Chapter 2: watching the paint dry

 

In the middle of the night

I go walking in my sleep

Through the jungle of the doubt

Cross a river so deep

 

I've been search for something

Something so undefined

It could only be seen

By the eyes of the blind

In the middle of the night -- modified from Billy Joel's "River of dreams"

 

 

Studying names from different countries is something fascinated David after leaving his home country. One other person, fascinated by names from different nations, is his good friend and colleague at ENS, Alex Volnov. Alex is from a Russian city called, Krasnodar which means "gift from the reds", on the shore of the Black Sea. Without meeting Alex, the name of such a not-so-prominent city would have probably never entered David's mind, just like David's tiny small hometown, Guiyang, would have not enter the memory of Alex. People joked about the city of Guiyang, saying it means "sunshine is very expensive", or "male are over priced", but its official meaning is just a town south of a mountain named "expensive". Besides that, David also learned an interesting aspect about translation, or meaning lost in translation. The country name of China is "Kitai" in Russian. But "Kitai" 契丹is actually a tribe once considered an invader to China and the tribe eventually disappeared after the more powerful nation of Mongols swept through the Eurasia continent. A fairly popular Chinese novel for David's generation "Eight Gods in the heaven" (天龙八部) featured a hero 萧峰, meaning a "Chilly Summit" who was loyal and devoted to China but was slander as a spy from the "Kitai" nation. David amused "if he only had his passport printed in Russian, all the suspicions and misunderstandings by his Chinese friends and followers would have gone away".

 

David and Alex both felt humbled by the fact that countries in this world not only include those prominent densely populated metropolitans, but each smaller cities, towns and villages also possess its individuality, rich history, its good name with significances and interesting stories. Many interesting stories were happening all the time in small corners of the world, and the world is changing fast. Two foreigners showed up in the streets of Guiyang in the 1970's, a circle would have quickly formed by children looking at these exotic human beings that appear totally different from themselves and their parents. But 30 years later, since the streets were often visited by tourists from all over the world, children would only glance at those tourists curiously from a distance and adults would just walk by paying little attention.

 

Alex and David started studying names of people with different nationalities because Alex wanted to translate his name differently from how it appeared on his passport. Alex Volnov wanted to bid on some contracts online as a moonlighting software developer to get some extra cash, living in one of the most expensive cities of Canada. While his name Alex Volnov did not attract many interests at first, after changing his name to Alex Wave -- the English translation of Volnov, quickly helped him get some attentions and inquiries. With his 10 plus years of computer skills in different areas, he quickly landed several small programming contracts. Then he discussed with David about his plans to form a small software company with the name "Wave Software Development". David was very enthusiastic in discussing names with Alex, and found their interests in studying people's names are sources of interesting imaginations and creative ideas. The topic became more and more worthwhile for discussions when they meet.

 

They both believed that a name, which a person would carry for quite sometime if not an entire lifetime, would inevitably affect a person's personality somewhat -- negatively or positively -- and possibly mold someone into a certain type of person. They started asking people "what's the meaning of your name in your own language?" At the beginning, they get some answers, such as "Shahabi" means shooting star in Arabic, or "Smith" and "Baker" mean types of "craftsman" or "chef who bakes bread". Then there would encounter some other people found them annoying, by saying: "My last name is Brown, it's just a name, what else does Brown means". David and Alex were undeterred and would start listing what the word "Brown" would remind them of in English. Throwing away the negative association of the word, they listed: "Brown is a color of course", "Cleveland Browns remind people an image of a dog", "Brown sometimes remind other peoples named Brown, such as John Brown", "The color Brown reminds people of season changes, such as 'all the leaves are brown and the sky is grey'", "Brown could be somebody from Poland changed his or her name from Brownkolsky to Brown". . .

 

After raiding their colleagues with questions and arguments about names, Alex and David both felt that they liked their names in their respective native languages a lot better and felt their names became very awkward in English. In fact, they always felt their first and last names in English are not their names at all, because they had lost their meaning and are left only with sounds. They both made resolutions to find the "proper" English translations of their names in their future career after understanding English a little better, in the effort of which, Alex found his last name should be "Wave".

 

In one discussion, David started with a joke he heard from the NBC "Tonight" show host Jay Leno: "Jay Leno recently said: 'can you imagine Ken Lay goes to the prison? The guy in the upper cell would yield, 'Yo, Ken Lay is here'. Then another guy would say 'who'? 'Can Lay'? . . ." if people do not understand the embedded meaning of the word "Lay", how would they get the humor out of this joke?" Alex joined in with another Jay Leno joke saying Clinton always admired Kennedy and wanted to grow up just like him. Later, Clinton had the same problem as Kennedy because he had trouble with "Tricky Dick" and couldn't control "Big Johnson". Both Alex and David were more and more convinced that rules of name translation need to be changed in an increasingly close knit global community. How else would someone understand a translated foreign name such as "tricky Dick" or "big Johnson"? It used to be OK to translate people's name with sounds before, but now there are so many people having to live and work with foreign people all the time, the old ways of translating are no longer good enough, for a deeper level of bonding. "This is not going to help reducing trade deficit in the new global economy", they agreed with half hearted seriousness, and then laughed about the scenario if people truly understand the meanings of foreign names in a trade negotiation table.

 

They also talked about more common Russian and Chinese names and how they should be better translated into English to fit the convention. Alex said: "'Kaplin' resembles 'a drop of a liquid', it should probably be translated into 'Waterson' or simply 'Watson'; 'Goncharov' means 'Son of a potter', it could simply be translated as 'Potter' like those of the Harry Potter family. 'Listiev' could mean 'leaf of a tree', Hmm… who knows, maybe that is 'Woodson'; 'Kuznetsov' means 'Relative of a blacksmith', and this can easily have its equivalent in English as 'Smith'; Aha, here is a good one 'Usov' is something like a 'moustache - man', maybe this can be translated into the name 'Furman' . . . Alex enumerated. David couldn't contain his excitement any longer on hearing the name 'Usov' and said: "this 'Usov' or 'Furman' name really worth a lot in Chinese. It could be translated as either into 'Mao' or 'Hu', and those families should be proud of producing two generations of the contemporary leaders for modern day China.

