The other day I went to the post office as I often do. Many of the employees seem to recognize me despite my hair adjustments. Naturally, we start off in Dutch, which for everyone's sake, is quickly over.
I took a couple of packages in to mail and the total was slightly more than I had calculated. I have no idea why I do this (calculate at home), but I weighed the package and figured the cost on the handy bpost website.
Anyway, by this time we'd already left the Dutch behind and I asked her how many kilograms the package weighed. I thought about it later and wondered if I had in fact asked her how many kilometers it weighed. That is profoundly possible since I have yet to grasp this godforsaken metric system.
Do your kids a favor - teach them metrics!
Although I've found it's really best to learn the new system rather than converting, instead, I've decided to make it as difficult as possible.
Like in the case of temperature. The weather is a huge factor in my life and I like to know just how cold it really is out there. As much as I want to simply realize that 4 degrees celsius is quite chilly, I really just want to know it's 39.2F. That I understand.
I googled "easy method for converting temperature" and here it is . . .
This is "easy"?! In a split second, I'm going to divide 9 by 5, multiply that by whatever the celsius is and then add 32 to that? I need a calculator just for the 9/5 part!
The other morning Jim looked out our bedroom window and said "there's not a cloud in the sky". Turned out there actually was a cloud - one big one you call "overcast" and we call "very Belgian".
Is there no mercy for us middle aged (assuming we live to be over a 100) expats? Will I ever one day think that Jefferson is 64.37 km from Longview? Will I ever say our house is 185.81 sq meters? Will I ever look at a package of ground beef and think it's 453.59 grams or a pound of cocaine is .453 kilograms? Of course not.
Will I ever know that wine comes in 750 ml bottles? Well, that's different.
There is some good news - cooking is easy because celsius on the oven is basically half. Like 350 is more or less 175 and since I rarely cook, this is handy, but useless. Plus, the pizza box has 180C for reheating written right on the box.
More good news - a liter is pretty much the same as a quart, but since milk only comes in one liter, this, too is handy, but not needed.
That's right - gallons of milk do not exist. Maybe it's because so many people here tote their groceries by hand like we do. Well, I think I speak for everyone here when I say "if I'm totin' a gallon of anything, it's gonna have a cork in it".
Happy birthday, Pop!
Happy birthday, Pop!
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