Not really what you can call a crisis

When the cold creeps in not quite imperceptibly, nay, in a dramatic way—with leaves turning red and gold, then fall, as in a storm from furious gusts—you would imagine us, belting out Nat King Cole’s haunting, “Autumn Leaves.” Or like new arrivals, you might find us scooping fallen leaves unabashed—some would even send these home glued in albums; an aunt, on her first visit with us, wanted to roll on the carpeted ground for a souvenir shot, while a cousin covered herself up to the chin.

But one Sunday morning after Holy Mass at the Holy Rosary Cathedral, here in Vancouver, we—my sister and I, Demie, and Manang Metring—huddled for none of that under a yellowed gingko tree on the sidewalk, for a mild conspiracy to end our crisis, instead. Still newbies then, we had bemoaned the unwritten civility rule in apartment living regarding noxious smells coming from cooking “exotic food,” and why it heightens in cold weather.

Demie, known to pull out answers for rhetorical questions from the cuff of her sleeves, like my sister’s and my craving for high-flavored, i.e., salty and vinegar-y food, had offered a scientific-sounding explanation about how smells seem to solidify this season. And right above Richard Street, plumes of white steam from exhausts arose, then hang solid in the frigid air, like it were on her command.

Easily, I recalled that wafts from a few parishioners, who apparently cooked supper first before rushing to the evening devotions, really begin to heighten in the autumn—quite common among Filipinos, the smell of “guisado.” Also, Manang Metring, had added, possibly they must have had dinner at Cusina Manila for “pritong tilapia,” hence, exposed to the “turo-turo” flavors of “binagoongan na baboy,” “bulanglang,” “kare-kare” and “paksiw na bangus” on open simmering trays.

Why cravings shift to heightened tastes, too, Demie also had a quick answer—the body, in prepping up to hibernate, needs salt that soaks up but not dissipate water. The weather, indeed, must be blamed, Manang Metring concurred, both for my sister’s and my craving, which I figure could be but a spark of our rebelliousness from hardly a break for the same clean taste of “nilaga,” “ensalada” and an occasional “pakbet,” “guisadong bihon” and the “bia-like smelt pangat,” aside, of course, from baked fillet of sole.

Like most who meet Demie daily at the cathedral, like Manang Metring and me, normally wanting a basis for any statement, amazingly just resign, though not without veiled dejection, as in our case, that to search for an alternative would be the only choice to pin down elusive flavors hovering around the tip of our noses. Quite a crisis nonetheless persisted, though not from the lack of dried “pusit”—the kind grilled on Avenida, lacing most nights with compelling flavors, especially after a thunderstorm; we had them, as well, among a “pasalubong” my aunt mailed from Honolulu sometime ago, Ziplock-ed in the vegetable compartment of our fridge for years—but for the danger of assaulting our neighbor’s senses poses, if cooked.

Along with the rules in tamping down sounds we make, including conversation that, if spirited, should end an hour before midnight, but especially raucous music, obnoxious flavors and smells must also be contained. When I first heard about such rigid civility involving neighbors like my aunt’s in California, who once called 911 during one summer barbecue season, for a deathly smell coming from an adjacent yard—that of “tuyo,” which I’m sure whoever grilled it couldn’t stave off a craving like we had then—I thought it ridiculous. But this soon happened to us, too, though not that extreme.

We did comply with the rule of turning on the exhausts and three electric fans, with my sister shutting the cross-wind windows to their tighest; still, our neighbors loudly grumbling, had pooled in the courtyard, their noses pinched, eyes raised toward our window, and we later learned, short of calling 911. Apparently, in our attempt to dissipate the smell or lessen what clings to the carpet, rugs, comforters, and woolens in our insulated apartment, we had swept the air out of the windows, and this poured out as solid as water thrown off into the courtyard, where all doors and windows from our corridors open.

Could we have lashed at our neighbors’ disapproval, and even hint at racial divide? But I should have remembered how in one of the Strata Board meetings, our in-house management body, one officer periodically reported without fail complaints about “poisonous gases” from his neighbor’s kitchen; I did catch a whiff, which I had recognized as “mustasa” being stir fried and tripe, with some intestines being boiled in the familiar Asian goodness.

Nothing heard, of course, about broiling mildly marinated chicken or salmon fillet or steak nearing perfection, as well as oregano and basil rising out of pasta sauce—without a quibble, these do stimulate pleasant feelings, that also hang in autumn air. At this point, Manang Metring put an end to our crisis with this: Cook your “pusit” early when everyone’s still asleep. And so like thieves, we did.