Ask Arthur 2023, Part 2: Measuring and measured

After looking at the questions remaining in this series, and comparing them to the maximum days left in the year, and then subtracting Christmas (because I didn’t want to post anything heavy around then), I calculated that today’s questions should be somewhat lighter. It’s all about the numbers.

And that brings me to today’s first question from my pal Roger Green, who asked:

What things are you now fluent in (such as Celsius temperature) that you weren't in 1995? And what have you forgotten (such as MPH)?

You are assuming I’m fluent in any of that—including MPH. Nothing depending on to arithmetic has ever been easy for me, but, it turns out, it doesn’t need to be: Nowadays, a smartphone alone can make any calculations or translations needed, so I don’t really need to be truly fluent in any of them, and that means that my lack of mathematical ability isn’t a barrier to successfully doing something. I talked about my adaptation to metrics after I moved to New Zealand in a post back in October 2006, in the earliest days of this blog, and again ten years later.

It turned out that familiarity wasn’t even remotely the same as understanding, and to this day I can’t visualise length in millimetres or centimetres except for small sizes (and that’s because the ads I produced for publications were in mm or cm). I’ve never had any ability whatsoever to visualise long distances, whether a football pitch or some point in the distance. For those, it makes no difference if we’re talking metres or yards, miles or kilometres, because I have absolutely no way to visualise or comprehend distance measured in them.

Similarly, I’ve also never had a good sense of speed, and I just went whatever the posted speed was, keeping the speedometer on that speed. In that sense, it, too, makes absolutely no difference what the measurement system is because all I’ve ever done is get the car’s display to show the proper speed—and nowadays when I reach it I put on the cruise control, something that also makes sure I don’t get too close to the car in front of me, which is a great bonus.

All that aside, I couldn’t think of anything from the USA that I’ve forgotten, apart from the names for some things that aren’t used here, and sometimes the spelling of American words, but, um, I've forgotten what those are. The latter is easy enough to check, but the first? Sometimes even Google can’t help, not if I can’t remember anything about the American name.

On Christmas day, one of the guests was visiting from the UK, and one of the Kiwis wanted to know what they called the sort of sleeveless shirt that might be an undershirt or maybe an athletic uniform shirt. Kiwis call it a singlet (it turns out that the Brits call it a vest, and what Americans call a vest they’d call a waistcoat). I could only remember pejorative terms from the USA, like wifebeater (which is apparently sometimes used in England, too), and the even worse dago tee. I completely forgot that the last such shirt I ever bought in the USA (in 1995) was labelled “athletic t-shirt”, and I also forgot that I’d also seen it called, rather boringly, “a sleeveless t-shirt”. And, I completely forgot that there was also possibly the most common name, “tank top”. I’ve lived in New Zealand for 28 years, and to me those things are now called “singlets”, end of story. This shirt thing just one example of many.

Over all, the things I’ve forgotten—and the stuff I don’t remember I’ve forgotten—come mainly from lack of use and the usual age-related CRS (“Can’t Remember Shit”) syndrome. That means that I’m blissfully unaware of what I’ve forgotten until it suddenly pops up, as it did on Christmas Day.

Interestingly, the answer to Roger’s next question is similar. He asked:

Did you always think the seasons changed on the month, such as when you were in Illinois, or is this a New Zealand thing?

There’s a theme of confusion developing here, because I really didn’t think of either one back then. Pre-1995, I wasn’t aware that things like “Meteorological Summer” even existed—that didn’t happen until after I moved to New Zealand, and even then it was some time after I arrived (I was busier with more important adjustments…). However, while I lived in the USA, I also had absolutely no idea, in those pre-Internet days, of when, precisely solstices and equinoxes arrived, although—and Roger would appreciate this—I certainly could have looked it up in one of my many annual almanacs—had that ever occurred to me. Maybe I didn't care? I just knew that they were somewhere around the third week of the relevant month, and I just let the evening TV news tell me what the first day of [whatever season] was. I can’t imagine being that passive now, not when there are resources like the one I’ve used for many, many years, the “Seasons” page of timeanddate.com (Fun fact: I started relying on that site just because I could remember its website address, something that was useful when people asked me what time it was at that moment back in Illinois; nowadays my phone tells me that instantly).

Thanks to Roger for today’s questions! Coming up, some kinda serious questions.

All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-23”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

”Let the annual inquisition begin” – The first post in this year’s series.
”Ask Arthur 2023, Part 1: Get here from there”