RobotBlogger

"Oh, you're in Australia! Hey, i know [so and so] is there, you guys should hook up! "

Yeah, i should! Perth is only 3,600 km away! That's close, sure! That's like Vancouver to New York, or London to Cairo! Perfect! I'll see if i can come visit this afternoon!

The place is big. Even this east coast of Australia is big. Brisbane to Sydney is 726 km, and it's only a quick 1350 km to Melbourne. We're neighbours.

Vanocouver isn't so close. It's 11,880 km apart, give or take. That's almost 39 million feet, which if you were to walk here, ignoring the wet ocean bit, it would only be 2,453 hours, assuming a comfortable 3mph (yes i'm mixing metric and imperial, and did the conversions too...) That's merely 102 days. OK, sleep and stuff. Let's say you walk for 9 hours a day (you are determined, this determines) you'd get here in a cozy 275 days.

Speaking of metric and imperial, it seems imperial has all but lost the battle. The USA is imperial - well mostly - science and aerospace are all metric there, since, uh, it actually makes sense. Try to take the wing off an f-16 fighter jet and you better have your metric set ready. A Ford? not so much. Few other countries support the imperial system.

Jamaica officially switched, just a few years ago. Not many left now..

Britian officially has - or did - in this big push to convert during the 70's, you know, when everyone else was doing it (well, most other people were doing it in the 60's) but then a new government came in and they gave up the idea half way through. Yes, you still buy gas in liters, but the road markings are in miles per hour. The UK even has an EU obligation to complete it's metrification, but hasn't set the date to do so, or even a date to say when they'll talk about setting the date to do so.

Ireland got fed up with waiting and in 2004 they changed all the road signs over.

This leaves the US and A, Burma and Liberia as the last Imperial hold outs. Well, and Britain too, a sort of half-baked foot in both camps kind of thing (are there Imperial-only parties, and are they that good?)

If anyone detects a tone of supremecy with my writing, then i must confess something..

I'm 6'2" and one hundred and -cough-ty-cough-four? centimeters tall and weigh 200 pounds, or cough-um-cough kilograms.