 

David listed the names of some current ENS employees: "Jun Tong, really means 'soldier' and 'child'. I think his name can be better translated as 'Napoleon Childs', which was probably his parents' expectation out of him; Tao Zhang really means 'a big wave' and 'open'. By the way, the order which we use in Chinese and English are reversed. In case of Tao Zhang, we say Zhang first, which means 'open' and then we say Tao, which means 'a big wave or tide'. I think his name should be printed as 'Tide Widen' or 'Ty Wyden' to really reflect the personality of his name. The funny thing is that the commonly heard Chinese last name 'Wang', really means 'King'. So by understanding Chinese and English, I often felt that Martin Luther King really comes as the pride of the 'Wang' family". After David's dismissal from ENS, the name conversion exercise could no longer continue but David didn't forget to try to translate people's name "properly" according to the "Alex and David protocol".

 

David felt like losing fun in such conversations was his biggest loss in getting kicked out of ENS. He though to himself: "poor Alex, he used to spend lunch time hanging out with the other Russian programmer Igor who was later axed. After Igor was fired, he spent lunch time hanging out with me. Now I am kicked out, another one of his friend JP would probably be in trouble soon. Maybe he is bad luck to other developers just like I am bad luck to companies that hired me". But to David and JP's relief, Alex left ENS soon after David's dismissal under the influence of David's repeated propaganda "that sorry ass company was lucky to have you still working there".

 

For David, there was no luxury to get concerned about life of Alex at that moment though, because he was the one without a job, not Alex. The urgent task for him was to find another paycheck somewhere. After filing for the unemployment compensation, David started waiting for the next employer's call, but job searching progressed slowly. Luckily, David found a part-time job teaching at a local technical college to get a little income, while continuing his search and got out of the unemployment compensation one month later.

 

One of the common used practices in finding a job, as David recollected in .com age, was to find employers in the same industry, by contacting other employers looking for people with similar skills. The .com age David referred to was the time around 2000 just about or after the Y2K age. It was a time when many companies along the same strip of a streets in the "high-tech incubation zones" would go on and off frequently like neon signs. David remembered that looking for new employers in the same industry was especially true for sales people among those incubators. When one company went belly up, its entire sales force could simply move next door to yesterday's "competitors/partners" to sell similar products with the knowledge they had already acquired about the industry and targeted customers. Every company was pretty much looking for the same type of talents. Recruiters lurked around coffee shops looking for heavy caffeine consumers as developers. CEOs looked for CFOs for the next round of financing. Well dressed people went to trendy restaurants to meet marketing people.

 

Speaking of industries, customers and all that good stuff, David started thinking about his buddy Eric Cutler -- a former marketing guy at ENS. David always enjoyed working with marketing people in the technology industries, if nothing else, for entertainment purposes. The marketing professionals in technology industry, by the nature of their jobs, analyze what customers want; and then ask sales people to tell customers what they want to hear, before asking engineers to build what customers want to have. They often give their best effort to project themselves with images different from that of a "techie", which means they try hard to appear very smart, glamorous and flamboyant -- well, maybe not as flamboyant as sales professionals. After all, they are the ones came up with languages such as "we are the dot in dot com". High percentage of women "product managers", a title commonly held by marketing people, would marry company president or VP at some point in their lives. Some female marketing manager would legally change her name to "Emma Fake" from "Emily Rothschild" to build her personal "brand name". Another stereotypical thing for product managers to do is to build "road maps" for products, and diligently refer back to those "maps" in meetings and presentations.

 

David's all time flashback highlight moment for marketing people in the .com age was recorded when working for a database software development company. The database product was benchmarked as being 37 times faster and hosting 4 times more concurrent users comparing to existing products on the market. Then there came the idea from marketing department to print the message "37 times faster, 4 times more concurrent users" on condoms to be given away as freebies in parties after "geeks" get together.

 

As an immigrant, David learned to sketch stereotypes for precisely the purpose of disregarding them. He believed there were probably a statistically normal distribution of good, bad and ugly in every type of people. He learned the lesson about stereotyping from the former NFL player Reggie White, a highly respected professional who committed an error in his audition with CBS and ruined his career after sports. No matter what a "type" is defined, David learned they are always exceptions within that "type".

 

Regardless of what marketing people commonly do, Eric Cutler maintained a good heart inside. He is a good natured decent human being with a high moral standard that David admired. When an Iranian descendent female employee of ENS in UK -- Dr. Shahabi -- was wrongfully discharged, Eric bravely testified against ENS for maltreatment of its employees and helped her won the case. The final verdict came after Eric was kicked out of the door by Ankur Kumar, but Eric chose to forgive Ankur instead of bringing another law suite against ENS which he had very good chance of winning, considering the court need to look no further at ENS track records, beyond the Shahabi law suit.

 

Another incident, which Eric won David's respect immensely, started from a joke on the Nord Kia project. Nord Kia, as a transportation company, had a division of taxi drivers that carry people around in the Swedish capital city of Stockholm. One day a driver got into a fight with a drunken rider. The driver sensed the passenger was going to make trouble and started trying to signal call center and fellow drivers for help. After pressing the emergency signal button on the ENS wireless communication equipment and saw no immediate help in sight, the driver was put into a dangerous situation. Because the ENS emergency system was still in beta test, it didn't send out any SOS signals successfully all the way to the control center. Fortunately, the Nord Kia driver was a big and strong male and he subdued the trouble making passenger without getting himself hurt too much.

 

Nord Kia wrote a strongly worded email to ENS complaining about the failure of the emergency reporting system. The text of the letter went as follow:

 

"Last night, a big f***ing fight broke out between a Nord Kia driver and a drunken customer. The customer repeatedly used his head to hit the rear entrance door of the taxi and then again hit the hood of the car to make several big dents. After the driver tried to persuade him to stop, the violent customer eventually used his head to hit the front Window of the car and smashed the wind shield glass. It was until the police came, that the aggressive customer was finally taken away with an ambulance. "

 

The email was sent to David and Bernard who was the representative from UK also visiting Stockholm at the time. Bernard could not contain his bizarre feeling about the letter and burst out laughing. Then wrote a comment to involved ENS employees saying: "Nord Kia and Olof always concerned about driver safety, but where is the customer safety?" Taxi drivers are usually quite street smart. Like truckers or police who work on the roads, they have strong bonding relationship within their groups. They all have a sense of everyone could possibly need some help one day and are always willing to help others who are in trouble. This particular taxi driver was obviously a tough street-fighter and handled matters in his own hands quite well, despite of a "failed emergency signaling system".

