I’m sipping an authentic Chai (vanilla moon, extra sweet), listening to Whisky On A Wire and staring at a computer screen. It’s a far cry from the raging, spit flying, head shaking lunatic of yesterday.
Sadly the lunatic of Mr. Hyde was turned lose on a cross culture blunder of universally proportions:
The meat was not on the bun.
If you’re reading this with cross eyes – that’s ok as I haven’t told the story yet. It’s called “reverse climax” – you know, like the movies that tell you the end before the beginning? 
Yesterday evening I decided to calm my craving for some Bar-B-Q and get a pulled pork sandwich. Pulling into one of the three BBQ joints in town, I order a sandwich and sat back to wait (well…stood back would be more truthful as I was inside the building). At last I received my sandwich – ordered with lots of sauce and to go – and head out to the car to eat it as I drove to my next appointment. Raising my pulled pork BBQ sandwich to my mouth I discover that the meat was not on the bun.[@more@]
That’s right. The meat was wrapped up separately from the bread…. This small item was like a nuclear bomb. Mr. Hyde came out in force – throwing spit and verbal incarnations in every directions. He could not understand the cultural influences that would make a ‘to go’ sandwich with out any meat – its like receiving a hamburger with the lettuce, meat, pickle and tomatoes wrapped separately from their bun…
The Hyde mindset goes along the following “that not how we did it back home”, “where I’m from it’s cornbread and chicken”, and “how dare them!”. All and all, itt goes to show that no matter how long you live “overseas”, you never lose certain presuppositional cultural views.
And this is after he’s lived in Idaho for nearly 6 years – a place where “barbecue” is just another word for “grill”…he still goes into culture shock every time he goes into a restaurant and orders the “barbecue”…
at one time MckyDs did separate teh meat from the lettuce. It was called a Big Mac.