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Cubicle Dweller Sandwich

Sandwich preference is a very personal thing. I consider it a reflection of a person’s personality — a collage of favourite flavours, engineered to work in harmony to satisfy a person’s most basic desires. What you choose to put in your sandwich truly reveals who you are.

So here I am — I will describe what is, to me, the perfect sandwich. This has to be built in the correct order to achieve the correct interplay of taste and texture.

Ingredents:

• alfalfa sprouts

• green leaf lettuce

• 1 vine-ripened tomato

• 1 kosher dill pickle

• mozzarella cheese, thinly sliced

• dijon mustard (the kind with the seeds)

• Miracle Whip (NOT mayonnaise)

• smoked breast of penguin (substitute duck where penguin is either unavailable or illegal)

• sourdough bread, thinly sliced and toasted

Assembly:

The order of these ingredients is very important.

Place two pieces of Sourdough bread, thinly-sliced and lightly toasted, on your bread board and begin building on it as follows:

On one slice, carefully spread the Miracle Whip so that it’s about 3 millimetres thick in the centre, but only 1 millimetre at the edges.

Onto the Miracle Whip, place a 1 centimetre layer of lightly packed alfalfa sprouts. The sprouts will absorb the Miracle Whip at the centre.

Onto the layer of sprouts, place a single 5 millimetre layer of vine-ripened tomato. Again, the sprouts will absorb the juice. Healthful and practical things, sprouts are.

Add 5 millimetres of the thinly-sliced mozzarella and a single leaf of lettuce. The cheese provides tasty structural integrity to the vegetable matter and acts as a moisture barrier between the tomato and the lettuce (never let your lettuce get soggy).

Add the penguin, but not too thickly. This is an ensemble piece — don’t let your penguin become the prima donna. If it tries, give it a stern talking-to.

Slice the pickle lengthwise in 3 millimetre slices and place them across the width of the sandwich.

Finally, on the second slice of sourdough, lavishly spread the brown, seedy dijon and mount the slice on the pickles to complete the sandwich.

At this point, you may now take the sandwich to your favourite cubicle and consume it without relish. I mean don’t use pickle relish. By all means, enjoy eating the Cubicle Dweller Sandwich™.

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The art of sandwich

In Mostly Harmless, Douglas Adams wrote, “There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth.”

When I was a student, I must have had far too much time on my hands, because if there is only one thing that I am truly good at, it is making sandwiches. When I make a sandwich, it’s a perfect creation. Some people just slap a few things between a couple of slices of white bread and stuff it into their mouths. I suppose for them it gets the job done — it puts matter in their bellies. But there’s so much more to the experience. It’s an experience that begins with sandwich architecture, which I think Douglas Adams understood:

There was also the geometry of the slice to be refined: the precise relationships between the width and height of the slice and also its thickness which would give the proper sense of bulk and weight to the finished sandwich: here again, lightness was a virtue, but so too were firmness, generosity and that promise of succulence and savour that is the hallmark of a truly intense sandwich experience.

Such a deep understanding of the delicate nuances of sandwich presentation and form is rare.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to make myself a sandwich for breakfast.

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A tearful farewell

Another shock at the cube farm. After the replacement of our good old coffee urns with a coffee vending machine, I didn’t think it could get worse. It has.

Miss Vickie's sea salt and malt vinegar potato chipsThere’s a big empty spot in the employee lounge where the snack vending machine used to be. That’s right — one of our principal food sources has vanished.

I don’t know what to say, but that my heart is heavy with the loss. It was a provider of nourishment. From it’s glowing window, it offered all the staples of the cubicle diet.

No more Mr. Big or Kit Kat. No more giant double chocolate chunk cookies. And worst of all — and I have a tear in my eye as I type this — no more Miss Vickie’s sea salt and malt vinegar homestyle potato chips.

We will miss you Miss Vickie. You touched all of our hearts, as well as our major arteries.

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Another appy onda

MISSING. Have you seen this H?

The “H” is missing from the front of my Honda. This isn’t a new development — it has been missing for quite a while, and every now and then I’ll notice its absence. Those two empty little holes at the front edge of the hood remind me that my car had something taken from it.

Where did it go? I always assumed it was just the whim of some teenage punk. Was it for his collection? Do kids show off shoeboxes full of their latest prizes — Honda, Acura, Toyota, … maybe even Oldsmobile? “Hey, dude,” he probably brags to his friends, “check out the KIA logo I ripped off a van last night!”

I really would like to replace it. Maybe there’s a black market in these things, and kids are recruited to harvest them from parked cars in the dead of night. And on certain streets, near certain alleys, there are shadowy characters like that trenchcoat-wearing character on Sesame Street who skulk in shadows, saying “Psst. Wanna buy an H?”

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Light switches: don’t be left in the dark

You might be surprised to know that there is more than one way to turn on a light. Allow me to explain.

The common light switch, a “rocker” switch, which is usually inset into the wall, has only two positions: on and off. At first blush (which one may in fact do when a switch is turned on at an inopportune moment), the switch is simple to understand, but several nuances exist that complicate the situation.

In North America, the standard installation of a light switch has the light turning on when the switch is flipped up. Most people take this arrangement for granted, but in many other countries, the standard is to flip the switch down to turn on the light. I personally have been stymied by the reversed arrangement; once when I walked into a darkened room, I found that the switch was already flipped up and concluded that I was blind. Since that incident, I have been corrected on that hasty conclusion, and I have also begun to take notice of light switches more than is usual for an average switch-user. Now that I am aware that other countries have different standards of light-switch installation, I rarely make the same mistake.

In an older house in Vancouver, however, I encountered a switch that consisted to two push buttons: one for on, one for off (to use the vernacular). Having been thwarted before, I decided to call in an expert—an electrician by the name of Armand, whom I befriended during my missionary work in the Sudan. Armand was of the opinion that the top button would initiate a closed circuit mode select, which I heartily supported with a round of vodka martinis (no olive or twist—a Dickens of a drink). However, considering the elderly nature of the device, the two of us decided it would be best if we researched the matter first before taking any action.

After we had drained our sixth martini, for which Armand had a special family recipe involving a brand of Vietnamese vodka that smelled suspiciously of rubbing alcohol, I decided to bite the bullet and simply push a button, and any damn button would do. Staring down the switch as would a bullfighter trying to intimidate an angry bull, I advanced. I pushed a button. A light came on.

To celebrate our success, Armand fabricated another martini, and I passed out on the floor. When I awoke, I pondered the dilemma of the push-button switch as I applied a cold compress to my aching head, and I realised that I could not remember which button I had pushed. Armand was of little help either, as he had been rendered blind by the foreign vodka. To this day, the dilemma of the dual-button light switch frustrates me. All I am able to do is spread the word that there is more than one way to turn on a light.

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