My Metric Problem

After watching a Holiday Movie in Ukrainian and Russian I was reminded about how I was awful using the Metric System when I was in Russia and Ukraine.

When I was in Russia they had a strict system to buy food in the stores (except in the Modern Supermarkets.) You couldn’t touch anything – everything was behind the counter. You would look to see what each section had to offer (even the smallest stores had many Sections – in a Food Store one section would be for milk, one for meats, one for vegetables, one for frozen, one for drinks, etc.)

Then you would go to the specific Cashier Register (касса or Kassa) for that section and only tell the price of everything in that section. Each price was put on a receipt and you paid the total for that section – of course only in Russian.

You then took your receipt back to the counter in that section and when it was your turn you told the person the items you wanted and they marked the price off the receipt and then, for some reason, tore the top and handed it back to you.

You had to do that in every section of the store that you wanted to buy something. It took a lot of time and a lot of thinking.

I would go to the Deli Section of a Store and see what they had and then try to remember what a Kilogram looked like in Pounds, etc. I then went to the Deli Kassa and gave them the price for each item I wanted, paid for it and then went back to the Deli Counter where I would tell them I wanted 3 Kilograms of cheese or meat (not realizing that that was equal to 6 Pounds.)

I was usually very surprised by how much food I always got – sometimes I would be given 2 different kinds of cheeses or meats because I had already paid for it and they didn’t have enough in-stock.

You also had to bring your own bags. Some stores allowed you to buy cheap bags from them otherwise you would have to go outside to one of the many old Women standing in the hot sun, the rain or the snow selling bags  - it was how they tried to earn some extra money since their Government Pensions were all but useless.

If the Old Babushkas weren't selling you bags they were shoveling the snow, brushing the streets, clearing the leaves or on their hands and knees handwashing the stairwells. Life in Russia was and is very hard because they spend all their money on Foreign Interventions (like Wars, Hacking, etc.) rather than taking care of their own Citizens - including the Disabled and the Elderly.

It may not seem like a big deal to buy 6 lbs. of cheese or 6 lbs. of meat, but you have to remember Russians, like most of the world, buy their food every day or every few days. They don’t do a big shopping trip like we Americans do and most of their food doesn’t have preservatives to last that long.

When I was in Kyiv they mostly had the Modern Markets with 1 Register for the whole place. I did buy some cheese and meats that had to be weighed and paid for in Kilograms, but unlike in Russia – where you paid first and then they weighed everything – in Kyiv they weighed it for you so you could see how much you were getting and then you paid for all your different items at once (like in the US.)

I was able to use my Russian in Kyiv since they didn’t speak English and I didn’t know Ukrainian, but that was of course before Russians started murdering Ukrainians for no reason.

I am okay with using Celsius and converting it to/from Fahrenheit, but I still have trouble with Grams and Kilograms and converting them to/from Ounces and Pounds.