Damn Metric System

So up here in Canada they have this new thing called the Metric System (apparently its big in Europe too .... and the scientific world).  I'm sure you already know this but values of measurements are based off the meter (centimeter, decimeter, meter, kilometer, etc). Anyway, as an American I have only dealt with the American system that deals with imperial units (inches, feet, yards, miles).  Oh god how I miss my inches and feet.  For all of our modeling assignments we have to model everything to scale, and we model it in centimeters.  Which is fine and dandy because I can visualize centimeters to an extent (and it makes a lot of practical sense). For instance my Superman toy is 9.6 cm. It's easy to understand that 0.6cm = 60% of a centimeter, where in inches we deal with values divisible by 2 (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32). It's hard to find out what 1/32 actually is percentage wise without a calculator.  Also I am forced to use meters not just because I am in Canada but because the modeling software we use has a standard unit of measurement which is the centimeter.  So its an industry thing.  Which, like I said, I don't mind because I understand how to read/take measurements and bring them to scale in 3D.


What gets to me is that I don't understand what the people around me are talking about when discussing dimensions of things I haven't physically measured.  Like the other day in class we were designing the interior of a little girl's room (for one of our projects) and everything was meter this centimeter that.  I was able to get an ok handle on it as I was able to gather that 2 meters is roughly 6 feet, so 1 meter is roughly 3.  So now I can do alright knowing that bit of information. This means that I can roughly calculate that 1 foot is about 33 cm. Even though I can do this, I don't like having to do calculation in my head to find out how long or wide something is. Especially when it comes down to something that is less than a foot long. I know how long an inch is. I would have to calculate it in centimeters.

And don't get me started on kilometers. When people tell me how far I am from something else, they use kilometers (instead of miles). I can visualize miles to an extent, although I've never really been too great dealing with them either (at a large scale). But at least I understood how far one mile is.

Also, I never know how cold or warm it is here in Canada (usually how cold it is).  They are on the Celsius system instead of the Fahrenheit like in the US.  So whenever someone or the something tells me how cold it is I don't actually know.  Also, the other international students use Celsius too so I can't get the info from them either (not like I'd actually want/need it. I understand cold haha).  But when people ask me, "how cold does it get in Los Angeles?" I cant really answer. I know that when I got here it was 30-mid 40 F and it was like 0-6 C here. I can learn the formula to convert it but I'm too lazy.