democratic government. If you read messages posted on the Internet by today's young Americans, it is not unusual to see posts such as: "Why are people in the world still resisting democracy", or "Chinese people, why don't you raise arms and overthrow your government"?

 

When Senate Robert Bird said "today I weep for America" in 2003, do you think all the other members of the Senate, who approved of going to war against Iraq, were lying or speaking the truth? When most of the respectable Senators said they believed America was under the threat of the tiny and far away country of Iraq, I believe they spoke the truth and the only explanation remains was they were all brainwashed and inadvertently brainwashed the American people. Remember George W. Bush got elected to the office for a second term with a better winning margin than his first term. If you care to check all the surveys conducted after the Iraqi war broke out, majority of the American people still consistently believed Iraq was a threat to United States under Saddam Hussein. Saddam must have felt like an innocent by standard that happened to stand on the wrong side of the street and got shot in this War on Terror. If the War on Terror were really justified to happen in Iraq, what are the answers to the following three questions? "Is Osama Bin Laden captured or killed?", "Does Al-Qaeda have any connection with Saddam Hussein?" "Where are weapons of mass destructions in Iraq?"

 

No, Osama is not killed or captured but War in Iraq is getting 80% of the attentions and coverage of War on Terror. Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden never could get along therefore had no connections. As to the third question, even if Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, America has 10,000 nuclear war heads without counting chemical or biological weapons. Was there really such a threat to a man with 10,000 shotguns when another was just about to have one?

"

Bud finally could cut in: "One shotgun could still be fatal. It could kill many American lives." "But Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, and even if it did, it was not likely they would give it to Al-Qaeda if they had only made a few. How did a war aiming at Al-Qaeda went into Iraq?"

 

Bud took out another defense commonly employed by conservative Americans: "Well, the war went to Iraq because United States needed to find a battle ground to fight those terrorists from the Middle East. We sure as hell would not want to fight the war on the American soil".

 

David recalled a phrase from an Indian professor he once had and said: "When elephants fight, ants get trampled upon. How many Iraq civilians get killed in order for Americans to shoot dead one terrorist? Does any one care? If the conservative great Americans think this way, I don't know how they would ever achieve the lofty goals president Bush set for the objective of the Iraq war, which was to spread democracy in the Middle East. This 'fighting on other people's soil' idea has lowered Americans to the same level as any imperialists of the last century. For people living in the northeast of China, they would always say '老毛子最坏，小毛子贼坏' for the Russo-Japanese war fought on their soil. They would not even buy Japanese car or electronics, let alone buying democracy from Japan or Russia".

 

Bud wanted to change the focus of the discussion and said: "you just don't like the war do you? Anything about the war was wrong, wasn't it?"

David: "Since you are from a military family, I will tell you what I think this war means to military family. It will really be even sadder for soldiers who are sent into this war. When Vietnam War started, there were not as many anti-war protests in America, Canada, Australia, and UK. All indications are, this war would be more difficult to clean up than the Vietnam War and one day, soldiers would ask themselves: 'what did we fight for'? Vietnam war was about defending against the spread of communism, and even that didn't work out. Now what a brilliant idea, 'spread demorcracy by overthrowing a government'? Why didn't Mohandas Ghandi of India think about that? Sorry Mr. Ghandi, I shouldn't even mention your name in such a context.

 

 

The fact that Iraqi War even happened demonstrated how American people were brainwashed when majority of the outside world could see this was a war that was not winnable, with the objective being spreading democracy.

 

In America, the brainwashes were usually done by the world's best engineered and manufactured "super turbo detergent", which sometimes accompanied by songs such as "I am proud to be an American; at least I know I am free". Almost all Americans believe they are free and their media is free and uncensored. At least, they would believe their media, if possible to be swayed by bias and bigger money, were still not as much as in other countries. Brainwashing ideas coming out of such washing machine has another added peril of never being suspected as being brainwash. I heard many co-workers and conservative talk show hosts and callers talked about America always "help the world". While America did help the world often, it is very unnatural to hear soldiers talking about how they are trying to help the Iraqi people and those people did not want to be helped. People brainwashed by democracy simply can not understand there are other people in this world who would not want democracy, or at least, do not treasure democracy as much as Americans.

