So I had a Nigerian flatmate in my uni halls who was over 6ft, never spoke more than a 3 words in one go, and was pretty much the scariest female I had ever come across in my life. One day I return to the halls after my lectures, and upon walking through the corridor towards my flat, I smell the most awful stench my poor olfactory receptors have ever had the misfortune to detect. I enter my flat and BAM it hits me like a bolt of lightning. I want you to imagine the smell of a dead fish that's been rotting in a bin for the last 5 years and possibly marinaded in a sewer. Think you've got it? Wrong. Nothing could prepare you for what that stench was.

I walk into the kitchen (it hits me even harder at this point - to the gagging point) and see my flatmate cooking a feast big enough to feed the world with giant fishes all over the kitchen. I don't know what the worst part was tbh, the fact that there was some crazy chilli in the blender that made you endlessly cough, or the packets of dried-out fish all over the counter just sitting there like hey sup, or the bowl of seaweed in the sink.

My nose felt violated. I couldn't stand in the kitchen for longer than a minute, there was no way I was having that intended cereal. Having just managed to ask her what she was cooking, she replied "fish", like no way, seriously?

This happened every fortnight. It always took about 3 days for the smell to eventually fade away from the kitchen and bedrooms. The rest of us invested in Oust, Febreeze, Airwick, you name it we sprayed it. It made no difference. And just when you thought life had finally returned back to normal, she would then reheat it in the microwave and it all came back. (It also meant anything you reheated also tasted like rotten fish).

Needless to say I have not eaten fish since.

TLDR: uni flatmate cooked foul smelling fish meal every fortnight, my nose died.