 

After David received the message from Bernard, he had a good laugh too and forwarded the email to Eric thinking Eric is the kind of guy always eager to make a joke or two in the office. But Eric replied: "there is really nothing to laugh about. I think we should all hang our heads in shame". First both David and Bernard were upset about Eric's party pooping behavior and argued "we were not laughing at the incident, just the way how the letter was written". But after days, they both admitted that Eric was occupying a higher ground morally and ethically, therefore deserved to be regarded as a better professional.

 

Now in another emergency and distress situation of his own, David decided to call Eric to seek his advice. "Eric, you worked with a lot of ENS customers and went to many technical conferences before, who are the competitors of ENS and where do I find them?" After a surprise "Wo wo wo . . . slow down, slow down, what happened", David described to Eric about how "I was laid off by ENS" and added "I say I was 'laid off' by ENS, but I preferred to leave the 'off' out of the sentence, do you get the poetic humor in it?" Then David told Eric as to how Ankur show him "trust" by taking away his severance pay. Eric laughed without guilt this time and said: "Oh, Ankur did kick you in the groin, didn't him?" "Yes he did, indeed he did" David gave an almost inaudible laugh while cutting off the phrase "and Geenick stabbed me in the back". "This reminded me of how much I took from him after testifying for Dr. Shahabi in the court" continued Eric. He then gave David a list of ENS competitors and a list of professional associations in transportation industry. But before hanging up the phone, he said: "Oh David, one more thing, on a second thought, forgive me for being 'sage' and all, do you really want to get even with Ankur in transportation industry? Aren't you tired of it all? There are way more businesses than just vehicles and drivers, you know. Remember, 'an eye for an eye, the whole world would go blind' -- Muhandus K. Ghandi".

 

But David had the excuse that he was not as morally sublime as Eric. He even thought of asking Eric to take Ankur to the court for the dispute of severance pay. He thought Eric would have helped testifying that his performance was at least as good as other previously axed managers, if not better, since Eric once said: "David, you often appear clueless, but eventually always get the job done" -- highest form of praises coming from the mouth of Eric. David originally thought that with equal performance and worse treatment -- without getting escorted out of the building and then taking 2 weeks of severance pay -- he could win in the court. But now, he decided to save the trouble for him and good 'O Eric, by not going through the legal proceedings dragging Ankur, Geenick and Eric into it. In fact, David decided that 2 week worth of pay is too little to waste time over. The root problem is just that Canadian employers are too poor to pay for better packages after getting rid of their employees comparing to their US counterparts. Worsen the scenario, there are employers like Ankur's family owned "publicly traded" ENS, that were always trying to short change employees intentionally whenever other people are not looking. He would half forgive Ankur and Geenick by not taking them to the court. But he would half not forgive them by staying in the industry to compete with them, if getting the opportunities.

 

David started contacting companies on the list that he received from Eric. The first thorny thing that David ran into was many of the colleagues in the same trade started asking him about NDA, the "none disclosure agreement" that he might have signed with ENS. David could vaguely remember that he did sign an NDA with ENS, but could not remember its content. He had to ask Jenny Lee for a copy and found several companies listed in the NDA as employers that he "can not work for" within 2 years after leaving ENS.

 

This angered David even more, since majority of the companies that he worked for before ENS did not ask him to sign the so called "none disclosure agreement". And when he interviewed with ENS, nobody mentioned this to him, then when he signed the NDA at the first day of employment, he thought of it as just another form along with tax, address, social insurance forms, which could be signed but never affect the life of an average Joe. It suddenly hit him that there are always the struggle of "good and evil" in small details and fine prints. The struggles won't be apparent most of the time, until some defining moments of one's life.

 

David's sister once taught him: "Don't be discouraged by problems because they are everywhere. People live to solve problems. If you don't have problems, you don't have a life to live and you are probably dead". To overcome this problem, David had to only contact employers not on his NDA list and avoid competing employers that provide similar products as those of ENS. The NDA filtered out many opportunities for David. Then he found that most of the employers in Eric's transportation associations list are in U.S. In order to work for them, he would need to go through the nightmare immigration process in U.S. again starting from an H-1B visa. Many U.S. employers do not want to sponsor H-1B visa for people they are not familiar with, unless they really need to get someone exceptional or urgently. This "immigration status" filtered out another large portion of David's opportunities.

 

Now David is pinning his last hope on getting Canadian citizenship, so he can access a much bigger job market in U.S. via NAFTA trade agreement's TN-1 (Trade NAFTA 1) visa, specifically devised for Canadians wanting to work in U.S. In fact, David's entire journey to Canada is for the purpose of getting a Canadian citizenship so he could travel and work around the world with reasonable convenience. People everywhere in the world, especially those in the West, like to advertise themselves as champions of the equality for all human being. And almost always, this is not totally false and not totally true. In reality there are many inequalities littered all over almost every downtown streets of every major city.

 

First, there is racism. Right in front of David's eyes, in a university campus, after a false fire alarm, when students getting back to their classrooms, black students would be asked for IDs by police, while students of other races would be let in without questions. In the 1990's, David also witnessed in graduate school that it was still possible for blonde-haired, blue-eyed travelers to cross country borders into Europe and North America without passport. In the meantime, he was one hundred percent sure he would not be allowed to cross borders of those countries without his passport.

 

One day, David sat in his study and received a phone call from another caller titling himself as "Detective Lansky from INS". He told David that his team as identified David as a member of the "Korean Gang". David answered: "are you kidding me? I am a Chinese, I don't know any Korean and can not be part of a Korean gang". The other party said: "who said Korean Gang? I said you are part of Ko Li Gong mafia group. We will come to your house tomorrow". David was really scared, so he reported the call to the local police department. After he went in and out of the house several times, he found a voice mail message on his answering machine: "Hello, this is Detective Lansky from INS, we have definitely confirmed that you are a member of the Koligong. We will come to visit your house tomorrow afternoon at 2 o'clock". Then at the end of the message, he heard laughs and a teenager's voice saying "I was like, I was like. . ." to others, then the voices stopped. While the prank didn't mount to anything, but it was quite annoying to David, and even wasted several police officers' visits too as a result. One police officer called the pranksters "idiots" pointing out that "detective" is a title for people working in police departments, and the proper title for an officer from Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) should be "Agent Lansky".

