1 inch ( in. or " )  =    about the width of a thumb = 25.4 mm
12 inches ( ins.)  = 1 foot = about the length of a size 10 shoe = 305 mm
3 feet ( ft. )  =  1 yard = about from nose to stretched finger = 0.91 m
1760 yards (yds)  =  1 mile ( m ) = about 15 minutes walking  = 1.61 km

Seriously?! And wait, it gets worse.

16 drams ( dr )  =  1 ounce = a tablespoon of sugar = 28 grams
16 ounces ( ozs.)  =  1 pound = a bag of sugar = 0.45 kg
14 pounds ( lbs)  =  1 stone used in body weight  = 6.35 kg
2 stone  =  1 quarter less common unit = 12.7 kg
4 quarters  =  1 hundredweight = 112 lb
20 hundredweight (cwt)  =  1 ton = 2240 lb. = about 14 men = 1.016 tonne

Nothing quite helps your self esteem than having your body weight measured in rocks, does it?  

Oh, and here’s another one: why measure how many litres of gas per 100 km a car consumes when you can say how many miles a car can go with one gallon of gas! What’s the reasoning behind that? “Gimme 2 gallons, Bob, and I’ll see how far it’ll take me!”.

I can’t imagine how anyone would not like that, and yet some prefer staying at home, tending the garden or the barbeque instead of trekking the globe, exploring new places and broadening their minds. A friend of mine said that maybe the “I heart traveling” goes hand in hand with us being scientists, having inquisitive minds and also hearting the thrill of new discoveries. I am positive this is true; discoveries, either scientific or cultural don’t tickle everyone’s fancy, but for the ones that are lucky enough to have their fancy tickled, the prospect of a new trip somewhere far away is exhilarating!

As for me, when I travel I like the experience to rise to certain standards. And I’m not talking about those of hotels. I like being exposed to the culture and the rhythm of the new place, understand it intimately as if I had been living there for years. I prefer visiting places naturally influenced by the human existence instead of artificial resorts which teach me nothing. I would like to go to Mexico or Morocco or Turkey. But not to linger by the pool with a cocktail in my hand and then brag about how adventurous I am and what exotic places I’ve visited. A day at the spa has more action than that.

Which is why, I would love to go to these places:

Havana – for the architecture of the Old Town and the vintage cars.

Iceland – for sceneries like this,

hot springs,

and the aurora borealis.

Santorini – an old item on my list. For everything that this place is: unique villages, food incorporating some of my favourite ingredients, and a sea so blue you think it’s photoshopped.

Tuscany – because I love hills, the sun, and ripe tomatoes.

What’s on your travel list? I’d love to hear!

Photos from Flickr.

This idea for this post came to me as I was reading Elissa`s Dream destination series on her blog Ebb&Flow. Iceland and Santorini are on both our lists. The only explanation for this is that great minds think alike!

I’m kind of stuck on plum and olive for now, combined with more neutral tones like beige and gray for balance. I’m desperate for the perfect beige raincoat which would make any outfit seem so proper, chic and pulled together…

My fave one is the bookworm. That is just beyond the boundaries of sweet!

Tan lines. Via Design Crush. Tumblr could also be replaced by IT guy, grad student, blog geek, person who hates the sun (e.g me).

And because I’m in tilt-shift mode here’s an awesome video about Berlin (thanks Oana!) shot with a tilt-shift lens. Hence the cool miniature effect.

Little Big Berlin from pilpop on Vimeo.

We had some fast fair food – burgers, fries and some poutine I actually enjoyed and then I started taking pictures of everything: the rides, the people, the Ferris wheel and the colourful food stands.

I love carnivals, they’re so full of bright colours, and always make me think of the 1950s, my absolute favourite decade. I was actually wearing something that resembled an outfit from the 50s: high-waist pants and a nice red scarf tied in a bow over my hair. I wasn’t going for a mid-century thing but the guy at the lemonade stand said this is what my look reminded him of, and he liked it so much that he gave me a lemonade at half price. Oh yeah!

At six o’clock they started inflating the balloons (which was a show in itself and a reason for a lot of picture snapping). I tell you, seeing hundreds of balloons up in the air is so fairytale-like, so surreal. Much like a picture you would see in a children’s book.

Unfortunately the rides were too expensive so we had to be happy with just seeing the balloons fly over our heads and disappear in the distance…

Have you ever taken a ride in a hot air balloon?

One great read this week was this explanation of what a PhD is. Very accurate I must say!

What Exactly Is a Doctorate?

