– Do you know how hot it is today? – a stranger asked me recently while I was crossing the street.
– I think it is about eighty – I replied, but I was a little afraid of his reaction. What a pleasant surprise to discover that, according to him, I was really close, just off by 5 degrees Fahrenheit. I can only hope that one day I will understand the American system of measurement.
Apart from learning Celsius to Fahrenheit scale conversion, inches, miles, feet and pounds are on my “need to decrypt” list. Fortunately, on food packages, in addition to ounce (oz) and pound (lb) there are also the familiar grams and kilograms.
In theory, Americans already changed to the metric system in 1866. However, in practice, the imperial units are all that are used.
A saying that the measure of a foot is a measure of the foot of the king, and inch is nothing but a big royal toe is well known here.
It seems to me that Americans will not switch quickly to the metric system. A huge campaign in the 1970s with slogan: “meter and liter are neater” – failed miserably. On the web I found a funny meme showing a kitten cramped inside a far too small glass aquarium. At the bottom the inscription read: to hell with the metric system, the order in centimeters seemed so big! (12 inches is about 30 cm).
On the other hand a few days ago, I failed to properly print wedding invitations designed by my sister in Poland. Probably the staff (perhaps only at this store) was confused by the crop marks, located where the image is to be cut. Earlier, a research was also needed as the envelope standards here differ.
Fortunately, after the technical intervention of my fiancé, the second time the properly formatted cards with bright red and yellow pattern jumped from the printer. Today, Dean instructed me via Skype (calling from New Zealand), how the American can opener works.
As for the street signs, can anyone make sense of our address? We live at the corner of 112th Ave North East and North East 8th Street. It seems that creativity is lacking here, and no one is anything but confused by the results.On the highway distance in kilometers is shown rarely, which I will definitely have to keep in mind while learning to drive here. Automatic transmission poses another problem. Fortunately, in the U.S., people drive on the right side of the road, and they wait on the right side of the escalators..JPG)
