Life Without The Metric System

Ahhh the metric system... how much more sense you make to me :P

One of the hardest things (weirdly) was learning to drive at 25 mph (miles per hour). Even though that's roughly 40kph (kilometres per hour) it felt so SLOW just seeing such low numbers on the speedo so that I'd automatically think I was going too slow and backing up traffic or something :S Luckily many speedo's here have both (km's in small numbers) so that helps.. I'm not sure why.. but I like it :P

That of course leads to people telling me how far something is by telling me "that's 10 miles away". In my brain I auto convert to time (does everyone? Or am I just odd?) and obviously my brain wants to turn to km's. Because with km's, metres etc everything is in 10's it's real easy to do. You'd basically just say "oh okay 10 mins or so" because you'd do 60kph in most places and 60 minutes in an hour... easy :)... but miles aren't the same. So instead of that I need people to tell me minutes. "How long will it take me to get there?"

Then there's the temperature, and not just of the environment, but also body temp.

I don't know about many of you out there, but I donate blood. It's my little "gift" to society and as my mum (yep, mUm not mOm :P) said many moons ago, it's like a little health check. Haemoglobin (no "e" in it here but oh well :D), blood pressure and temperature. Small things but good to know. Blood pressure and haemoglobin are always much the same in measurements but temp... I have to ask "is that good?". Doesn't seem to matter how often I look up what's "normal" it just falls out of my brain...

I have an infra-red ear thermometer that I LOVE  that I brought from Australia when I first moved over. It's not only for ears, you can use it to check the surface temp of baths, and baby milk and stuff (not really needed for me yet, but handy :D) and luckily it can be in C (celcius) or F (fahrenheit) but the awesome thing is it beeps when I have a fever. In my effort to learn F I have mine set to it ('cause if I go to a doc they'd wanna know F) So unless it beeps I'm fine :) When it beeps I google to find out how bad. I know it's ridiculous, I really do but it's so HARD!

Take this w/end for example. I caught some bug (strep I found out) and my temp was tracking up. 101.5, 102.5. Looks like a HUGE difference between those 2 right? a whole degree... nope. that's 38.6 and 39.1 respectively... which still looks bad but isn't AS bad.

In regards to environmental temp though, I only know ranges. For instance if it's in the early 70's that's a good temp. If it's in the 80-90's it's going to be warm (you've gotta check humidity too). And anything under in the 30's is freezing and lower than 32 F and that and it's below 0C. Anything between those ranges (40's - 60's) and you'll probably need a jumper at some stage... I pretty much just watch out for the 70's.. those are good days :D

Then finally, a woman's worst nightmare... her weight doubling just by changing countries :( Someone who weighs 80kgs in Aus weighs 176lbs in the US!! That's just terrifying to see triple digits all of a sudden and nearly into the "200" range. Most people know that your weight fluctuates about 1-2kgs a day (food, waste product etc) but here it's 2.2-4.4 lbs a day :( Luckily, I've found a way to make this work for me. I WEIGH in kgs, but I lose in lb's. This makes me feel heaps better because you might weigh 80kgs but you just lost 4lbs! WOAH! That's AWESOME! ... hehehe.

Anyway. Here's a little quick cheat sheet I threw together that might help some of you :) It's only a couple of things, I'm working on a bigger one that includes how many inches in a foot, and how many feet in a mile, or yard in a mile etc and then comparing those to metric in the hopes that the comparison and the single sheet with all the info there will help me learn. While right now not knowing some of this stuff doesn't negatively affect me too bad, it may in the future so it's better to learn now while I have the time and inclination, rather than waiting till I look like a moron for not knowing :S If any of you would be interested in this sheet leave me a comment and I'll add it when I get the chance :)