I don't need an object to remind me of certain things, food, places, people and seasons. All I need is just some functioning receptors in my nose to pick up the chemical (smell) and has it transmitted to my brain.
I remember during my first year away from home in a new country alone, everything was foreign in that new city compared to home, which I had been staying for the past 17 years of my life. It took me a good old 3-4 months to adapt to the new change. But when the first Fall season, which is also the rainy season arrived, the first heavy rain smelled so much like the rainy days in my home country. I felt home.
I went home January this year to celebrate Chinese New Year with my family. Upon my arrival back from vacation, the smell of a combination of frosty snow and everything in the air reminded me that my vacation had ended. And it was time to get the engine started.
It is well-known that everyone generates his/her unique body scent. No, it's not actually reffering to the type of unpleasant/offensive body odour (BO). Our body produces a certain type of scent, which is affected by our living habit especially the eating habit. Sometimes some people's body scent is camouflaged by some artificial influence, say perfume. Now I must say I am a perfume girl. So when it comes to fragrance, I can be pretty sensitive. Yet, I find that though two individuals use the same bottle of perfume, they can smell different. Why is this so? It is probably due to the original body scent of different individuals that make this combined scent effect. Of course, for those who have some unpleasant BO problem, probably it is good to make some improvement in personal hygience and eating habit [click here for more tips]. It is worth to note that some BO might be a symptom of some diseases, which we should be aware of.
The whole sense of smell mechanism is really complicated. Great works have been done on our olfactory system by Nobel Laureate Prof. Richard Axel and Prof. Linda Buck. And this work was actually awarded for the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine [click on the link about these two Laureates]. I had attended one of their Nobel lectures.
I have my favorite scents. Perfumes that smell fresh and light are certainly my bottle of scent. After shower smell. Clothes that come out fresh from the washing machine. The smell of rain. My grandma's cooking. And the smell of home. What about you?
♥ every page of my imagination
