Ever since we turned the air conditioning off for the season (and that was only like, a month and a half ago thanks to the looong Georgia summer) the lack of ventilation throughout the apartment brought an interesting smell to our attention. It's kinda like the smell you would expect at the end of the night in some sort of cheap Asian fusion restaurant. You know, the type of place that serves Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Pakistani and a bit of Indian thrown in for good measure; a place that is about as authentic as the Olive Garden only it desecrates about ten cultures at a time instead of just one.
And this is a smell that my olfactory organs found very familiar.
You see, the first place I lived in by myself in Nashville had very thin walls and interconnected plumbing as well as ventilation systems that knew no boundaries so I would often catch whiffs of what my neighbors were cooking up. And it was never good smells, like I had often experienced in Italy (where if you're walking the streets around lunch or dinner time your appetite grows exponentially as you pass every open kitchen window). No, they were always wafts of awfulness akin to rotted produce or spoiled milk. An especially awful smell seemed to only appear every few weeks from the apartment next door where a Pakistani man dwelled. I only imagined what kind of concoction could possibly smell this bad. Boiled cabbage and sweat-drenched socks, perhaps? Anyway, it was bad.
And now it's back with a vengeance thanks to our what-we-assume-to-be Korean neighbors. Except it's there every day, every moment of the damn day. What's weird is that we share a side of our apartment with these people and we have never heard a single sound from them. No noise, just smells. They must sit silently, constantly and tirelessly stirring their enormous pots of awful stew. Our coat closet has been hit the hardest and we have to leave it open once in a while to prevent full jacket contamination. Otherwise we run the risk of bringing the smell with us everywhere we go. And that is not acceptable.
I guess we'll just have to bear it until it's time to turn the heat on, except that might not be for another couple of months knowing the meteorological perplexities of the deep South.
Crap bag.
And this is a smell that my olfactory organs found very familiar.
You see, the first place I lived in by myself in Nashville had very thin walls and interconnected plumbing as well as ventilation systems that knew no boundaries so I would often catch whiffs of what my neighbors were cooking up. And it was never good smells, like I had often experienced in Italy (where if you're walking the streets around lunch or dinner time your appetite grows exponentially as you pass every open kitchen window). No, they were always wafts of awfulness akin to rotted produce or spoiled milk. An especially awful smell seemed to only appear every few weeks from the apartment next door where a Pakistani man dwelled. I only imagined what kind of concoction could possibly smell this bad. Boiled cabbage and sweat-drenched socks, perhaps? Anyway, it was bad.
And now it's back with a vengeance thanks to our what-we-assume-to-be Korean neighbors. Except it's there every day, every moment of the damn day. What's weird is that we share a side of our apartment with these people and we have never heard a single sound from them. No noise, just smells. They must sit silently, constantly and tirelessly stirring their enormous pots of awful stew. Our coat closet has been hit the hardest and we have to leave it open once in a while to prevent full jacket contamination. Otherwise we run the risk of bringing the smell with us everywhere we go. And that is not acceptable.
I guess we'll just have to bear it until it's time to turn the heat on, except that might not be for another couple of months knowing the meteorological perplexities of the deep South.
Crap bag.
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