Wrong Side of the Road!!

I was walking down the street the other day, and I saw a car driving. I immediately thought, "holy crap, that guy's on the wrong side of the road!". But then immediately remembered that they drive on the wrong side of the road here. You think I'd be used to it, but I'm just not. Probably because I'm not actually driving. I still look all ways (left, right, up, down, behind me...) when I cross the road because I'm not going to be another casualty statistic from stupidity. I guess that's how most foreign tourists die here - not looking the right way and getting hit by a god damn car. Forget that. I've had a few close calls and now I just look all directions, not even knowing where the cars are supposed to come from. Why can't we all just drive on the same side of the road?

The other thing that's been hard for me here is the metric system. I have a decent concept of meters and stuff already, but it's still hard for engineering purposes. I'm trying to think in meters and kilonewtons, but It's like trying to think in Spanish when you've only taken a year of high school classes. It just doesn't work. So I sit and convert metric to imperial in my head (or with a spreadsheet) to see if my calculations seem right. Plus, they do everything (engineering-wise) in millimeters - so the numbers end up being huge! Not that you'd know what I mean, but the moment of inertias for steel members here are measured in the billions! It's ridiculous. I'm trying though, hopefully it will get better.

Work all this week, work in the day, work in the night, work on the weekends. I'm finishing up this one task for Thom (not that work won't come in after this, but this is pretty major and needs to get done), so it's taking up a lot of time. Anyway, better get back to it!