Meeting with Cathay

Ray is wrongly accused and punished

So Sean and I get up on Wednesday to go to Cathay, and our biggest concern is that the taxi driver takes us to Cathay's headquarters and not to the Cathay terminal at the airport. So the cab driver knows exactly where we have to go and we arrive at 9:15 for a 9:30 meeting. Perfect timing. As we are checking in, one of my contacts comes up and asks if either of us are Ray. Not a hard deduction since we are the only Americans in the lobby. She then informs us that we are late and the meeting was at 9:00. I begin to feel like an ass because not only have I made the mistake and feel embarrassed but Sean is guilty by association.

We arrive to the meeting with roughly 20-25 people waiting to hear our presentation. I jump right in and am flying through my slides which is making me nervous because I need to make it last the entire morning and I've already made it through 10 slides in like 10 minutes. Thankfully an Australian dude with sweet glasses begins to break the ice and ask questions. His inquiries open the door for others to ask questions and stretch the first half of our presentation to almost noon which is great.

With the embarrassment of being late still in my head I didn't think the day could get worse. Then we went to lunch. We take a shuttle bus over to the air port to have lunch at a Dim Sum restaurant. The Cathay team orders a bunch of stuff for the table to share, very similar to Tapas. So as stuff arrives they are polite and wait for Sean and I eat first. They are also very persistent with filling our tea cups which never seemed to reach half full. I'm not kidding, two of the guys with us were literally jumping across the table to fill our cups every time we took a sip.

So as I was saying, the food arrived and they wait for us to begin. I ask the logical question of, "what are each of these dishes?" to which they responded; "eat first and we will tell you later".

So being a good account director, and not wanting to come off as an ignorant American I begin to try everything on the table and fumble with my chopsticks. I am proud to say I refused utensils. So there is one dish on the table that just looks nasty. Very similar to the following pic:


So my first assumption is that it was cooked in curry. I like curry so I am thinking that it will mask the taste but I still don't know what the hell it is. It has these sort of pockets and reminds me of Sponge Bob Square Pants so I think to myself, it's probably some sea urchin that I am unfamiliar with. So I take as little as I possibly can and begin to eat it. While it is loaded with curry, it is the most vile texture I have ever tasted and I do a quick mix of chewing and swallowing to get this down. I quickly take a huge gulp of tea to get rid of the taste and feeling. The tea is scalding hot since these dudes are not letting my cup cool off. Regardless, It was a blessing in disguise because I burned my taste buds and didn't taste much after that.

While there was a part of me that didn't want to know what the hell I ate, I am just to curious and had to ask. I don't know what my face looked like when they said Cow Stomach, but I'm sure it wasn't good. Now looking back I realize that I am the only person at the table that actually ate it. They must have been punishing me for being late.

So as we get back to Cathay I am still bothered by the cow stomach and the fact that we were late. Sean and I have some time before the second half of our meeting begins so I go back to my email to check the meeting times. What I am happy to find is that I was correct. Proof below:


So now I am left with the dilemma of vindicating myself or letting it go. Since my laptop is hooked up to the projector I leave the email up on the screen for a few minutes as people filter in but decide to pull it down since it has passed and they didn't seem too concerned.