Wednesday, January 17, 2007

i choose c

We were watching the weather channel for a few moments to get an update & all that anyone is talking about is America as the Frozen Nation. Looking at the single digits for central & southern US, we were a bit confused because we first had to figure out if they were in Celsius or Fahrenheit. We figured maybe it's in F as most of the US likes to have it broadcasts but then that wouldn't make sense because it would be colder than Canada. Most of the digits were in the singles, which is insane because Dallas at 3o C & Atlanta at 1o C was just unbelievable. Who knew it could get that cold over there? Now that the southern states have witnessed & experienced first hand how El Niño & global warming can wreak havoc, maybe Bush might take the environment seriously & cut down on some pollution.

Getting back to the weather format, the reason for the C/F confusion? For the most part, Bermuda has adopted British ways: the metric system for one - the distance & odometers here are spelt out in kms as opposed to miles, the roads & cars - left hand drive. However, there's one area where confusion ensues & that's the weather. In this case, Bermuda seems to follow the American preferred Fahrenheit when it comes to stating & predicting the temperature. While they do have the Celsius conversion displayed, it still makes it confusing. They figure with their large number of tourists being American, they may as well make them feel comfortable. It's just makes it confusing for the rest of us ex-pats, especially the ones from Canada & England. For this reason I've had to learn to convert F to C during the summer months (temp in F minus 32 divided by 2). But that's it. I am not about to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit for anyone. Besides stating the temperatures in Celsius makes more sense to the viewer & the rest of the world goes by it!

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