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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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