Tales from the road: great expectations and the cheese sandwich that wasn’t

Its been a long journey, I’ve arrived at the site of a potential customer in Mumbai. We arrive at the gate (the site is enormous, many buildings spread out over a multi-km complex). Sadly, our hosts have forgotten to arrange transport for us. So we hang off the side of one of the ‘worker busses’ that travel around the complex. That could be the subject of its own epic, but I digress.

Its hot, its humid, the air is dirty. The brand new building we arrive at is somehow already in disrepair. The meeting starts late after standing around uncomfortably for a while. Finally its over, but there is another meeting in the afternoon. We are offered the option to go wait in the cafeteria.

I jump at the chance. I’m not feeling that great, and its a large manufacturing-style cafeteria (trays, counter, that sort of thing). So I pick the least obtrusive thing on the menu, the cheese sandwich.

Now, lets backup a second. A cheese sandwich. You take a softish cheese (Edam, Havarti, Cheddar, Gouda, something like that), you put it on bread, often with a green pepper. It is delicious. You can’t screw it up.

I present the photo on the right. Its what was handed over. The cheese is on the outside. No utensils were available. Somehow the bread has the texture of damp chalk, the cheese is blowing in the wind, kind of hard and crumbly. All there is to drink is prickly-pear from a large cooler.

Great expectations. Smashed.

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