 

David love to listen to conservative radio talk shows when he lived in and later visited United States. Some of the non-conservative talk shows are too difficult for him to understand, with his limited vocabulary in English, that he had to resort to rap-dictionaries or ask friends in order to comprehend. Therefore it is easier to just tune in to the conservatives. In fact, David always credited Rush Limbaugh as his most important English teacher. After 911, it seemed more and more conservative talk show hosts started jamming conservative radio stations that Rush's EIB network used to be hosted on, some even go further to the "right of Rush". This is someone who labeled himself "to the right of Rush and to the left of God". Mike Savage, the host of Savage Nation is advocating "terrorist profiling" at the borders and in the airport. He repeated again and again, "This is not racial profiling I am talking about, but terrorist profiling. When you stop an 80 year old Norwegian granny at the airport, don't you think it's ridiculous to spend the same amount of time searching her as other passengers . . .". David grimed and shook his head amusingly: "why didn't he just say it makes perfect sense to do racial profiling at the airport? Why did he keep on mentioning the word 'Norwegian'? Would an 80 year old 'non-Norwegian' granny be profiled differently from a 'Norwegian' granny in his system? In fact, if terrorists really want to plant a bomb in the suitcase of an 80 year old Granny, do you think they would plant it in an 80 year old 'Norwegian' granny or an 80 year old 'non-Norwegian' granny?"

 

Set aside the discussions of racism or "reverse discrimination", racism is at least denounced in official documents in most countries and in most corporations all over the world. On the other hand "citizenshipism" by "citizenshipists", as David called it, is another form of absurd inequality becoming more and more conspicuous in the new era of global economy, and gets officially sanctioned by countries and corporations everywhere.

 

It is half understandable that EU (European Union) would allow citizens of EU to work among EU countries with little restrictions. After all, those countries are geographically close like one village adjacent to another in the old times. But it is quite illogical when people are treated differently simply because they are holding a passport of People's Republic of China, and most countries think it is normal. When David wanted to travel to Sweden, most of his colleagues could pick up and go, as long as they are Canadian, Belgium or Singapore citizens, while he had to get some additional documents for every business trip.

 

And the fun doesn't stop there. "In criminal justice system, police are in the law enforcement branch and judges are in judiciary branch, and here are their stories" -- Law and Order opening statement. But in immigration system, every border agent, every consular officer is the legislative branch plus the executive branch plus the judiciary branch. Therefore for David's business trips -- to Sweden -- for instance, he had been dealt with different types of treatments depending on whom he was going to run into at any particular time. One agent would say, "You should apply for a visitor's visa, because your stay would only be two weeks" and another would say "you should get a work permit, because you are going to work in Sweden". When asked by David what the definition of "work" is, some agent would say "physically moving boxes from one place to another" some would say "any type of paper work, programming, word processing".

 

David sometimes would ask about the definition of "work" and say: "Then what about interviewing with customers, listening to their complaints, onsite support, managing projects, trying to make a sale to potential customers". The officer would reply: "hmm… that is a grey area" while making a mental note inside "this guy is really testing my limits, what would I do to show him who's in charge around here". When it is being the right place at the right time, an officer would tell David: "Do you know every officer at the border has the right to check the luggage of every passenger? We normally choose not to do so, but we can always do that. Now come with me and let me check your suitcases".

 

Sometimes the sun would shine in the immigration office briefly and there would be a nice officer saying: "please fill out this form, I don't know why Swedish government wants to know the names of your sister in law and brother in law, but there are blank spaces there, so you've got to fill them out". That is about as bright a moment as it gets in an immigration office.

 

Citizenshipism is entirely sanctioned by counties, corporations and it is based on reasons heavily related to the alliance system of the last major war in the world. Cold war was over for many years, and politicians were busy untangling many other ideological systems other than citizenshipism. Just about the time when citizenshipism was about to be addressed among nations, another war broke out. In comprehensibly, David couldn't understand why citizens of People's Republic of China should suffer again and how they were lumped to which side of the alliance system.

 

There was a time when David could fly to Stockholm, Sweden via British Airway up until shortly after 9/11. Several months later after 9/11, citizens with People's Republic of China passport could no longer fly to European countries through British Airway without a "transition visa". Again, David's traveling companions could simply take any airline they wanted if they hold a Canadian citizenship and passport.

 

There were times, when David wanted to simply travel to Europe, Australia or Europe just to see famous tourist attractions of visit relatives. But he knew that last minute deals advertised as $399 does not apply to him. Round trips to London are not for people with citizenships from certain countries. By the time a visa is obtained with his PRC passport, God knows whether that $399 deal would have become $999 deal. Why are these countries so afraid of PRC passport holding tourists? There could probably be two reasons that these people are so afraid of PRC citizens. 1) PRC citizens are poor and would bring 3rd world problems to their countries; 2) PRC citizens would bring communism to their country. But if David gets a Canadian passport tomorrow, does that mean he had the above problems today but got rid of them tomorrow after one night's sleep?

 

Legally, Queen Elizabeth II rules over UK, Canada, Australia and many other places. David thought some of the Queen's officers had already checked his background and made certain that he was OK to travel, work and live in the vast territory under her reign and protection. Why would other subjects of her majesty deny his passing by, for "democracy" maybe or for the application fee of the "transition visa"?

 

In any house or family, a guard is charged with the tasks of "welcoming friends" and "defending against enemies". But in any of the developed countries, particularly UK and US, David felt he always belonged to the category of be "defended against". So he wondered whether border "guards" are the special type of "guards" that are only charged with the task of "defend against enemies", in these countries perceived themselves as been highly "developed".

 

In one of the Seinfeld episode, there was a character called Babu, who was deported from United States to Pakistan because he did not receive INS (disbanded Immigration and Naturalization Services) notification to renew his visa. Most Seinfeld audiences had a good laugh at the comedy, but little had any non-immigrant Americans ever considered this: Is there really such a thing as "visa renewal notification" in the United States? This was an example of how fictional world could use common sense to portray INS, which operates under the total defiance of common sense or common logic. In fact, INS was such an organization that even without sending out visa renewal notifications, already behind by two to three years of work constantly, that adding other tasks to their job descriptions is unimaginable.

 

David spent eight years applying for an American green card, but was told to wait for another two years in the end, therefore he moved with his wife and daughter to Canada because Canadian immigration process was advertised as speedier than that of the United States. David felt that a Canadian passport is just as, if not more, traveler friendly in most parts of the world. But now, it seemed that a planned three year immigration stop is turning into an infinite loop because of a small accident, a big ignorance or false advertisement.

