International Marriage Woes: The Metric System and C* vs. F*
It’s Gett’n Hot in Here
So first things first to lay the premise - I’m one part of a newly married couple. I myself am am an American-born Korean and my wife is a student immigrant from Korea. As we’re both designers of the same age and attended the same graduate school, we very much enjoy similar things and live life to the same rhythm.
Except for one drastic difference.
Each morning, my wife will get out of bed and call for Siri on her iPhone - “Hey Siri, what’s today’s temperature?” Besides the obvious discomfort of having a British-accented and articulate male responding eagerly to my wife in the wee morning, what’s to come is even more distressing. “Today will be about 15 degrees outside.” What, 15?? In April??
Obviously, it’s unlikely that we’ll have sub-freezing temperatures even in New York at this time. Each morning I have to remind myself that it isn’t 15 degrees Farenheit but instead Celcius. I don’t think Americans will ever get used to the fact that the rest of the world holds a different ruler to the world.
This might just be one of the most contentious bits of culture that define the US and the rest of world. American individuality at one point seeped into their rationale and instead of adopting the metric system, decided that Feet and Yards and Miles were a more compelling alternative.
Foreigners (at least 1 in my wife) seem to love poking fun at this every time they get. My wife tells me stories of her time in her landscape architecture program and purposefully using meters when describing her work to colleagues. An attempt to mask confusion always ensues.
The Devil is in the Details
This topic is usually brushed off as “oh you silly Americans”/“oh you silly Europeans,” but I thought it might be interesting to contextualize in a particular situation like my marriage. Interracial and international marriages are becoming increasingly common, less stigmatized, and more readily available as an option as universities and borders become more porous. More progressive-leaning folk have taken up a motto of “love is love” and like to dismiss the real points of friction that might come up between two people of different races, nationalities, religions, etc.
Cultural, social, and even economic differences obviously make up some of the biggest rifts between two partners. But even when ethnicity, demographic, and lifestyle line up in the way me and my wife do, there are still seemingly insignificant yet nonetheless notable things that may cause a point of conflict.
In my case, obviously a simple conversion from C to F is of no cause for distress or any real concern. But the fundamental difference in engrained culture can quickly scale to subsume the way anything is done between two partners.
I thought I’d share this little point of view and maybe get your experiences. Have you noticed noteworthy differences between you and you (life or business) partner?
Let me know in the comments below. Steem on!
This inevitably reminds me of that failed NASA Mars mission from the late '90-ies, not long after NASA decided to switch everything to metric. They subcontracted a rover to a company which somehow forgot about that switch and interpreted the dimensions sent by the NASA as being imperial. So the thing crashed at landing on Mars.
Coming back to marriage, I think cultural differences can be a long-term challenge. Somehow the first 20 years of our lives imprint our behaviour much more than the next 60. And here I think C° and F° are anecdotic.
Although I have to say, the C° makes sense even to a 7 years old: 0°C is where water freezes; 100°C is where water boils (both under 1 Pa). I can't say what's the meaning of the F° scale. Can you ?
Not at all, I cannot defend F in the slightest.
Very cool example @sorin.cristescu, I'll remind my wife that if we're not careful we could end up a giant galactic fireball.. haha
I switched my phone to celsius for a year to become "fluent" in celsius and it worked pretty well. We should switch to metric, there's no way the world could switch to imperial.
Oooo that's an egggcellent idea @heymattsokol.
국제결혼......자라 온 환경과 문화가 달라서 살면서 부딪히는 점이 분명 있겠지만
그건 살면서 서로 이해와 배려로 맞춰 가며 살면 될 것 같아요 언어만 통한다면 충분한 대화로 얼마든지 극복할 수 있지 않을 까요
다른 것에 대해 인정해준다면 사랑 안에서
큰 문제는 없지 싶어요
이제 신혼부부라는 것과 나이 그리고
디자인전공이라는 거.....조금씩 알아 가네요
근데
지금 미국이 시리아를 공격했어요?
시리아는 러시아에서 뒤를 봐 주고 있는
나라인데 어쨌든 이라크 때처럼 한국에도 참전을 요구할까 싶어 걱정이예요
Haha, entirely loved reading this post.
If I started with noteworthy differences between my boyfriend and I, the list would never end! But the one thing that stands out is this - he always expects the answer to 'How big is the city?' in terms of population. I tend to use well known cities as a unit of measurement. So I would say 'half the size of Bombay'. In any case, I use geographical limits to gauge the size of a city.
It always baffles him how I don't know the population of each city I've visited. I think it's impossible to remember if it's 12 million or 18 million or 1 billion or 50,000.