I visited Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, at the end of November 2023. This was my first international trip since the start of the pandemic and my first trip to Australia. I was travelling to Melbourne for ISO standards development meetings.
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Metric system
Photo by Ag PIC on UnSplash The USA, along with 40 other countries signed the the Treaty of the Meter in Paris in 1875. In the late 1960s, both the US and Canada decided that continued use of the Imperial system of measurements, or inch-pound system in the US, didn’t make sense since the rest of the world worked and lived in the SI Metric system. If you were in grade school in Canada during the early 70s like I was, you will remember learning both systems.
Failures in conversion lead to mistakes
Violet will never be able to instinctively judge temperatures in Celsius, she wasn’t raised to. And being raised without the metric system is like being born with weights on your brain.
In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade, which is 1% of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. And amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to “how much energy does it take to boil a room temperature gallon of water?” is Go fuck yourself, because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.
Wild Thing – Josh BazellThe US gave up on conversion to SI Metric, at least in part because replacing all of the speed limit signs and milage marker signs with new signage showing the metric limits was just going to be too expensive. In 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter burned up in the Red Planet’s atmosphere because of a unit mix-up between NASA and Lockheed Martin [1]. Today, only the United States, Liberia, Myanmar and a handful of island nations use versions of the imperial system [2], [3], [4].
Canada completed the transition but requires dual unit markings on product labels. Many Canadians continue to cook in Imperial measures (cups, quarts, teaspoons and tablespoons) while driving in km/h and deciding what jacket to wear based on ºC, but set their thermostats using ºF.
The consequences for Canadians include tape measures and rulers with both inches and millimetres, dimensional lumber only measured in feet and inches, i.e., a 2 x 4 x 8′. Dimensional lumber is smaller than the “trade size,” just to make things a bit more confusing. A 2 x 4 is actually 1-3/4″ x 3-1/2″. Sheet lumber, like plywood and OSB flooring, has the thickness measured in millimetres, but the sheet size in feet, i.e., 4′ × 8′. The confusion continues in many other materials as well. But I digress.
Failure to progress
In 2022, then Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the UK announced that he intended to rescind the UK’s conversion to the metric system in favour of reversion to the Imperial system of weights and measures [7]. This is yet another example of mindless decisions made on purely populist ideology since most of the UK’s business is done with metric countries in the EU and elsewhere. As Mr. Johnson is no longer the PM, this particular bit of madness may have passed the UK by. Unless, of course, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak decides that Mr. Johnson had a good idea.
Why convert to metric
For the most part, science and engineering are done in SI Metric, even in the USA. Medicine using SI Metric as well, again, except in the USA. At some point, I hope that the idealistic hold-outs recognize that clinging to obsolete systems of weights and measures does nothing but hamper trade and innovation. Still, I doubt that such logical thinking will prevail before the end of my life.
Hope is the thing with feathers
Emily Dickinson
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.
References
[1] “Math Error Equals Loss of Mars Orbiter”, Science News, 1999. [Online]. Available: https://www.sciencenews.org/archive/math-error-equals-loss-mars-orbiter. [Accessed: 18- Jun- 2022].
[2] “Countries That Don’t Use the Metric System 2022”, Worldpopulationreview.com, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-that-dont-use-the-metric-system. [Accessed: 18- Jun- 2022].
[3] C. Martin, “The U.S. has resisted the metric system for more than 50 years”, Science News, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/united-states-has-resisted-metric-system-more-than-50-years. [Accessed: 15- Jun- 2022].
[4] “Supporting American Choices on Measurement | We the People: Your Voice in Our Government”, Web.archive.org, 2012. [Online]. Available: https://web.archive.org/web/20161216191145/https:/petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/make-metric-system-standard-united-states-instead-imperial-system. [Accessed: 18- Jun- 2022].
[5] “Ten Years to Metric”, Science News, 1970. [Online]. Available: https://www.sciencenews.org/archive/ten-years-metric. [Accessed: 15- Jun- 2022].
[6] P. Gallagher, “Make the Metric system the standard in the United States, instead of the Imperial system.”, We the People, 2012. [Online]. Available: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/make-metric-system-standard-united-states-instead-imperial-system. [Accessed: 15- Jun- 2022].
[7] “Boris Johnson to reportedly bring back imperial measurements to Mark Platinum jubilee,” The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/may/28/boris-johnson-set-to-bring-back-imperial-measurements-to-mark-platinum-jubilee (accessed Aug. 25, 2023).
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Tokyo 2019
In the fall of 2019, I travelled to Tokyo to attend some standards development meetings. At the time I left, there was no indication that the world was about to head into a pandemic.
The coming storm
Just before I was about to leave Canada, I learned that there was a massive typhoon headed out of the Pacific Ocean towards Japan. This was Typhoon Hagibis.
Typhoon Hagibis probable track map I got on the plane anyway, partly because the ticket was already bought and paid for, and partly because I really could not cancel on the committee. I figured that, if you had to ride out a massive storm like this, Tokyo would be just the place to do that. The Japan Times was warning readers about the expected path of the typhoon.
