@ icebrain:

Heh! I figured that. :)

@ Mitlik:

I do intend to finish that one sometime soon. I just ran out of inspiration and did not feel like writing more about that clusterfuck day. But yeah, I do have half-finished draft for part 2 and an outline for part 3. They just need some work, and I have been procrastinating. :)

Who stops there?

Also, please don’t let this be another dead ended stub like Fan Day

That sounded bad. I meant rolling my eyes to your managers’ assertions, not to the post!

Great post; I’ve gone back and forth between smiling and rolling my eyes ;) And the cliffhanger is killing me!

Liudvikas wrote:

@ Luke Maciak:
Yes, it is.
It’s not like you can say – screw you guys I’m going home. You need money, so the choice is either get raped or move to europe.

Well, for some values of europe. Right now I wouldn’t move to, say, Greece or here (Portugal).

We are supposed to get sick days, but considering that around 20% IIRC of our workforce doesn’t have any contract at all – like freelancers, except they have all the disadvantages of a contracted worker – that doesn’t mean much. We, in a democratic time, have managed to remove all the working rights our grandparents fought for during the fascist regime. Quite an accomplishment.

@ Luke Maciak:
That might work if you figure out how to rape people over the phone.

I wonder how much school programs differ in USA, maybe your straight A’s were just the result of easier schooling :)

As for religiousness – the previous pope was greatly appreciated by the Polish. Perhaps it’s just nationalistic pride (which is even worse), it smells bad in either case. Of course USA is worse in both counts, so it’s no big deal.

@ Liudvikas:

Let’s outsource raping to India. That should cut the costs. :P

Why leave Poland? It was mostly random. It was late 90’s, and our name was pulled out of the hat in the Green Card Lottery. It meant I had a shot at schooling and career in the big US of A which back then was the mighty super-power that had a booming economy, and was at the forefront of all this crazy internet stuff. It was an exciting opportunity that I did not want to miss. And truly it was exciting. I remember a senior in HS here in US and watching the economy explode upwards as the .com bubble inflated it bigger and bigger. It was awesome being young, naive and watching this amazing technological revolution sweeping the nation, changing the way people did business. Then of course the bubble burst around the time when I was about the graduate college with my CS degree. Fun times!

The truth is that I really like it here – I don’t see myself going back. I think I made out pretty well – I’m not sure if I would have gotten the education I did back there. The whole thing about moving, starting over in a new country motivated me to work hard. I was a C student in Poland, but when I came here I became a straight A student. If you told the 16 year old me that he would be teaching at a university as a part time job, he would probably not believe you.

As for Poland being religious – it’s fairly relative. It’s mostly a cultural thing – majority of people are Catholic in a cultural sense. We share customs, traditions and religious holidays – but most people (especially in big cities like Warsaw) are quite liberal and not fervently religious or conservative.

@ Luke Maciak:
I’m in! But you know there’s just so much raping we could accomplish by ourselves. We would need a lot of helpers if we intend to rape everyone not moving to Europe. I’m a little bit discouraged by the expenses that such expansive work force would entail.

Seriously though, why leave Poland? It’s a bit too religious for my taste, but it’s still Europe.

Liudvikas wrote:

Either get raped or move to europe.

That should be the advertising slogan of our new “European Travels” agency. :P

@ Luke Maciak:
Yes, it is.
It’s not like you can say – screw you guys I’m going home. You need money, so the choice is either get raped or move to europe.

@ Liudvikas:

I don’t really have a preferred format. Whatever works on teh Kindle is fine by me.

@ Victoria:

Yeah, no paid sick days is fairly typical for US. In fact the whole concept of “vacation days” is considered an optional perk for your benefits package. That said, I could theoretically work from home if I had to (unless something physically breaks that is). Sometimes that’s what they do when we get snowed in – they just forward your office phone to your cell, and you work from home. :)

@ Liudvikas:

Well, we do get national holidays off. Only the big ones though. Today is President’s day for example, and a lot of people have off. Most people I know are working though. So for me all it meant was less traffic on the road during the morning commute.

Wait… Is it still rape if we get paid for it? :P