Romance about Immigration

unless something extraordinary happens. Sometimes if the team is undilutedly nonimmigrant, it treats the sole immigrant as a porcelain figurine – people are careful with every word, every gesture, out of best intentions. Sometimes curiosity prevails and if it is determined that the man is normal he is asked questions. Or inconsistencies may be pointed gently.

A man comes to work for the first day. The lines of his pressed pants will cut a fly in motion. From his white shirt the light of neon lights reflects. The colleagues welcome him, present him chair, pen and notepad, organise a tour for him at the departments with which he will work. The next day our man goes to work again with pressed trousers and shirt. Oh, say the colleagues, you will probably celebrate with your wife something and you will not have time to go home and get changed. On the third day a colleague - himself a recent immigrant - pulls our man by the ironed sleeve and says, look, we work here in jeans and T-shirts, no matter that we are big shots. The newly appointed specialist phones his wife and sais, my love, come to pick me up aftwer work, we should go shopping, I do not have appropriate work clothing, I need jeans.

On Friday night the team regularly passes a glass or two of good beer at the nearest pub to oil the work relationship mechanism. Beer tends to untie tongues and a colleague gathers all his courage.

- Look, if you want you may not answer, of course, but purely out of curiosity, what was your salary at the previous location, how much the head of a laboratory costs there?

- It is not embarrassing! - The figure is thrown on the table.

- Hmm, I do not want to upset you, but I think you are in for disappointment. In our company, only the bosses on the seventeenth floor and up get that much; until that you have a lot of climbing. Nobody will pay you that much per hour here!

- Why per hour? Per month!

- Waiter, round of beer to everyone! My treat! I was closest to the amount, but I thought it was per diem!

Emigration from big city to small towns is secondary. The metropolis is more open to new people, there is usually more work and it is easier to come across a friendly group of former compatriots for consolation purposes. Some of the immigrants remain in the city, some decide to take it easy and take the route towards slow-moving waters. These waters are steeped with unexpected pleasantness and troubles, new meetings, new challenges.

A group of parent have gatheres on Saturday to spring clean the old children's camp. The female team brushess out cobwebs, washes the survived windows, makes a list of necessary minor repairs. The men force cuts grass, replaces tiles and repaires the bathroom and kitchen. At certain time it turns out that we have ran out of all detergents and we organize an expedition for coffee and soap. Because the ladies’s group is ahead of schedule a whole car of us go. The soap is purchas