Weights, Measures and Confusion!

Some things about Asia are blatantly different and frankly discombobulating, things like the food, the traffic, and of course the funny lingo, but others are more subtle.
Over the last week, I've been struck again by the differences in basic standards.

For example: January 1st passes with hardly a nod- they're all just beginning to get ready for Spring festival, which is the agreed-upon start of the year.

The day has 24 hours here too, thankfully, but they use military time, the 24 hour clock, which is another adjustment to make for those who think in am and pm.

They eat differently- with chopsticks, of course, but getting used to eating and drinking not being linked is a bit of an adjustment.

And on that subject, tp commonly appears on tables in resturants as napkins, while pocket packs of kennex are intended for use as tp. Confusing! And the bathrooms are confounding in their own right!

The beds are different too- if you weren't a back sleeper before, a few nights of waking up with your shoulder asleep from the hard mattress will make you one!

The work schedule is different too. I could get used to the 2 hour lunch and nap break routine, though I still find it a tiny bit amusing to see all my co-workers doing home or rolling out nap mats in an unused classroom like a bunch of kindergarten students.

All lengths and distances are measured by the km, m, and the cm.

Temperature is in celcius. Do you need a jacket or a t shirt when it's going to be 26 degrees?

Locks and keys are made differently, windows open differently, showers are just mounted on the wall, there's no such thing as hot water plumbing, clothes dryers, or full sized ovens, the washing machines are wierd, and it's strange to only be able to drink water bought by the jug.

With rare exceptions, they don't do lines. It takes a complete reversal of training to force yourself to push in and put your stuff on the scale brfore anyone else can and the grocery store weighing station(that's a change too- you take your produce to the lady who weighs it and puts a price sticker on it before you go to the checkout), but if you don't you'll just stand there all day while other people push in front you. They don't consider it rude, so you've just got to put aside your good training and charge in there too.

The voltage is different, the wall sockets strange, and the light switches are a whole different model too.

Kilos are disorienting enough, but most things- fresh produce, rice, beans, etc, are sold by the jin, a unit I'd never heard of before I came here, which is half a kilo, or just a little over a pound.

The money is thankfully in logical units, but the conversion factor to US dollars is 6.7, a very unweildy number for in the head calculations.

And on the subject of money, I learned yesterday that they don't even do commas in large numbers the same way. The counting system has terms for four places before switching over to another order of magnitude, so they put a comma every 4th place, instead of every third. I never even considered that there was another way to do that.

So far I haven't identified anything that they do exactly the same way here. Each change is just a tiny thing, but the cumulative effect is totally disorienting!