 

While applying for a Canadian citizenship, David Chen was told that his Chinese translated official English name -- Da Chen -- is a duplicate of someone who might have criminal records in the past. David knew there must have been quite a number of "Da Chen" in China, and it is possible that several of them might have moved to Canada, but he is quite confident that if somebody simply looked at the Chinese writing of his name -- "Chen Da" 陈沓, the possibility of someone with his name and has a criminal record is close to the possibility of winning a lottery. In fact, from elementary school to college, he always felt lonely that there is nobody with exactly the same name as his, while many other kids, named Wang Zhi Gang or Wang Jing Song existed in every school he attended. Both of the above names had meanings like "Stone Wall Jackson" in American English: Wang Zhi Gang means "stern willed from the King family" and Wang Jing Song means "unbending redwood pine from the King family".

 

Name duplication is a well known, and often joked about, problem in China because of her large populations. It was said, that one police received a suspect's name and wanted to talk to a Wang Jing Song. He went to the street and asked where the suspect lived. Then he got about 20 addresses for 20 people with the same name living in various places -- on the same street!

 

To avoid such a well known problem, David Chen's parents decided to give David a very ancient form of his name as 陈沓 out of the following 21+ possibilities such as:

 

Family name: 陈

 

Given name with pronunciation of "Da": 沓，大，褡，达，打，答，搭，哒，笪，嗒，瘩，鞑，妲，耷，垯，疸，怛，荙，跶，靼，怛 . . .

 

It was a name searched out of a Chinese dictionary to avoid duplications. Then David's parents recorded such a name on his elementary school registration paper. The name accompanied him through out the years that he lived in China without seeing another "Da Chen" with the same spelling in Chinese. David immensely appreciated his parents' efforts of coming up with such a good name for him, and joked about it saying it was more unique than a name such as "Major Major Major" in Cache 22.

 

It is after David started living in the West, that his name started giving him troubles. Because now, these many family names could be all translated into "Chen" by different people:

 

陈，郴，成， 程，钱，秦

 

The probability for David Chen to run into another "Da Chen" is up by 6 x 21 times greater comparing to living in China, give or take that some words are not as commonly used for names as others.

 

That is not the only problem in David's Canadian citizenship application, there was a second problem, which was triggered by the name duplication and was becoming a much bigger insolvable problem. Due to the extra background check that David had to endure for his common English name, the application of his entire family got delayed. Time flew by fast, and just before the time David's second background check came back clean, Jade's background check had expired. According to Canadian immigration laws, any fingerprint records on file is legally invalid after 6 months. Jade, David's wife complied with the regulation and pressed her fingerprint again for the RCMP (Royal Crown Mounted Police), and the wait for the whole family continued. Now David's second fingerprint is about to expire -- after 6 months again -- and the Chen family still hadn't heard anything from the Canadian Immigration and Citizenship services (CIC).

 

David discussed with his wife about why things were the ways they were. David joked to his more religious half: "This must be God's way of punishing us, for not being loyal to either China or Canada. We are traitors of China obviously and once we get the Canadian citizenship and the Canadian passport, we will leave this country again at the first chance we get".

 

Canada is a country with impeccable reputation for being polite and friendly world wide and Vancouver is one of the cities that have been ranked as "most livable city in the world" many, many years in a roll. But like people often observed, things look good on paper could mean little to common mortals. The Canadian social system still has many imperfections that appear to be magnified in Vancouver. The most obvious one seemed to be the over-correction of the "lack of identity" problem. Co-existing with its super-powerful neighbor at the south, Canadians like to assert their identities amongst themselves, especially among politicians. Many political debates usually include this undertone, "you are trying to turn us into US, and because that is the American way, we don't want to do that". But the problem with this is that nobody reasonably analyzed whether that "American way" was good or bad. As results of such thinking, privatization of healthcare would always meet resistance, non-violent crime rate in Canada would always be higher than US, because of its criminal friendly justice system, and drug grow ops would be much more rampant than that of US. The "politeness" image of Canadians is vastly overrated.

 

It is very easy to mistaken the image of a country with its people. Comparing to USA, Canada drops much less bombs in this world, but if randomly comparing one American to one Canadian side by side individually, it is hard to tell who is more polite and many times, the American would win. If a person dials two customer service representatives for technical support, one in US and one in Canada, then the US customer service rep is definitely more "polite".

 

Then what officially is the Canadian identity? Let's say starting with who is the head of State for Canada? She is Queen Elizabeth II of United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland. When David told one of his Canadian native born coworker, Anthony Dufield, that the citizenship ceremony for new immigrants consisted of an oath "I swear to be loyal to Queen Elizabeth II . . ." Anthony immediately raised his right hand and said: "I swear not to be loyal to Queen Elizabeth II ". One day, David told his colleague Dan Wortherrington from UK that the office would be closed for Victoria's Day holiday, Dan asked: "Who's Queen Victoria? Are you sure this is not just you Canadians trying to make excuses not to work?"

 

David wasn't legally a Canadian at that moment, but he enjoyed being bastioned under the freedom of democracy and decided to live out his own Canadian identity. When first arrived in United States, David and Jade were both surprised at how nice people treated them and welcomed them with open arms. After all, they felt that they did not pay taxes all these years to a society that treated them with the amount of respects and hospitality way more than they expected. It was also possible that culture shocks and inability to understand English prevented them from being sensitive to the negative parts of people's reactions to them. When they came to Canada, they were still thankful at a country that gave them a home and welcomed them with open arms, but they did not feel thankful as strongly as other new immigrants who had recently arrived from China.

 

David suspected it all changed after a conversation he had with his colleague Ken Eaton back in Cincinnati, Ohio. Ken asked him about how Chinese colleges and universities were structured and how students were selected. David replied with the experiences that he had gone through in the 1980's. In essence, top universities selected students based on their grades after a nationally administered standard college entrance exam. Then students are ranked by the grades in their own provinces for university recruiters to draft with a pecking order based on prestige of the universities. Thos universities select best available students based on their grades and their lists of school preferences.

