Go metric!

Of course, everything here is in metric.  I actually find this hard to believe, because the company is the Arabian AMERICAN Oil Company, and everything else is just like it is at home.  Like the outlets!  They are the usual 110V regular old American outlets on the compound, not the 220 V ones that Europe and everyone else uses.  And the Official Company Language is English, not Arabic.  So why metric?  I’ve been told nothing here is logical, and you’ll go insane trying to figure it out if you try to force logic in this place.  So , huh, whatever, I guess I’ll just learn to be metric-girl.  

You might think that, as a scientist, metric would come easy to me.  Remember, I have been taught to think in metric, after all.  You know, like the acceleration of gravity is 9.8 m/s².  Or the gravitational constant is 6.67e-11 m³/kg/s².  So far, the ONLY instance where this training has come in handy is on the back of a food label.  The Nutrition Information doesn’t use Calories (I just accidentally typed “Carolina” instead of “Calories”.  Missing home, much?), it uses KJ, kiloJoules!  OK, I can handle that.  I know how much a Joule is, and these numbers make sense to me.  Bring on the metric system!

Unfortunately, the rest of the time, I am much too ingrained with English units.  Take driving.  In theory, I know how fast 1 km/hr is.  So I should be able to extrapolate to know how fast, say, 80 km/s is.  Right?  Turns out I am much better in km/second than km/hr.  I can tell you that the Sun is orbiting the center of the Galaxy at about 250 km/s, for example, or that the particles in the Solar Wind can reach 1000 km/s if the Sun is in active phase.  And I have a good handle on how fast that is, relative to other things.  But I have to keep looking at the speedometer to make sure I’m not going to get a ticket for driving over 80 km/hr, because I have no feel for it.  And today it was 20 degrees.  Celsius.   I bought 400 mL of shampoo the other day.  My shoe size is now 40.  And Mike usually gets home at 16:06.  Military time?  REALLY?  

So watch out on Baby Girl Benchich’s birth announcement – hopefully she will arrive at a nice 3 kg and 50 cm.  The scales they use in the hospital are not electronic, so they don’t convert for you – I will leave it as an exercise for my students to figure out how much she is in pounds and inches!