 

It is probably embarrassing for a Chinese born Canadian citizen to remind you this, do you remember what George Washington said in the farewell speech about preserving the unity of the nation? Do you remember what Civil War was all about and why Abraham Lincoln was regarded as the best President in the history of the United States of America? George Washington vigorously warned against danger of party by geographic regions and pleaded all Americans to protect the unity of the country with utmost pride and "jealous anxiety". Abraham Lincoln, simple brushed aside the constitution and democracy to force the Southern states rejoining the union. Emancipation of the Negro slaves was a clever, convenient and justifiable reason later added to the war objectives more than a year after the war started. Emancipation of slaves was against democratic principles also since Lincoln legally could not free the slaves that the North did not have authority over if he was a stickler to the principles of democracy -- government based on consent of the governed.

 

What makes American media touted the President's goal of War on Terror as "building democracy in the Middle East" with words such as "lofty" and "noble", and only with slight mumbling of "too ambitious" if this is not propaganda to fool the public. People in any country desire prosperity, unity, stability and collective security over the hollow "democracy", just like George Washington said when there were only 13 United States in North America. Are the Americans thinking that only Americans are the man of the "all men are created equal" and all the people in the other nations are less of a man in the sense of "all men are created equal"? Is "democracy" really such a precious asset for any other nation that it worth breaking its national unity, stability and individual safety to achieve? How many countries can you name that are under democracy in this world and have the privilege of enjoying the prosperity at the same level of the USA? That should be sufficient proof that democracy alone does not bring prosperity, stability and collective safety and therefore not always desirable over all other things.

 

It was God who gave America all the prosperity she has today not democracy, but now US has a president who thinks he is the only one getting divine instructions from the God and want to spread democracy in the Middle East. He said on TV that he does not consult with his father elder Bush but "appeal to a higher father". He also said that he does not listen to "intellectuals", in other words, he only listens to "none-intellectuals" like himself or people who watched cowboy movies? Yet, such a man was elected to the highest office in the country twice. If there is not a super turbo charged brainwash going on in United States under the democracy, I don't know what else can be called brainwash. Almost all the conservative radio talk shows keep on labeling "mainstream" media in United States as being "liberal" and incite the "common man" to ignore the "intellectuals". Let me tell you where I have seen this before. This is the common practice that I was very familiar with when growing up in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. But I have never read anything in American media mentioning that Cultural Revolution and Chairman Mao's later part of political life had been denounced officially by Chinese Communist party, since American people need to be let known that communist parties are evil. I felt like stepping away from one brainwashed environment turning towards freedom and walking into another free environment that is turning into increasingly brainwashed.

 

Since America was a country enjoying most amount of freedom in the world in the last couple of decades, there are still many people in the world eager to get brainwashed by American ideas and cultures, including top Iranian universities using English to teach classes. But are Americans equally open to be brainwashed by any knowledge from any other culture? Definitely not, for that will make a "great Americans" turning into an "intellectual", or a "liberal sissy", said those well learned "intelligent" voices pretending to be "common man" on air in the radio or TV stations. The sad thing is true "common men" are easy to be persuaded into not doing much thinking, because laziness is one of the prevalent human natures. The deeds of the intellectual "common men" are worse than "blind leading the blind and both will fall into the ditch". These are the deeds of the people with good eyes leading the blinds into the ditch to make a buck or two, if this is not brainwash then what is?