 

Ken asked, "If your family is very poor and you have very good grade, will best schools in China, like Harvard and MIT here, take you into their schools". David replied: "Yes, as a matter of fact, my family income was below average when I entered university, because my Mom died very early leaving my dad raising three kids as a single parent. If in US, I don't think I would have been able to afford entering my university, which was one of the best in China". "How much did you need to pay for the tuitions?" "It's free. The school even bought us text books in my freshman year. Afterwards, I only needed to pay for my books for the three years afterwards. Of course, I could buy used ones or borrow from friends from higher grades who got them for free in previous years". Then Ken said: "well, at least I found one thing good about China -- the educational system". David was furious, because he was full of anger towards the Chinese "systems" at the time: "but it was really not fair. When I left the country, the government forced me to pay ¥10,000 which is the equivalent of about $2,000 in US just to get my stupid passport. Why?" Ken replied calmly: "well, forgiven me for speaking from an outsider's point of view, but if you haven't paid tuitions for your college, and now you are making money here on this job, I think you should pay somebody back". David was even angrier and gushed out how he thought the communist party had held back the progress of China. Otherwise, with his father's occupation as a medical doctor, $2,000 wouldn't have been a big deal comparing to incomes from medical doctors all over the world. But under the economic system back then, $2,000 could mean tens of years of salaries for his dad. Ken artfully changed the topic of the conversation to avoid further argument. But the conversation stuck in David's mind and he frequently wondered, besides his father, whom he should feel thankful to -- for his undergraduate tuitions.

 

Since coming to Canada as a tax payer from first Monday onwards, David felt he had really contributed 5 of the best years in his 30's to exchange for a passport that was advertised to worth 3 years of services. He would gladly repeat "God saves the Queen" anytime from this point onward, but praising a Queen of UK anywhere in the world has almost the same effect, for the Canadian citizen and the Queen her majesty, as praising her in the Canadian soil.

 

David thought it would be better for him to be loyal to the Queen in US or UK, or wherever a bigger paycheck is likely to happen for him, because he would be more productive than in the Vancouver high-tech community, for the Queen her majesty and himself. No longer feeling guilty for being an immigrant in a strange land, after being a sheepish immigrant for many years, David decided to write emails to spam the Canadian government's all three hundred Members of Parliament (MPs) loudly requesting for a passport. He was going to tell them his personal story about how "all the Queen's horses and all the Queen's men couldn't put an immigrant's passport together again, Humpty fell, Humpty fell. . ."

 

If the letter get him a Canadian passport along with long sought after freedom to travel the world, great! If the letter provoke politicians in Canada and cause him never to get the passport again, he no longer cared any more. "I might be a cripple, but I am not a rat", from the movie "the usual suspects", was what came to his mind. A life of a rat is miserable no matter what passport the rat holds. "I only wish my motherland China would take me back again, if I can not continue to travel the world, but if she doesn't I deserve all the punishments" David murmured to himself.

 

Then, there was the birth of the following letter titled "watching the paint dry".

 

"

Subject: Watching the paint dry -- 21 month citizenship application... and counting

 

Dear Sir/Madam,

 

I am writing you this letter to report a funny incidence that is happening to me. It is greatly affecting me and my family members, while making us wonder if anything could be done to improve the efficiency of the Canadian government -- particularly, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC).

 

My name is Da Chen and my Permanent Residence number is RF03054255279. After finishing two Master’s degree and 7 years of successful career in science and engineering in US, I immigrated to Canada in the year 2000, along with my wife and daughter. I started full-time employment the 2nd day after relocating to British Columbia and have been a law-biding productive member of the community ever since (Vancouver, Richmond and Burnaby, BC).

 

When I applied for my citizenship after living in Canada for 3 years, the first shock came when I was required to take an extra background check, being told that my name might be a duplicate of other individuals who had criminal records. I have heard that such things are very common among Chinese with short names. Well, my name is very common if translated into English, but it is very uncommon if read in Chinese. Since my Chinese name is also spelled out in my application documents, I wonder why it was never checked. But without complaints about such seemingly trivial technical problems, I went ahead and gave my fingerprint for another round of extra background check and waited for 5 months.

 

After 5 months, we were told to take the citizenship test. My wife and I both successfully passed the test, but the second wave of shock came to us.

 

Because of the extra time it took to do the background check for me, the background check for my wife had expired. Therefore after our successful citizenship tests and background checks, my wife would need to go through another round of background check.

 

The vicious circle continues. Now my background check will expire in the next month. That means even if the results of my wife’s background check turns out to be "no criminal records" again, which I am sure will be the case, I will be required to go through another round of background check again. If the trend continues, my wife’s background check will expire before the results of my next background checks come back next time. We might never get our Canadian citizenship if we just sit here and do nothing.

 

My wife and I have called the telephone service of Citizenship Canada 5 times since summer of last year. Every time we get a polite officer talking to us, but also politely telling us that there would be absolutely nothing they could do about our applications. They also advised us, that there was absolutely positively no place we could report such inefficiency, and definitely, no improvements could be made over such a process. If this is a private corporation, can you imagine hiring a number of employees just telling people nothing could be done, as their daily job duties?

 

Since I am not a lazy bone myself and do not believe in idling without activities, I think it will be more productive to do something rather than watching the paint dry again. After all, it will be, at least, more fun to experiment what color of paint dries faster than others, rather than passively watching. I will start:

 

1) Send this letter to Minister of CIC & MPs of British Columbia and asking for their help and advice, then wait for a week. If nothing happens;

2) Send this letter to MPs of the entire parliament and asking for their help and advice, then wait for a week. If nothing happens;

3) Send this letter to MPs of the entire parliament and all the major media in Canada that I can think of, then wait for a week. If nothing happens;

4) Send this letter to all the above and also to known foreign medias and then wait for a week and more. At this point, it is purely watching and amusing...

 

If still nothing happens, I will have to watch the paint dry. But I still can not find any criminal records that disqualify me as a Canadian citizen. If you care to watch the paint dry along with me, this is week 1.

 

Thanks for your time & attention and hope you have a wonderful & miraculous day!

 

Sincerely,

 

Da Chen

 

"

 

After writing the letter, David felt a sense of relief. Although not being religious, he decided to live a life with his fate in the graceful hands of the almighty God.

 

From the time he left China, he had always wondered about this unknown world ahead of him. A flight from China to North America invariably leads to a short day, because of flying East. Soon the darkness descended and it is human nature for people to fall in sleep. David had always been blessed with the ability to sleep soundly in transportation vehicles, being it cars, buses, trains or air planes. He could remember comfortably sleeping like a baby first, but then waking up next morning, feeling extremely anxious, wondering: why am I in the sky now? How is it going to be in this place that I will land? Seeing the rising sun, when it should have been the darkest hours of a 24 hour period in one's biological clock, he felt empty and non-existent, a sort of a ghost living in a real world.