Arriving in Tokyo
I landed on October the 9th, and I got off the subway near the hotel just in time to witness an Australian colleague heading to the airport before the storm was to arrive.
I was staying at the Comfort Hotel Tokyo Kiyosumi Shirakawa, close to Kiyosumi Gardens, and I used the subway to get from Haneda airport to the hotel when I arrived. It’s about a 40-minute ride for under $10. The same trip by cab is about 15 minutes for $100.
image: Rome2Rio.com Comfort Hotel Comfort Hotel Lobby Meetings
On October 10th, we started our meetings at Kiyosumi Garden. Kiyosumi Garden is a beautiful place with a lot of history. Tokyo citizens took shelter in the park during the American bombing raids that destroyed much of the city during WW II. You can learn more about the park from the Tokyo Parks website. You would never know from this photo that a huge storm was coming in hot.
Storm watch
During the meetings, we watched the typhoon bear down on Japan. The storm kept on growing, and after our first day, we had to meet at the hotel as the Garden was closed.
As the storm bore down on Tokyo, the track predictions started to look like this:
It became clear that we were going to take a direct hit from the storm.
I was booked to leave Tokyo on Sunday, October 13th, the day after the storm passed, but it seemed unlikely that my flight was going to happen. My partner and I started to work on booking new flights to get me home.
From the International Space Station, the typhoon was both beautiful and terrifying.
image: NOAA The storm hits
The storm hit Tokyo. We were hunkered down in the hotel along with quite a few other guests. Restaurants were closed, so we had to make a trip to the local grocery store to find provisions that we could keep without needing a fridge or a microwave since we didn’t know if the power would stay on.
But wait, there’s more!
Around the time that the storm was rolling into Tokyo, we also experienced a small earthquake. It was only a 5.7, but it was more than I’ve experienced before at home.
The room bounced and swayed when the tremor struck, but nothing was damaged, the power stayed on, and even the elevators continued to work unaffected. My colleagues and I continued our conversation, working hard on finding ways home once the storm passed and our meetings were done.
image: Japan Meteorological Agency The Japan Times wrote a little about the earthquake. The Japanese are much more accustomed to earthquakes than people in the part of Canada where I live. Toronto is in a seismic zone, and we have experienced some very small tremors, but nothing like what I felt in Tokyo.
The storm raged all night on Saturday, making the building shake and sway. Somehow, the power stayed on. Sunday, we woke to find that the subways were flooded, as was Haneda airport. Even worse was the damage in areas around Tokyo.
Flooding in Nagano image: Reuters While Tokyo took little damage, outside the city hundreds of people’s homes were damaged in the flooding. According to Wikipedia, over 760 mm of rain fell in parts of Japan. Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency stated that at least 98 people have been confirmed dead, seven people are missing, with 346 people were injured by the storm. More than 270,000 customers lost electrical power during the storm. The typhoon is ranked as the second-costliest in history, with damage totalling US$15.2 billion in 2020 dollars. The impact was so great that the name has been retired.
Getting home
Flying home was “interesting.” Some of our Japanese colleagues helped get us closer to Haneda airport so we could get to our flight more easily on Monday. We were treated to a trip to the onsen spa at the Tokyo Dome, where we had a wonderful experience. We also had a chance to see the Yomiuri Giants play on Sunday afternoon. This was my first experience seeing the famous Tokyo Dome Beer Girls in action.
One of my colleagues flew home with me, and we ended up flying a day later than planned from Haneda to Seoul where we stayed overnight, then onward to Toronto. I ended up getting home three days later than expected.
It was quite an adventure. I would not change my decision to travel to Tokyo and experience a typhoon + earthquake. The Japanese were wonderful hosts throughout. Thank you to Ryuta Otsubo and Tomomasa Maruyama for looking after us!
Little did I know that I had another adventure coming in January 2020 when I flew to Thailand for another work trip.
[1] BBC, “Typhoon Hagibis: Japan suffers deadly floods and landslides from storm”, [online]. 2021. Available: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50020108. Accessed: 2021-12-16.
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Expertise
An apocryphal story about expertise and consulting
A giant ship’s engine failed. The ship’s owners tried one expert after another, but none of them could figure but how to fix the engine. Then they brought in an old man who had been fixing ships since he was young. He carried a large bag of tools with him, and when he arrived he immediately went to work. He inspected the engine very carefully, top to bottom.
Two of the ship’s owners were there watching the man, hoping he would know what to do. After looking things over, the old man reached into his bag and pulled out a small hammer. He gently tapped something. Instantly, the engine lurched into life. He carefully put his hammer away. The engine was fixed!
A week later, the owners received a bill from the old man for ten thousand dollars. “What?!” the owners exclaimed. “He hardly did anything!”
So they wrote the old man a note saying, “Please send us an itemized bill. The man sent a bill that read:
Tapping with a hammer………………….. $ 2.00
Knowing where to tap…………………….. $ 9,998.00
The effort is important, but knowing where to make an effort makes all the difference!