 

If brainwashed mobs and general public are depressing phenomenon to see, brainwashed world leaders are even more dangerous. For the title "world leader" comes with privileges and responsibilities. Right before American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin described it seemed then that every British citizen was addressing colonists in North America as 'our subjects over there in the new world'. Nowadays Americans pretty much view everybody outside of the United States as 'our subjects'. You can hear American people talking about how to shape many other countries of this world, but I couldn't help notice, many of those talkers talking about other countries could not speak many languages let alone make conversation in many languages. If someone wants to plan the future for other countries, don't you think it's important to learn about those other countries first? And if one wants to know about another country, don't you think at least learning the country's languages and thoughts not relying on secondhand learning is important?

 

I have heard the stories recently about an American restaurant owner trying to ask customers to speaking English or get out. I whole heartedly supported that guy if he was running the government, because I thought every country has the right to use only one official language and felt odd that state of Ohio, a state that far from state of Texas, tried to debate whether Spanish should be included as the second official language. I couldn't vote, but did pay taxes and thought that was a waste of tax payer money. Working in Canada, every web site design and development projects for the government always required French in addition to English. For smaller budgets than their US equivalent, I always thought it strange to have double amount of the bilingual pages.

 

But in private, I question American's lack of willingness to learn other languages. Many foreigners have no problem learning English, speaking English when Americans go visit their countries, have you ever asked why? In fact many foreign countries are actively seeking good English teachers for people who are living outside of the USA and many of the American English teachers were more sought after than British English teachers, have you asked why? If Americans keep it up going to other parts of the world to be the ruler and treat other people as subjects, without learning a thing or two about those countries, starting from their languages. Let's see how much longer the rest of the world would want to learn American English? When the day come and people no longer want to speak English or come to visit here, then quoting Lord Jesus Christ: "they have their rewards".

 

Take Iraq for instance, what percentage of Americans know whether people living there are Arabs or Persians? Do they speak Arabic or Farcies or other languages? By now, probably many people started to hear the terms Shiite and Sunnis, is that really the major difference amongst the Iraqi people?

 

Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Jordan, who is likely to side with who?"

 

Outside of the car window from a long distance, David could see downtown stadiums and he started to ask:

 

"Are the Texans still losing a lot this year"?

 

"Yes, the sure are" Bud appeared to be paying attention only to the road.

 

"

I remember there was a guy names something like Steve Chabot, who was running for US Senate used to show up at the gate of the Cincinnati Bengals' games to shake voters' hands in the 90's. Cincinnati Bengals in the 90's was just about as bad as today's Texans. For the fans rooting for a bad football team, they get to vote for Senators who would advertise to work for them in Washington on TV and in front of a stadium gate.

"

 

Bud seemed to started paying attention when the conversation was no longer about Iraq, and said: "yes, football is American's favorite pass time so politicians want to show up at the football stadiums no matter how bad the local football team happened to be, as long as there are fans".

 

"But there are no fans of American football in Iraq. People who advertise locally 'send me to Washington, I'll work for you' and people who got voted into office because of sharing a passion with other local fans in sports games, also became leader of the free world. They made life and death decisions for people all over the world. They wanted to spread democracy without consent of the governed, or even ever an attempt to ask the governed.

 

"

 

"I remember George Washington said in his second farewell address that he hoped to say something that would be treated as from a departing old friend with nothing biased or attached to special interests. Maybe the best way to learn about Middle East is to step out of the environment and propaganda of the US.

 

I don't proclaim I know, and I am not even a member of this nation of world leaders. So I don't have the responsibility to learn what would be right about Iraq. From my limited contact with people from Middle East, all I knew was that area was an area of serious confusions. If American wanted to spread American style democracy, they would have better chance starting somewhere closer to home.