 

Now after going around a circle, he finally got the answer which is: this place that I will land is probably no different at all from the place where I came from. Why should I feel like that I am an alien coming from another planet? He recalled a letter received from one of his best friends in the University of Science and Technology of China -- a letter actually written on paper with ink, like light years away! Does anybody still remember people used to write letters? Not emails? The letter read: ". . . When we were 4 or 5 year old, a group of us, kids from the neighborhood, accidentally wondered into the neighboring village. We thought that we had wondered into a new world. Don't be too excited about this new world that you just happened to wonder into. Fairly soon, it is going to become just your neighboring village. After every 4 or 5 years, a person should always get beyond himself, examining the role models that one used to idolize and gain new knowledge that help to reestablish a fresh perspective about the world".

 

We all live in a confusing time and an entangled world; therefore it is really hard even for countries to calculate which country owes which other countries how many historical debts. As one out of millions of immigrant floating around, in the processes of changing citizenships from one country to another, David felt he would leave the calculation of his debts to professional and certified accountants and attorneys of this world. He would just simply assume that he owes a great debt to every country that he had ever lived in, but nevertheless, happily live out the rest of his life as a normal human being instead of an "alien". There could be times that he would pay more, or some other times less, to get the same deal for being an "alien", but he would treat that as just God's will or the works of market economy.

 

Did Beatles say: "When I find myself in time of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom: let it be"?

 

Or did Blues brothers said: "God always work in his wondrous ways"?

 

Four days after sending his email titled "watching the paint dry" to the minister of immigration and MPs from British Columbia, David's family received a letter from CIC informing them to attend the next citizenship ceremony scheduled in their area. From the date appeared on the letter, the notification was sent out the same day that David wrote his email spam blasting to numerous innocent by standers. He would like to believe that it was God's work not his that made the response coming so quickly. "Maybe CIC was thinking about sending out this notification when I was composing my letter" David explained to other colleagues and students when asked about his citizenship application.

 

Later, he received several phone calls from CIC and local MP's office inquiring whether he had received the notice to attend the next citizenship ceremony. After all, Canada is still more immigrant friendly than United States, and as an evidence, at least an immigrant can have a conversation with live officer from the government.

 

At the citizenship ceremony, David's family stood up and swore to be loyal to Queen Elizabeth II along with hundreds of immigrants from many countries, following a retired colonel dressed in Canadian military uniform. The old colonel was an amiable old gentleman who told stories about how amiable the Queen was in one of her visits to Canada, when he had the pleasure to attend to her. David wasn't sure whether he was supposed to feel such a story is all of a sudden no longer so "alien" or whether he was supposed to still feel such a story is still so "alien" and in a galaxy far, far away.

 

On the way home from the Citizenship ceremony, David and Jade went straight to the designated immigration office to apply for Canadian passport so they can travel. Their daughter Crystal Chen was singing a song that she learned from kindergarten:

 

I am a little coconut

Sitting on a coco ground

Everybody sits on me

That is why I crack to seeds

I am a nut, coco, I am nut, coco, I am a nut, I am a nut . . .

 

David started the conversation: "look at that little nut. What can I say? We are a nut family. I recall that Dallas souvenir shop had a mug with the phrase: 'my family tree is full of nuts' printed on it". "What do you mean we are nuts?" Jade replied. "Well, I mean we moved from US to Canada, because it took too long to get a green card there. Then we came to Canada and had just gone through a nightmarish application process to get our Canadian citizenship. And it seems that we are going to go through another nightmarish green card application process again if we want to work in US, as if we really enjoy immigration applications, and we just thrive in this kind of challenges".

 

Speaking of the nightmarish "immigration application", that was what broke the "American dream" for David's first trip to the United States. For people who never need to worry about things such as "immigration status", it seems like a waste of time keeping up with immigration rules and regulations. For most immigrants who had gone through the immigration processes, it is a life changing experience one would probably never forget. Although afterwards, most immigrants would simply chose to appear normal and pretend not to feel the pain and not to dwell on the bitterness of the immigration application and focus their attentions on raising 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants.

 

David's immigration application is by no means the most difficult type of cases, comparing to immigrants starting from "illegal alien" status. He had always stayed legal after entering United States as a foreign student on F-1 visa status. After graduation, there was a one year period which foreign students could work on "practical training" status with an employment authorization document (EAD). In fact, when David graduated, each of the foreign students was allowed two practical training periods, one called "curriculum practical training" and another "post curriculum practical training" with one year each in length. If an F-1 student isn't finished with using curriculum practical training, then the time left could be carried over for employment after graduation. David started his employment with two practical training periods left, which is way more relaxed than got two timeouts left after the "2 minute warning" of an American Football game. He applied for H1-B visa as a skilled professional and got approved. So far so good, and David started looking for an immigration lawyer to help applying for a green card, which is actually in pink color these days, also called "permanent resident alien" registration card. But that was about the end of all the good times with this journey of immigration status.

 

David's employer Soil Engineering Inc. started cutting people because of a downturn in the environmental industry. Everyone in the office was teaching David a new English phrase "last hired, first fired". This first cut included 3 employees -- David Chen, a Chinese immigrant with Master of Science degree in Environmental geology, almost 2 years of services, Salem Badat, a Pakistani immigrant with Master of Science degree in Environmental engineering, almost 1 year of services, and Bill Milford a 50 year old senior manager transferee from Chicago office with 20 years of services. They were all truly close to "last hired" in the office.

 

It wasn't too bitter at the time for David, because he felt he could not even speak 5th grade level English yet. Maybe he was overpaid and not truly qualified for the job. Plus he was only 24 and how much could a young boy truly care about jobs and expenses? Speaking of expenses, he unexpectedly got several weeks' paycheck for "severance pay", the meaning of which he didn't even understand at the time. So he was quite grateful.

 

Luckily, computer and Internet started taking off, and as a computer geek, he quickly found another job and career while continuing with his H1-B status as a programmer. He felt this new career more interesting and futuristic than a career as an environmental scientist. While his career started moving along again, he found the rocky road of applying for a green card had just started.

 

With the help of his employer Cincinnati Times Chronicle, the local newspaper, he started applying for his green card. The first step of applying for a green card is to go through a process called "Labor Certificate". The purpose of this step is for the employer to prove to the Department of Labor that there is no qualified local candidate willing to take the vacant job. Therefore the alien applicant can get a "Labor Certificate". Such a process takes one year and a half to two years depending on different people's luck. David thought this was fair enough. After all, a country should take care of her native citizens first, to be a normal sovereign country.

