I smelled like curries in my first week in the UK, here’s why
The one thing your research didn't prepare you for
I moved to the UK at the end of March a few years ago. I was given a serviced apartment by my employer to live in for a month until I find a permanent place to rent. My relocation was easy, I moved with two bags, one with a handful of clothes and the other full of food ( rice, dhal ) and spices. Yes, you heard it right, I even bought a kilo of rice and 500g packet of dhal with me so that I have something to survive until I get comfortable with my surroundings and grocery shopping. That aside, everything was going great. But after a couple of days, when I left home and get to the bus to go to the office, I was getting a whiff of a curry smell and it was coming from my jacket.
I felt embarrassed and was shamefully looking around to see if anybody notices my curry smell. Being the only non-white person on the whole bus didn’t help my anxiousness at all. After coming to the office, I went straight to the ladies to figure out if it was only my jacket, or me. After confirming the smell is actually coming from the jacket, I put it furthest in the coat rack. After coming home, I realized the smell is actually persistent in my apartment as well and for while, I couldn’t understand how it happened or what to do.
Here’s the thing, I have lived my whole life in Sri Lanka with frequent travels overseas. None of which prepared me for what is happening. I had two options, find the root cause and fix it so that I can keep on cooking or stop cooking. Stopping the cooking was really not an option as I haven’t got my first-month salary and was still living off the small amount of money I brought from home. So I did not have enough money to rely on takeaways.
I spent some time thinking about what is happening and how is it different from back home, where the smell was never a problem. What has happened here is, since I moved in Winter, I never thought of keeping the windows open. The kitchen was an open plan without a window and the only window which was there was in the living room side. There was a cooker hood to get all the smoke out when cooking, but it was weak when sucking the smell of spices. So the smell kept lingering around. We never had the problem back home because our windows are usually open and we also have grills on top of windows so fresh air was constantly coming in.
I used to have the coat rack in the living room. So the first thing I did was remove the coat rack. For the rest of my stay, I kept the open plan area tightly closed so the smell don't escape to the bedroom and tried to keep the window open at least for few hours a day.
When I moved to the place I rented, the situation was not that different. It’s incredibly hard to find non-open-plan places to rent. However this time I knew what to do. No clothes in the living room, keep the window open and the door closed. I also used a lot of scented candles every time after cooking as well.
Have you faced similar embarrassing situations when you move countries? I would love to hear about your experience in the comments.
