Talei tries Durian!

Talei has always claimed to have a lousy sense of smell. Well ...

Out at dinner one night in Manila, just as a tease, after asking her if she'd ever tasted durian and receiving a negative that wasn't coloured with the expected "Oh yuck! NO! Please No! No! No!" I ordered her an iced durian puree, lying through my teeth and saying "You'll love it!", wanting to see her reaction.

Do you know about durian?  If you don't, it's a fruit that tastes fine, sure, rather like chocolate mousse, but the smell!!!  Oh boy, that smell! It's like the rank stench of rotting meat coupled with the odd whiff of breadfruit, old boots and turpentine, and is so lingering, insidious and penetrating most Asian hotels ban the fruit on principle.

I tried some for the first time in Kuala Lumpur last year and ... well, it was a very chic boutique desserts cafe and thus I was determined to be equally chic and worldly by acting as if this durian-eating business was totally within my scope.

Sorry! Couldn't do it! My durian parfait only had to come within a foot of me and my well-honed gag reflexes were fully and instantly engaged!  Eating it ... well, I was determined to do it if only to say I had but I have to say it's desperately counter-intuitive. My body, being relatively normal, is innately tuned to vomiting at the smell of rotting flesh and certainly to NEVER putting it in my mouth.

In the end, chic-be-damned, I sat there holding my nose as I ate. It was nice. Like I said durian is "Natures' Own Chocolate Mousse." and most flavoursome, but oh boy, what was Mother Nature playing at giving it that smell.

Anyway, now it was my turn to inflict it on Talei, so I ordered her that iced durian puree and took out my camera to await her response.

Her reaction?

Yup, absolutely NO REACTION whatsoever!

There she is with the most putrid stench right under her nose, one so bad I'm gagging across the table, two feet away, and she's not reacting at all.  "What is wrong with you???" I say to her.

And she responds with a ...

She's on a big Emo kick at present, entirely determined to never show emotions, especially to The Geriatrics, and not reacting to this hideous smell could very well have been a way to get back at me for this torture ... however, if that's what this was about I can only say "Kudos" because not reacting to the smell of durian can only be called a First Order Heroic Trojan Effort.

Of course, it could also be that she has, like she says, a truly lousy sense of smell.  But whoever knew it could be this bad!