Metrics Schmetrics

It’s been ten months, and I still am very far from getting this metric thing figured out. I remember having to learn the metric system in, like, fifth grade and how teachers would tell us we were probably moving to the metric system, so it was important to learn ... and 15 years later, we are still sans-metrics in America (and I'm ok with that).

In Hong Kong, though, I get people going on about meters and kilos, and I just try to look like I am following, meanwhile taking a mental note of numbers so I can later convert it and actually know what just happened. I stepped on a treadmill earlier (donated, which is verrry convenient … also verrry free), and punched in the number I would normally have as my walking pace, in miles. I thought it was weird it was going so slow … and then I realized it was going so slow because it was measuring in kilometres and not in miles. I had to readjust and just figure it out without a conversion, but I think I did ok.

I don’t seem to have quite as much trouble with cooking, but that’s mostly because I cook most things at the same temp and my measuring cups have mililiters included in them. I usually just eye the grams and tablespoons, and hope for the best.

It also took me a while to get used to driving speeds being posted in kilometres, and even more getting used to using a speedometer in kilometres. I’d be going 110, which to me sounds dangerously speedy, but in actuality is slightly less than 70 mph, which is normal for a highway.

The hardest one for me has actually been measuring temperatures in Celsius. I just never have any idea what temperature it is, unless I go to weather.com where, thankfully, they post the temperatures in Farenheit (though you can switch to Celsius if you really, really wanted to). It’s very weird to hear people say, “It’s 36 degrees!” when it’s hot outside, when my mind immediately hears 36 degrees, and thinks, “that’s almost freezing!” (FYI, 36C is about 97F, whereas 36F is 2C, so you can understand my confusion)

Recently, I had a math nightmare, only I wasn’t asleep. We sent some members of our team overseas to facilitate an event at the World Economic Forum (a very big deal, actually … heads of many world organizations as well as UN officials attend every year). We had created flyers and invitations and banners to the event to advertise among the participants, and I was told the paper type, the dimensions (in centimetres and metres!), and how many of each type, as well as the banners, and had to determine how much this would all weigh, in kilos, so we could make sure those going had room in their luggage. It made my head hurt just to think about, but we got there in the end, PTL.

I just have no concept of how much a kilo is. I was told we had 50 kilos of space available, but no real idea of what that was, other than I had to make sure the amount of kilos I was coming up with for all the paper didn’t exceed the 50. We were weighing it on a big warehouse scale, and at one point Kate stepped on to shuffle some boxes around, looked up, and saw the read-out and said “oh, I guess you know how much I weigh now!” Of course, she’s itty bitty so I don’t think it would be anything embarrassing, but honestly I saw the number and had absolutely no idea how much weight that was.

So, I guess I still have a lot to learn about metrics. I definitely have a better handle on it than I did before (despite what you probably think after reading this post), but I still miss using pounds, miles, and Farenheit. If my fellow Americans reading this ever think about moving out of country, be ready for the metric system. It really does mess with you, despite being a seemingly small thing. I guess you can just chalk this up to one of the many, many new things I’ve had to step outside my box to do in my time here.