Ever wondered what getting a doctorate really means? Matt Might, professor of Computer Science at the University of Utah, explains it perfectly in this graphic presentation that starts with a simple circle.—JD

How adorable are these animal photographs taken by Sharon Montrose? My favourite is the goofy-looking baby giraffe.

Lastly, here is an open letter by Christina Hendricks from Mad Men. Via Gala Darling.

A Letter To Men by Christina Hendricks

We love your body. If we’re in love with you, we love your body. Your potbelly, everything. Even if you’re insecure about something, we love your body. You feel like you’re not this or that? We love your body. We embrace everything. Because it’s you.

Speaking of your body, you don’t understand the power of your own smell. Any woman who is currently with a man is with him partly because she loves the way he smells. And if we haven’t smelled you for a day or two and then we suddenly are within inches of you, we swoon. We get light-headed. It’s intoxicating. It’s heady.

We remember forever what you say about the bodies of other women. When you mention in passing that a certain woman is attractive — could be someone in the office, a woman on the
street, a celebrity, any woman in the world, really — your comment goes into a steel box and it stays there forever. We will file the comment under “Women He Finds Attractive.” It’s not about
whether or not we approve of the comment. It’s about learning what you think is sexy and how we might be able to convey it. It’s about keeping our man by knowing what he likes.

We also remember everything you say about our bodies, be it good or bad. Doesn’t matter if it’s a compliment. Could be just a comment. Those things you say are stored away in the steel
box, and we remember these things verbatim. We remember what you were wearing and the street corner you were standing on when you said it.

Never complain about our friends — even if we do. No matter how many times we say a friend of ours is driving us crazy, you are not to pile on. Not because it offends us. But because it adds to the weight that we carry around about her.

Remember what we like. When I first started dating my husband, I had this weird fascination with the circus and clowns and old carnival things and sideshow freaks and all that. About a month after we started dating, he bought me this amazing black-and-white photo book on the circus in the 1930s, and I started sobbing. Which freaked him out. I thought, Oh, my God, I mentioned this three or four weeks ago and talked about it briefly, but he was really listening to me. And he actually went out and researched and found this thing for me. It was amazing.

We want you to order Scotch. It’s the most impressive drink order. It’s classic. It’s sexy. Such a rich color. The glass, the smell. It’s not watered down with fruit juice. It’s Scotch. And you ordered it.

Stand up, open a door, offer a jacket. We talk about it with our friends after you do it. We say, “Can you believe he stood up when I approached the table?” It makes us feel important. And it makes you important because we talk about it.

No shorts that go below the knee. The ones almost like capri pants, the ones that hover somewhere between the kneecap and the calf? Enough with those shorts. They are the most embarrassing pants in the world. They should never be worn. No woman likes those.

Also, no tank tops. In public at least. A tank top is underwear. You’re walking around in your underwear. Too much.

No man should be on Facebook. It’s an invasion of everyone’s privacy. I really cannot stand it.

You don’t know this, but when we come back from a date, we feel awkward about that transition from our cute outfit into sexy lingerie. We don’t know how to do this gracefully. It’s embarrassing. We have to find a way to slip into another room, put on the outfit as if it all happened very easily, and then come out and it’s: Look at me! Look at the sexy thing I’ve done! For you, it’s the blink of an eye. It’s all very embarrassing. Just so you know.

Panties is a wonderful word. When did you stop saying “panties”? It’s sexy. It’s girlie. It’s naughty. Say it more.

About ogling: The men who look, they really look. It doesn’t insult us. It doesn’t faze us, really. It’s just — well, it’s a little infantile. Which is ironic, isn’t it? The men who constantly stare at our breasts are never the men we’re attracted to.

There are better words than beautiful. Radiant, for instance. It’s an underused word. It’s a very special word. “You are radiant.” Also, enchanting, smoldering, intoxicating, charming, fetching.

Marriage changes very little. The only things that will get a married man laid that won’t get a single man laid are adultery and whores. Intelligence and humour (and your smell) are what get you laid. That’s what got you laid when you were single. That’s what gets you laid when you’re married. Everything still works in marriage: especially intelligence and humour. Because the sexiest thing is to know you.

Do you (ladies) agree with it? What would you add to it?

My Mom always told me she is somewhat relieved that she had girls and not boys. No frogs and snails and puppy dog tails… It would have been too much for my mother’s nerves. She got two girls, but that didn’t mean she could put on her party hat just yet. My parents got their fair share of misbehaving, shouts, cries and fights from us two.

