Whew.
The smell was indeed what I remember from Phuket -- which is to say, rotting flesh -- but it wasn't rotting human flesh. Kinda funny how it all smells the same.
Our neighbor had indeed gone on vacation and something-or-other happened to his massive South-African-Embassy-supplied freezer, leaving all his hoarded meat products to putrefy in the heat.
Funny story I can now tell about said weird little neighbor, without appearing ghoulish (Ryan, apparently, suffers no such compunction -- see previous post's comments): Probably because of security (or, possibly, just 'cause it's India), no apartments in my building are actually numbered. There are two per floor, and one has to know "turn right out of the elevator" or "turn left out of the elevator." Consequently (or, possibly, just 'cause it's India), delivery people are always getting confused.
Our WLN is constantly ordering pizzas and the like, which half the time arrive at our door, and which we good-naturedly redirect to him. We tend not to order quite as much stuff, in part because K likes to sneak a cigarette while going to pick up the stuff himself. But there was one night we were really craving mint chocolate chip ice cream, and, well, Baskin Robbins here delivers (and yes, that's as fraught with trouble as it sounds). When an hour had passed and we still didn't have our dessert, K called them back and walked through the delivery process with them in Hinglish.
We determined that they found the right building, turned the wrong way out of the elevator -- and delivery was accepted.
What kind of neighbor, I'd like to know, gets his doorbell rung at 8 PM and thinks "oh - unsolicited door-to-door ice cream? Mm, don't mind if I do"?
Another macabre digression. (I'm trying yet another home cure for my cold, this one courtesy of the British Isles: tea with rum. And no, I'm not developing Foreign Service liver. It's precisely because I'm not much of a drinker that all these work so well. I could publish a companion volume to that bible of the developing world, Donde No Hay Doctor. I'd call it Hay Bartender, Si, Si. Look, these things work, ok?)
Anyway. A related memory:
The main makeshift morgue in post-tsunami Phuket was, true Thai-style, a combination of sort-of-refrigerated morgue trailers, tent camp, and street festival, and an absolute sensory riot of color, mixed food and corpse odors, and the roar of generators. When I went there with an American colleague, we were greeted by Thailand's most famous forensic pathologist, who looks like a female Iggy Pop (dyed spiky hair, heavy spiky bracelets, and stylishly slashed jeans). Before we could start our interview, a man appeared with a variety of ice cream, with the pathologist insisted we take. I was gratefully mid-cone (it was well over 100 degrees out), when my colleague leaned over and mused, "where do you suppose they keep the ice cream?"
Our neighbor had indeed gone on vacation and something-or-other happened to his massive South-African-Embassy-supplied freezer, leaving all his hoarded meat products to putrefy in the heat.
Funny story I can now tell about said weird little neighbor, without appearing ghoulish (Ryan, apparently, suffers no such compunction -- see previous post's comments): Probably because of security (or, possibly, just 'cause it's India), no apartments in my building are actually numbered. There are two per floor, and one has to know "turn right out of the elevator" or "turn left out of the elevator." Consequently (or, possibly, just 'cause it's India), delivery people are always getting confused.
Our WLN is constantly ordering pizzas and the like, which half the time arrive at our door, and which we good-naturedly redirect to him. We tend not to order quite as much stuff, in part because K likes to sneak a cigarette while going to pick up the stuff himself. But there was one night we were really craving mint chocolate chip ice cream, and, well, Baskin Robbins here delivers (and yes, that's as fraught with trouble as it sounds). When an hour had passed and we still didn't have our dessert, K called them back and walked through the delivery process with them in Hinglish.
We determined that they found the right building, turned the wrong way out of the elevator -- and delivery was accepted.
What kind of neighbor, I'd like to know, gets his doorbell rung at 8 PM and thinks "oh - unsolicited door-to-door ice cream? Mm, don't mind if I do"?
Another macabre digression. (I'm trying yet another home cure for my cold, this one courtesy of the British Isles: tea with rum. And no, I'm not developing Foreign Service liver. It's precisely because I'm not much of a drinker that all these work so well. I could publish a companion volume to that bible of the developing world, Donde No Hay Doctor. I'd call it Hay Bartender, Si, Si. Look, these things work, ok?)
Anyway. A related memory:
The main makeshift morgue in post-tsunami Phuket was, true Thai-style, a combination of sort-of-refrigerated morgue trailers, tent camp, and street festival, and an absolute sensory riot of color, mixed food and corpse odors, and the roar of generators. When I went there with an American colleague, we were greeted by Thailand's most famous forensic pathologist, who looks like a female Iggy Pop (dyed spiky hair, heavy spiky bracelets, and stylishly slashed jeans). Before we could start our interview, a man appeared with a variety of ice cream, with the pathologist insisted we take. I was gratefully mid-cone (it was well over 100 degrees out), when my colleague leaned over and mused, "where do you suppose they keep the ice cream?"
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