Unexpected differences between England and the U.S.:
- The zippers are backwards (zipper pull on the left)
- Everyone uses 24-hour time (“Dinner at 18:30″)
- Date/month are reversed (I return home 19 December)
- Computer keyboards have some swapped characters. I expect that in France, where they need keys for accented e’s and where what we call the QWERTY keyboard is called the AZERTY keyboard. But didn’t expect it in England (@ and ” are reversed, which causes endless problems when sending email). And in Germany, Z and Y are reversed.
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Keith, once again, love the posts! It reminds me of the observations I have discovered both in the UK and in Australia (which are often one and the same). In my global role with Thomson Reuters, I use 24 hour time daily. I use it consistently at work, so it’s hard to stop and change to US vernacular when I’m not at work. I have said to people, I’ll meet you at 16:30 before and they look at me like I’m nuts. Actually I prefer it, and would support going to a global standard for all this stuff… Haven’t seen you mention the metric system and the Celsius bit–how’s that going? Do you know the shortcut for conversion from Celsius to Farenheit:
“double it and add 30″ or conversly, “subtract 30 and divide by 2″. So, if its 5 Cel, it is roughly equivalent to 40 F.
Thought I’d mention it- that formula has worked for me for years.
You’ll be headed home soon. Hope to see you during your brief time in the area over the hols. Take care! Liz
Yes, I use the shortcut. But by now I mostly “get” the temperatures without translation. Temperatures don’t vary that much in England from day to day compared to St. Louis, so it’s not very important anyway. It’s pretty much the same temperature as yesterday, mostly.
Outside of professional settings, a lot of people in conversation will still say “see you at 7 o’clock” if it’s for a social event; or, even, “the meeting is between 1 and 3″…I’m still figuring out when they say which. In fact, now that I think about it I’ve encountered the 24-hour time in print only!