The other night I made one of my favorite Korean dishes, ojinguh bokkeum, spicy stir-fried squid. I made it with not only squid, but mussels and shrimp as well, just for a laugh. The next night, soon after I polished off the leftovers, my flatmate came home for a chat. After about an hour of inane small-talk he finally got to the point. I'm being asked to leave my flat because my cooking stinks. As in, actually smells too bad for my Italian flatmates to handle. "We just didn't realize that you'd cook so much Asian food," he said lamely. "When we were advertising the flat we had decided that we weren't going to let any Pakistanis in for that reason, the curry, you know."

Interestingly enough, I had let some Chinese cabbage go to waste last week because I thought making my own kim chi might be sort of inconsiderate. Now that they've decided to evict me, though, I'm going to put a few prawns in the lining of their mattresses while they are gone for Christmas. We'll see who stinks then.