Today's adventure: a grad student brought in durian or durian-flavored something. Someone else called the fire department because they thought they smelled a gas leak.

oh dear

We all had an important lesson in cultural awareness. (It did smell awfully like the additives they put in natural gas to make a detectable odor. I don't even know if that's a bad smell as much as an alarming one thanks to the connotations.)

Oh dear...

Also it didn't occur to the poor student that most non SE-Asians wouldn't know what a durian smelled like beyond 'infamously bad'.

The smell of durian is actually due to a whole cornucopia of thiols mixed with hydrogen sulphide, so it’s entirely possible Ethanethiol is usually what’s used in butane/propane for the added scent

Ah, neat!