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".