 

Then an employment based green card applicant is supposed to ask his or her employer to file a form called I-140 to move into the next stage. The date which I-140 was filed, was a landmark date called "priority date", a notorious date for many immigrants. The interesting thing about the priority date is that, besides marking the beginning of the I-140 application, which usually takes at about two years to complete for many immigrants, it also serves as a "number" as someone "take a number" from a machine in AAA or BMV when the office is busy. The waiting lines were especially long for immigrants from People's Republic of China and India around the year 2000. David's first US graduate school roommate, who was from Republic of China (or Taiwan), got his green card 6 months after getting his "Labor Certificate" approved.

 

There are many, many I-140 applicants lined up from India and P.R. China waiting for a small quota allocated to their countries. David suddenly remembered one famous quote from Chairman Mao: "birth must be controlled!" and think US INS must have been thinking along the same line as Chairman Mao, while forgetting the fact that most of the other US governmental branches were criticizing the "birth control" policy as a form of human rights abuse.

 

INS came up with this "priority date" system, telling every immigrants waiting in line that they are now processing applications for people with certain "priority date", much like the Bureau of Motor Vehicle clerks telling customers, they are working on "number 13 customer" and rest of the customers should just be patient. Looking at the line that David was standing in, in late1998, the "priority date" for Chinese born immigrants was something close to April 1996. Another odd thing about the "priority date" system is that: it is not based on citizenship of the applicant, but rather based on "birth place" of the applicant. Therefore, such a system is not based on "racism" or "citizehshipism", but based on "birth-placism". If David were to go through the same employment based application process for green card, he would run into the same problem again even after becoming a Canadian, Australian or some other kind of citizen who can now buy a British Airway ticket, without worrying about "transit visa". On the other hand, Queen's subjects born in different places could be treated differently depending on the GDP of the "birth places".

 

In early 1999, David also wished that he would receive a Babu style visa renew application, because he was going to use up the upper limit of his H-1B visa after changing from F-1 to H-1. But INS is more or less like a gargantuan malfunctioning vending machine. It usually only takes in coins and bills (actually checks and forms) but rarely spit out anything. No phone call can ever get into an INS office from published numbers, although insiders, just like vending machine maintenance crews, could obviously cut in and occasionally arrange the merchandise items. When a non-functional vending machine does dish out a piece of paper, it is either miraculous or spooky.

 

No paper ever came from INS about David's pending expiration of his H-1B visa, but his $5,000 market price employed lawyer wrote him a letter ". . .based on your upper limit of you H-1B visa expiration date and the present status of the priority date system, I advise you to make other arrangements. . .".

 

That was in a nutshell how David and his family made plans to immigrate to Canada, before the Chen family priority date became current in US. Their Canadian "permanent residency" status was quickly approved 6 months after heeding the immigration lawyer's advice. Sarcastically, their "priority date" became current in US shortly after, and his family was able to proceed with the next step of filing for I-485. After filing for I-485, the H-1B visa 6 year limit no longer apply to David and his family, since US INS permits people during "changing of status", in this case from H1-B to Green Card, to hold expired H1-B visa but apply for EAD (employment authorization document). David held an EAD for about half a year when he called the INS answering machine and got a robot voice telling him his waiting period for green card would be 450 days to 600 days more for the I-485 to go through.

 

That was when David's entire family moved from Cincinnati, Ohio to Vancouver of BC Canada for a speedier process to obtain freedom of travel to most part of the world.

 

At that time, David no longer held grudge against his mother land China for so called "Tian An Men Massacre". After witnessing the degradation of people's lives in Eastern Europe and Russia, David believed what Chinese government said about his country was true in 1989: "stability trumps everything". He still mourned for people who lost their lives in that tragic event and sympathized with his friends who were traumatized by it, but more painfully, he regretted his hotheadedness in those years. After all, young people are often the sacrificial lambs to the "ideas and isms". His generation simply took their turn to sacrifice and now it's their turn to disappear into the darkness as a natural process of human history. Now that he became a little older and probably a little wiser, he started admiring how the even older generation of "communist" Chinese leaders had silently and tactfully corrected mistakes before 1989.

 

China is now a country with "Chinese style socialism", which is the equivalent of "Chinese style capitalism". Half of the black is the same color as half of the white, if you ask any web designer. Although very impressive and important in the development process, Chinese government can not take all of the credits for the country's rapid economical advancements. More importantly, Chinese people completely lost interests in "ideas and isms" and only focused on economy in the last decade and a half. That is the biggest change about China from David's observation and probably the most important one. The 1960's Chinese style "Culture revolution" and "ideological struggle" had definitely moved out of China to places like Taiwan and to a certain degree -- US and other parts of the world.

 

Like any investments in life, the investment of a citizenship could be a success or a failure. David remembered one of his former colleagues, Miodrag Puacavici, once told him the story about the Yugoslavia passport. "When I was a child, the Yugoslavian passport was the best to have in Europe. We could travel to Eastern block of the continent or the Western block. People in Yugoslavia were among the happiest in Europe. But then Tito died . . ." The guy was clearly missing "totalitarianism regime" and showed no love for democracy and freedom enjoyed by current broken apart former Yugoslavian republics. But who could blame him, how much does the struggle of "ideas and isms" have anything to do with the life of common mortals?

 

For David himself, he found unimaginable in his childhood era to cast away "isms" including "patriotism". But now, simply because holding a Chinese passport can not travel to Sweden or buy a British Airway ticket without a visa, he was quite happy to trade his superficial "ism" and loyalty for a different color on the cover of his passport. The trade was at a price of best years of his life and a sworn allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II.

 

It's been real, it's been fun and it's been real fun, but fun has to stop for real work to be underway. Now that David can travel with his new found freedom, the other problem is money. After citizenship, the other thing preventing David from buying tickets to Europe or US is a big enough paycheck.

 

"Why do corporations go into business?" The economic professor Chuck Berry asked the class. One young student answered timidly: "to make money"? The economic professor replied loudly and scornfully: "No, to make a PROFIT, not money! Money is something you can make in your basement with a printer -- and it's illegal".

 

Why do immigrants go through their troubles to immigrate? "Economics" whispered mountains and oceans in the wind.

 

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