As I’ve never been interested in learning to move my ears or eyebrows or, let’s say, to whistle, I also have never got the zest to memorise quotations to entertain my family or friends. I do appreciate people who have, well, moving your ears doesn’t impress me so much anymore, but I enjoy hearing somebody reciting me a Rimbaud’s poem or quote famous speeches. At the age of twelve I however learnt by rote a passage from Pulp Fiction, the great Tarantino movie that weirdly appealed to my pre-teenager spirit. I still remember it, though I might mistake with some words.
-Do you know what they call Quarter Pounder with cheese in Paris?
-They don’t call it Quarter Pounder with cheese?
-They wouldn’t know what the Quarter Pounder with cheese is, they have the fucking metric system. They call it Royale with Cheese.
-Royale with cheese… What do they call Big Mac?
-Big Mac is a Big Mac, but they call it le Big Mac.
I was very proud to play this scene (less useful in small talk situations nowadays) and it came to my mind today as I was calculating the prices of fruits here. 3 pounds of mandarins were 6,59 dollars. It took me awhile to understand this ridiculously expensive price: 3 pounds is less than a kilogram. Pound is one of the few measures I’ve learnt so far, but I have no idea what an ounce is even though I pay 45 cents for 1 ounce of salad in the university restaurant. The USA is one of the three countries in the world that have not adopted the metric system, the other two being Burma and Liberia.
I don’t know what is yard or how much do I have to walk for 100 feet. I’ve survived so far, even though mile is always much longer than I think.
I actually decided to check the conversion rates: pound is quite a bit more than I thought: 454 grams (so 3 lb would be more than a kg, not less) and ounce is 28 grams. Oh, the beautiful and logical metric system – I am a fan!
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