My sister and I used to fight a lot and I mean A LOT when we were growing up. Our personalities were so different and would often go clashing with each other. Actually clashing might not be a strong enough term. Swatting each other. Yes, that’s better. I’m surprised my parents didn’t consider selling us to a circus where we could kick and scream at each other for a living. But I digress. All this to say that beside the slight damage to my Mom’s sanity we didn’t destroy anything else. We didn’t burn the house down or punch each other through walls. On the other hand, D and his older sister, C did damage a wee bit more than just their parents’ patience.

(*) One time, D must have been five or six, his Mom told him she would take him to the hairdresser later that day, his curly locks in dire need of some trimming. But seven-year old C came up with a plan. Why pay a hairdresser a lot of money when cutting someone’s hair seemed like such an easy job? So she proposed that she cut D’s hair and they split the unspent money between them.

When D’s Mom came back from work she found her little boy with a zigzag hairdo and cuts and bruises on his forehead. His new hairdresser did not have a steady hand! To this day my mother-in-law thanks the Almighty that her son came out of that adventure with both his eyes in their respective sockets.

(†) My favourite story from D’s childhood should be called Dancing in the Rain. The two kids must have been around seven. One night their parents went to visit their downstairs neighbours. The kids were home alone, I assume also a bit bored and with a gnawing question on their minds: what would it be like if it rained inside the apartment?

So they put on their raincoats, D put a hose at the bathroom sink faucet and they made it rain! They made it rain so badly that the downstairs neighbours started seeing the results on their ceiling. Not knowing what was going on upstairs the parents quickly came back only to find the carpets floating in water two-inch deep. Did I mention it was winter time?

(‡) Now, the superglue story. Maybe D was trying to get back at C for all the chasing around the house she put him through, or maybe for the haircut incident . Somehow he convinced C that it would be a fun to see what happens if your toes were stuck together. So he superglued them! As he was telling me the story he was LMAO-ing LHAO-ing because, he said, it was funny to see C struggling to walk. Of course it was, her sense of balance was a little bit on the screwed-up side…

Now when we get together and reminisce about all this it’s so great to see us all laughing even if we’ve heard the stories hundreds of times before. It’s one of those moments when you’re grateful for the sibling that sometimes made your life Hell but who’s also responsible for all these moments of AWESOME!

* † ‡: No kids were harmed (very seriously) during the events detailed in this post.

Check out other cute shade-inclusive photos at I Heart Faces.

Here’s a cute link I found via Holycool – journals with iconic faces on the cover. Can you recognize everyone?

Have a fun weekend!

Now that we’ve moved to the new and improved apartment the distance to my work place has gone from 100 meters to 2 miles, give or take. Which means I must partake in the joy of commuting. At the beginning I was not happy about this downgrade AT ALL. [I know some of you have to commute for hours, so my meagre fifteen minutes or less doesn’t even reach the ankle of your commuting time, but hey, this is why I created this blog. To complain about shit egotistically, in ample posts that go nowhere. Anyway, back to me.] I mean who goes nuts about buses running late, having to renew your pass on the first of every month, or having to smell the BO of fellow commuters at rush hour?

But you know what? I’ve realized it’s not at all that bad. Ok, I always have to make sure I leave the house in time to catch the bus, I have to check the bus schedule online – I know I’ll memorize it eventually, just give me time – and I just have to deal with the fact that buses are sometimes late! But guys, those fifteen minutes when I’m on the bus, it’s just Switching-Off Time, or Think-About-The-Bigger-Picture Time, or Reflection Time, or just plain Reading Time. Do you know how many books I’ve read in one month of riding the bus? Four! I.e. a book a week. And that just makes me happy and proud!

You know what else I like to do while I’m on the bus? People-watch. And eaves-drop on their conversations… and sometimes imagine the story behind those conversations. Since the bus I’m taking is not at all crowded I’ve come to know my fellow commuters. There’s a Dad and his ridiculously cute little boy with an even cuter French accent; there’s this hipster girl that braids her hair in the most awesome style I’ve ever seen; the sixty(ish)-year old Grandma who sometimes takes her Grandson to the park is always so elegant and so patient when answering the silly questions she’s being asked; the weird lady I see every once in a while is so committed to making small talk to the driver that she’s driving me bonkers – I sometimes wish the driver would just tell her to can it or get off the bus.

So yeah, there you go, another aspect of my day to day existence which I gratuitously shared with the world whether the world liked it or not. All this to say that I feel like I’ve grown a little bit (fine, minus the passive-aggressive attitude towards the chatterbox lady) and that somehow, in a bizarre way, taking the bus to work seems to be contributing to building my character.

How about you? Do you commute to work? Do you like it?