Metric awesomeness

I've been noticing recently that I've been 'thinking' in the metric system. I was emailing my parents today and was mentioning how the water visibility here 'is over three meters'. Uhhh, when did I start thinking in meters?

I guess for a while. The metric system really does make a lot of sense - most of the time.

Here are my thoughts on common measurements:

meters - good - Feet, for more things, are too small a measure (besides height, more on that below). When talking about distance meters are a nice way to approximate and visualize things. "Oh, its only about 20 meters (66 feet) to the tree over there".

kilometers - good - When talking about distance on our trip, we are usually moving around by walking. Kilometers are a much more digestable distance mentally for me than miles. You can see just how far a kilometer is. It is also 10 football fields. These things make it easy to think about.

kilometers per hour - good - aka, driving speed. For all but the slowest speeds I think kph makes a lot of sense. 100 kph is just about 60 miles per hour. A mile a minute. 110-120 is the speed limit. That sounds fast. Over 100 is going really fast, going 60 kph is just a bit above 35. It gets confusing when you are going slow, 20 kph is a crawl.

kilograms - good - when talking about weight, kilos make a lot of sense to me. It is a less precise measurement than pounds. This is often useful when you are talking about how much something weights, or you are guessing. My bag is about 20 kilos, which is 44 pounds.

liters - good - Especially when talking about gas. A liter is a more precise measure (about 4 liters per gallon). You buy gas by the liter, and that may get you 9-11 kilometers. In my mind it tightens the relationship between how much you purchase, and how far you can go. I first started thinking about this in Tanzania when we went through hundreds of liters of diesel on our safari, and each liter cost over 4000 shillings ($1 = 1300 T Shillings). It starts you thinking...

centimeters - not my favorite - I still prefer inches in my head when talking about short distances. Telling people I'm 184 centimeters tall just sounds weird.

Speaking of weird - this is the end of my bizarre post on the metric system!