This is a great illustration to Oakeshott’s point about general rules of conduct:
I could have made everybody’s life at work less pleasant by heating borscht in a shared microwave and eating pickled cabbage in the office. But I don’t do it, much as I love these foods.
It’s not about people not eating ethnic foods. Eat them, of course. We all love our ethnic foods. I’m positively crazy about mine. But we are all happier if we keep the particularly ethnic components away from shared spaces.
Man, this brings back memories. The chinese students in my grad student lab used to microwave fish. It also echoes the ever-reliable asian american trope of “school lunch smelled weird” as a defining childhood trauma.
Urmi Bhattacharyya, the Rosa Palak of the break room.
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This is legit hilarious. 😆😆😆
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Good news:
https://x.com/i/status/2011532542718197970
Plus, our military is very occupied in the Caribbean. We are busy and can’t be bothered.
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Let’s see how long this lasts. War might be back on the menu in a couple of months, who knows.
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I know it’s not for everyone, but… over years of getting invited to friends’ houses I learned to love the knock-you-over smells of their parents’ kitchens. Like a big sign saying “REAL FOOD HERE”. Shrimp paste. Crab soup. Sau Rieng. Colanders full of tiny fish on the kitchen table. Garlic-peeling parties.
Given the choice, I’d take those odors at the office any day over having to endure close proximity with other people’s perfume, cologne, or Tide detergent. The fish and garlic don’t give me a splitting headache.
In a perfect world, people would be considerate about all those things. But, you know, synthetic perfumes first. That’s chemical warfare.
-ethyl
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This comment made me very hungry. I want to go lick some shrimp paste and I don’t even know what it is. 😁😁
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Shrimp paste, as far as I can tell, is ground shrimp mixed with tons of salt and fermented.
I once woke up in a house in a fish market in Da Nang, to an overwhelming odor and a funny scraping noise. I got up and peered, squinting, out the window. In the courtyard outside, a man with a big squeegee on a pole was spreading shrimp paste in long even rows in the sun.
The smell was eye-watering. I could taste the air.
Those were the days. Still makes me kind of nostalgic.
-ethyl
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OK, I’m not hungry anymore, so thank you.
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😀
I recall I was dreadfully ill (for other reasons) at the time, so it didn’t make me hungry either.
But it was the smell of adventure!
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No, I get it. It’s really great to explore the different olfactory experiences when one travels.
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“It’s really great to explore the different olfactory experiences when one travels”
Not as easy in Europe…. though Obor market in Bucharest has almost knocked me out three times…
One with overpowering smell of amonia in a section selling lots of white cheese…
Another with a bug ole pile of freshly pickled cabbage leaves (whole leaves not shredded) in the sun
Another time, just before easter, very freshly slaughtered lamb carcasses (complete with heads… in plastic bags….) a lot of them (for those who think meat magically appears in supermarkets…. freshly slaughtered and dressed carcasses have a very characteristic odor…. multiply it by a hundred and…. it will knock you off your feet.
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People are doing everything they can to slaughter my appetite, which is a good thing and I’m glad.
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What puzzles me here is that palak paneer doesn’t have an overwhelming smell. I feel like there’s more to this story, like a series of obnoxious behaviors from the Indian grad students. Indian immigrants are frequently unintentionally annoying to Americans.
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if you bring stinky food to eat at work eat outside or in your car or eat it cold so the smell doesn’t permeate the work place.
I had a coworker bring DURIAN to eat at work. The lack of social awareness people have is truly mind-boggling.
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Exactly. I travel quite a bit and every time I make an effort to be respectful of the people’s customs. If somebody points out that my behavior is disruptive, I apologize and amend it. It’s the height of entitlement to inform people that bad smells are cultural. Of course, they are. And if you choose to inflict yourself on people, try to keep your cultural manifestations to a polite minimum.
A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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