A Hungarian lady receiving us at her house for dinner, telling us an anecdote of her time as a university physics professor. The English is fluent, but there's an accent to it, more Latin than Hungarian. The story went:



I used to work in labs a lot, I was doing my research. I had two assistants, and one day they walk into the lab carrying some stuff, it's early in the morning and they don't notice I'm in my office, just next door. I heard that they were talking and knew that they didn't know I was there, but I let them talk and I listend.



One of them was saying,

"Oh my god, I can't stand all these immigrants, coming over here, taking over, stealing our jobs, keeping our money. Last week a new abasto (a groceery store) opened outside my house."



And the other one says,

"Don't say that. I have an abasto outside my house too. Have you ever observed these Portuguese? Really watched them carefully?"



And the first one says, "No, why should I?"



And he says "Well I have. At 5am, their lights are on. At 7.30 they open for business. At one they close for lunch but don't even leave their shop, they just clean up. At two they open and stay open until 8. At 10 they're still in."



And the assisstant asked: "So?" because he couldn't get where the other was getting at.



"So, the other assistant says, "So you think any Venezuelan would be that stupid to work that much?"



She delivers the punchline masterfully and everybody laughs.