Metric

It was something of a source of comfort when I was leaving home, knowing that the country that we were going to be working in was metricised (if its not a word, it is now). I worked for Americans when I was in Singapore and whilst it was good for my education to have worked with feet, inches, kips and fathoms and the like, it wasn’t really that entertaining.

Of course, one of the things about Canada is that it has a somewhat reduced proximity to the US of A. this means that there’s sure to be leakage across the borders.

And so its with great amusement that I read some of the measures of contents on labels, in particular, pop bottles (aka soft drink).

There is no 600ml bottle of coke in Canada. Its obviously shaped around the equivalent American bottle, which from memory is a 16 ounce (which is a pint – and of course these are US pints and ounces, not British ones). What does that mean in common sense metric units? It means that you get a 473ml bottle of coke.

Somehow cans come out at a nice even 355ml, but that’s sure to be more by luck than design.

And you know how when you go to print things and you have to shift the paper size between A4 and A3, there’s all these other random and stupid paper sizes in the list to choose from? Things like letter and 11x17?

Well apparently, that’s something else that’s leaked across the border because they’re ‘standard’ paper sizes over here. And of course when you get a notebook for a diary, that’s a different size again, so even the things you print don’t fit neatly within the book. Not that I’m bitter …