We spend our mornings drinking coffee, reading headlines on our respective glowing devices, and discussing whatever bizarre thing the Internet has coughed up overnight.

Every automobile manufacturer seems to have its own ideas about where everything should go.

The food appears to be the first shock. Visitors arrive expecting hamburgers. This is understandable. Our reputation abroad appears to consist largely of hamburgers, cowboys, and action movies.

Nothing remarkable about them. They weren't large. They weren't brightly colored. They didn't arrive in a velvet pouch guarded by tiny pharmaceutical elves.