 

In the time I worked with 20 developers with 11 nationalities, I have worked with only one Java programmer from Iraq who is forever waiting for his Canadian citizenship in Vancouver, BC. He is quite a fierce looking dude, young, athletic and with his favorite sport being Karate. His first and last names are both "Ahmad", which he said meant "Praise the God". He joked that every time we call his name, we were saying "praise the God" not only once, but twice. I suppose anybody with such a profile would have 10 times more difficulties than a Chinese crossing any border in Europe or North America these days. He said one of the funnies question answer session would be: "what's your name"? "Ahmad"; "What's your last name"? "Ahmad"; "Do you understand English? I am asking your last name".

 

He is an average developer with no outstanding performances or unbearable mistakes in a software development team. When asked by co-workers at lunch time, whether he is a "Shiite or Sunny" he replied "Well, that question again. Actually, before I left Iraq, I never knew there was that big of a difference. Yes, I am a Sunny, but living in a mixed area in Baghdad".

 

His co-workers will also occasionally ask him "what do you think of Saddam Hussein"? His reply would be that Saddam was a mystery to the Iraqi people and to the rest of the world. Nobody knows his agenda. He was supported by U.S. to gain power, for which irritated the Iraqi people. Then he irritated the Iraqi people again by invading Kuwait and more importantly causing the trade embargo. Before the UN imposed embargo, Iraq was a country with relatively higher standard of living than most Asian countries. Afterwards, Iraq became one of the poorest countries in Western Asia. In summary, through Ahmad's generation, Iraqis had two sources of irritations: Saddam and the US.

 

It's definitely not a scientific survey of popular opinions, but on the other hand, it revealed a scary fact. Such opinion could be so easily found in such an irresponsible and casual environment, it's scary to think American media couldn't find it. If reporters want to ask me where to learn about true opinions from people in the Middle East, I would only suggest them to talk to some taxi drivers. I learned from two more taxi drivers to confirm what Ahmad told me and I felt I wouldn't want to vote to start a war in Iraq whether being a world leader or not.

 

When hearing American media spent significant coverage convincing the public that their soldiers would be welcomed in Baghdad like they were welcomed in Europe after World War II, I wondered whether voters, senators, reporters got chances to talk to taxi drivers in big American cities or big European cities. Well, voters and senators drive their own cars and that was understandable. But for reporters to be more out of touch than a computer geek like me, that was very disappointing.

 

Speaking of the media, this open and "believed-to-be" objective media is not so objective if you simply step outside of the United States once in a while. The Abu Ghraib Scandal came to light in almost April of 2004. But in the summer of 2003, I saw published in a Swedish newspaper, pictures of naked Iraqis males standing in the streets of Baghdad, handcuffed, with "Coalition" soldiers standing behind them.

 

I walked into a pub in downtown Stockholm, and a black man with African accent stopped me and asked 'Are you from America'? I answered 'Well, I am from North America, but from Canada'. Since Canada did not register with him immediately and he probably though I was from Idaho or Montana, he started questioning me angrily 'if somebody committed crimes, you put them in cuffs, is there any need to take off his cloths and make him stood naked in the streets?' Then he unfolded the newspaper in his hand, and there it was: "Coalition" soldiers holding their guns standing along with hand-cuffed naked man.

 

I had my beer and thought it funny that when I left, he finally registered that country where I came from with large land mass but tiny population. He came to me again and said: 'I really admire your Canadian prime minister. He stood up to the United States and said 'No' to the invasion of Iraq'. I bet he didn't know the name of the Canadian Prime Minister at the time. If you take a survey at a global scale, overwhelmingly majority of the people in this outside of Canada, who even can always respond to the country name "Canada" at the first mentioning of it, usually can not name the Canadian prime minister. It's very difficult for people to remember leaders of other countries. But almost every American knows Saddam Hussein these days and felt the guy was threatening each American citizen personally -- what a brainwash.

 

. . .

"

 

It was a long conversation between David and Bud, almost beyond credulity, but it happened and that was how bad the Greater Houston and Downtown traffics really were in the morning rush hours if one tries to drive from a suburb called Pearland to somewhere on Main Street.

 

 

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