I know [too many] Canadians who have been fuelling their autos with litres of gasoline for decades;  they have been reading SI road maps and SI road signs and reading SI speedometers and odometers for decades.
YET, they STILL check their fuel usage in miles per gallon!
The missing link in their thought process is that they have not established a few bench-mark numbers such as (say) 10 L/100 km for a reasonably thrifty vehicle (14 L/100 km corresponds to the old 20 miles-per-gallon).
Once they do that, the rest is easy.
 
The same thing goes for weight-watchers.  Instead of reading weight in kg and traslating it back into FFU for comparison to (say) 130 lbs. (their desired weight  -  sorry Prof. M.  -), they fail to translate the 130 (or whatever) into 60 kg and base their action at the table on their most recent kilogram readings.
 
If they cannot relate to (say) 15 cm of snow, they should obtain a metre-stick and, every once in a while, have a good LOOK at it.  See where 10 cm, 20 cm, 50 cm etc. come on the stick.  Also have a look at the small divisions to see that a millimetre is about the thickness of a thin dime.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: U.S. Metric Association <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: February 22, 2002 06:29
Subject: [USMA:18340] Re: Comments from a friend in Toronto

In a message dated 2002-02-22 00:49:55 Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:


2002-02-22

Ask him!  I'm curious to hear his answer.

What I find amazing, is how immigrants who come to the US after spending years in their home countries and learning and using metric, claim after a few years they no longer remember metric and are completely comfortable with FFU.  Yet, an American can spend a decade or more in a foreign country and claim he/she still doesn't know metric and still thinks in FFU.

How can that be?  What should this be telling us?

John



Older Canadians around him still taking in miles, no doubt.

cm

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