I grew up in the US............not on the metric system like all other parts of the world.
When I moved to India, the ounces I was familiar with were replaced with "ml's", pounds were replaced by "kg's", and dollars were replaced with "Rs.".......
Converting everything from one to the other is something that I had to adjust too........but honestly, I still rely on the familiarity of the weights and measures and currency system I grew up with.
I have gotten quick at calculating in both currencies...............certainly not an expert, but I can navigate back and forth more easily now that when I first moved here............but it all doesn't seem "real".
It's hard to explain............100 Rs. doesn't seem like $2.00 USD...........and 95 kg doesn't seem like 210 lbs.......
So what does all of this have to do with "Indy" our Toyota Innova turning 4 years old?
Just the other day, on my way to work, Ramesh, our faithful driver, proudly pointed out that the odometer on the car just turned 100,000 km.
Wow.....a milestone. So I asked him to slow down so that I had time to pull out my camera and take two quick photographs of the display panel.
That quickly led to a discussion.............."how many miles" is 100,000 kilometers?
It made me reminisce about a time when I was growing up and as children we would go around converting dogs ages into Human years.
It has always been commonly believed that each year of a dogs life is equivalent to 7 in human years......but this isn't quite accurate......many factors go into determining a dogs age and it varies by breed.
So Ramesh and I started to try and calculate how many "miles"..........and the banter started back and forth about how many kilometers in a mile.......I was doing division in my head...............back and forth......but I knew one day I would have a little time and I would find out the accurate answer.
For you math whiz kids........you have probably already calculated it.......for me, it took several weeks.......to find a converter on the Internet and let it to the calculations for me.
100000km = 62137 miles, 1640 yards, 1 foot, 8 inches
Yes......can you believe it............I was close in my calculations.......I proudly told Ramesh the answer and I was only off by 10 yards.................NOT!
"Indy" has been a great car............for his birthday he got his check up, fresh fluids.......oil and such and he got a new set of brake pads.....his original ones were becoming a little squeaky.
He got an early birthday present around 90,000km.....a new set of tires......
He is getting "old" though.......a warning light has popped up intermittently for the "safety restraint" system......sometimes it is on....sometimes it goes out......we took indi to the shop and the technician stated that there was nothing wrong except they would replace a wire for 15,000 Rs.......thats almost $300 USD.....I told Ramesh........thanks but no thanks!
But what I can't believe is that we only put an average of 25,000 kilometers (15534 miles, 460 yards, 1 foot ,11 inches) per year on Indy....... our cars in the US have very high mileage. This is extremely low in comparison.
When we first got Indy, Ramesh and I took him to the pundit who performed a "puja"......it hardly seems like that was 4 years ago.........if you want to read the blog entry......see the archives for 2008 and the posting was done on November 9th. It was one of my early blog postings and received many page views.
So....for those readers back in the US.....how old is your car in Human years.......or how many kilometers does your car have vs. miles...............
Practice those conversions........you never know, tomorrow you may find yourself on your own adventure someplace in this world!
Enjoy
When I moved to India, the ounces I was familiar with were replaced with "ml's", pounds were replaced by "kg's", and dollars were replaced with "Rs.".......
Converting everything from one to the other is something that I had to adjust too........but honestly, I still rely on the familiarity of the weights and measures and currency system I grew up with.
I have gotten quick at calculating in both currencies...............certainly not an expert, but I can navigate back and forth more easily now that when I first moved here............but it all doesn't seem "real".
It's hard to explain............100 Rs. doesn't seem like $2.00 USD...........and 95 kg doesn't seem like 210 lbs.......
So what does all of this have to do with "Indy" our Toyota Innova turning 4 years old?
 |
| Going Strong at 100,000 kilometers |
Wow.....a milestone. So I asked him to slow down so that I had time to pull out my camera and take two quick photographs of the display panel.
That quickly led to a discussion.............."how many miles" is 100,000 kilometers?
It made me reminisce about a time when I was growing up and as children we would go around converting dogs ages into Human years.
It has always been commonly believed that each year of a dogs life is equivalent to 7 in human years......but this isn't quite accurate......many factors go into determining a dogs age and it varies by breed.
So Ramesh and I started to try and calculate how many "miles"..........and the banter started back and forth about how many kilometers in a mile.......I was doing division in my head...............back and forth......but I knew one day I would have a little time and I would find out the accurate answer.
For you math whiz kids........you have probably already calculated it.......for me, it took several weeks.......to find a converter on the Internet and let it to the calculations for me.
100000km = 62137 miles, 1640 yards, 1 foot, 8 inches
Yes......can you believe it............I was close in my calculations.......I proudly told Ramesh the answer and I was only off by 10 yards.................NOT!
"Indy" has been a great car............for his birthday he got his check up, fresh fluids.......oil and such and he got a new set of brake pads.....his original ones were becoming a little squeaky.
He got an early birthday present around 90,000km.....a new set of tires......
He is getting "old" though.......a warning light has popped up intermittently for the "safety restraint" system......sometimes it is on....sometimes it goes out......we took indi to the shop and the technician stated that there was nothing wrong except they would replace a wire for 15,000 Rs.......thats almost $300 USD.....I told Ramesh........thanks but no thanks!
 |
| Check out the "Safety Restraint" light illuminated and almost out of fuel! |
When we first got Indy, Ramesh and I took him to the pundit who performed a "puja"......it hardly seems like that was 4 years ago.........if you want to read the blog entry......see the archives for 2008 and the posting was done on November 9th. It was one of my early blog postings and received many page views.
So....for those readers back in the US.....how old is your car in Human years.......or how many kilometers does your car have vs. miles...............
Practice those conversions........you never know, tomorrow you may find yourself on your own adventure someplace in this world!
Enjoy
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