confusing metrics

There are many things that are the same and some that are very different when I compare life in the US and in Scotland. In general I find that most measurements are in metric form. However if you actually start getting into the details, its not so clear anymore.

Take for instance, distances and driving. In the UK the speed limit is specified as mph(miles per hour). Distance, however, in daily usage, while talking to neighbors, colleagues, etc, is spoken in terms of kilometres. So if you you ask someone for the distance from Point A to Point B, they might say that it is about 10 km. If you want to drive from Point A to Point B on a road that has a speed limit of 30 mph, you then have to convert 10 km to miles and then account for the speed or convert the speed to km per hour and then account for the distance. So far so good.

Now comes the weight. Most things in the nearby supermarkets are measured out in gm or kg. The doctor’s office used kg as well to note down my weight when I went in for my first registration visit. But then I noticed that the common term used in newspapers and TV to refer to weight is ’stone’. One stone is roughly 6.35 kg, but can be converted to a round 14 lbs to a stone. Luckily, my weight has never come up in conversation with anyone here so far and hence have been saved from an embarrassing display of my almost non-existent mental arithmetic skills.

The entire thing, however, brings back (bad) memories of high school math and preparing for the GRE. I am lucky I have one of those cell-phones that has a calculator.