Horror! Reporter has culture shock!The American view of the world! Anything not as America does it is non-standard, wrong, etc, etc. Reminds me of an old quip my mother once told me, about when I was in the Scouts, and we were marching in some parade. I was out of step, and got severely reprimanded by the Scoutmaster. My mother tried to comfort me by saying that all the scouts were out of step except me! It may have made me feel better, but obviously did not reflect reality.
John F-L ----- Original Message ----- From: Michael GLASS To: U.S. Metric Association Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 11:27 AM Subject: [USMA:49424] Horror! Reporter has culture shock! Gayne C. Young of "Outdoor Life" made a shocking discovery: Australians speak differently! For one thing, an Australian referred to a barramundi fish as a "barra". How confusing can that be? Like calling a refrigerator a fridge, or a telephone a phone, or Santa Claus Santa. And another thing, they spell differently. How dare they spell realise with an "s" or colouration with an extra "u"! However, the worst thing was this: "Unfortunately for me, Australians also use the metric system which means I have to do math to covert the measurements to standard for my readers." "Once hooked, the giant quickly ripped through 80m (about 262 feet in the real world) of 30-pound braided line before crashing across the lake surface. "When I heard it crash, I knew it was a big fish," Harrold detailed to the Australian media before throwing out his "barra" and "snodger" comment. Harrold's monster weighed an incredible 44.6kg (about 98 pounds) and measured 135cm (almost 4 ½ feet). Its girth was an astounding 107cm (about 3 ½ feet). This beat the previous barramundi record taken in 1999 from Lake Tinaroo, Queensland by almost 7kg (I'm through converting numbers)." Now how exotic is that! But don't take my word for it. Read the original at http://www.outdoorlife.com/blogs/gone-fishin/2011/01/world-record-barramundi Best wishes, Michael Glass
