Be Modern!

"Multiply inches by 2.54, and you get centimeters..... so out with the English, be modern at last... the system of metric is better!" This was probably the most played tune in the early 80's. It was all over the TV and radio stations in the Philippines, announcing that the whole nation was ditching the old English Imperial system in favor of the modern Metric system. This was also the time that I would be preparing for the board exams.... after 5 years of engineering calculations by the English system, now yet another set of computations to convert to Metric have I to master... length: yard to meter.... temperature: Fahrenheit to Celsius.... volume: gallons to liters.... energy: BTU to calories or joules... etc., etc., etc. Looking back, that was really a lot of complicated work for everything to be converted and for everyone to be re-educated. But that leap proved great for it made measuring easier.

I cannot say that the nation is not modern because, in fact, it is the seat of the hip and cool, but the US has remained an English system society and I have no clue why. Now, having moved to the US, I have to go back and revisit my once comfortable territory of English Imperialism. Today's temperature is a mere 50 deg... which bothers my Canadian friends because theirs is just 10 deg... silly! It is the same temperature except ours is in F and the Canadians' in C.

How about this? In 1975, an Australian news program revealed that the country would soon be converting to "metric time." Under the new system there would be 100 seconds to the minute, 100 minutes to the hour, and 20-hour days. Furthermore, seconds would become millidays, minutes become centidays, and hours become decidays. Are you kidding? Do the math! I would just be 21 years old... would I look the age? This one's a hoax... happy April fooling!