A question was brought up in the altitude thread, which I think deserves an answer -

"I couldn't help wondering how many FT members think in terms of either feet or metres, or maybe both? "

Personally, I walk in feet, drive in kilometres. I buy my groceries bilingually - half a pound of this, 200 grams of that. My own body I measure in feet and pounds. I measure temperature in Celsius.

I walk and travel in feet and miles.

Measure body in feet and pounds/stone also.

Groceries certainly for me are in grams - 200g of cola bottles etc.

feet..drive in miles..buy food by the pound..for my body I'm such and such feet and so many stone

I buy groceries in grams, I measure temperature in celsius and I weigh my body in stones and pounds.

In Canada, we were forced to convert to the Metric System in the 70's by then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's Gov't.
Our entire Country is surveyed in Miles, so this is very confusing, especially for tourists.
As I grew up using the Imperial system, I find my little brain automatically converting from Metric to Imperial.
The only Metric measurement that makes any sense at all is the Temperature, where 0 Degrees is Freezing. That is the only measurement I think of in Metric terms.

I am mostly Imperial. When cooking I am Celsius but the room temperature is in farenheit. I am feet and inches tall, weight too many stones and pounds, buy fresh food such as meat or fish which needs to be weighed by a member of staff in pounds and ounces. I drive in miles and fill my car up with petrol which is priced in litres. All in all a complete mish mash.

I can easily visualise 30cms but don't ask me to know how high 159 cms would be - well actually that wouldn't be too difficult, about five feet three but most conversions would be more complex for me. I will fight the metric until I die, I was born into an Imperial world and hopefully will die in one!

I'm completely indiscriminate with distance, using both metres or feet as the occasion demands. When driving in Europe I think in kilometres, which is probably just as well if I've got a hired car with a speedometer registering these units, but in Britain or the U.S.A. I think in miles.
I'm definitely a centigrade person, though I understand fahrenheit. I know my own weight in kilos, but have only a vague idea what it is in stones & pounds. I also prefer food weights in kilos rather than pounds, and think metric in building materials, such as 9mm plywood, etc. I'm happy with litres, pints, and gallons, but am a bit confused by the U.S. gallon which is less than the imperial gallon, especially when gallons are referred to in engineering journals which I read.

I weigh myself in stones and pounds and drive and cycle in miles. But at the gym everything is metric, so I'm starting to think both ways. I seem to have converted to using celsius for temperature these days. I buy olives and cheese at the deli by asking for a 'small tub' because I can't be bothered to think about the grams. I buy milk by the pint and fruit juice by the litre. Petrol is in litres, but I then talk about the car doing so many miles to the gallon. It's all a bit of a mess.

In the U.S., I think in ounces and pounds, feet and inches. However, during extended stays in Europe, I've thought in metric. (My bathroom scale in Italy drove visiting American relatives crazy. To learn how much they weighed, they had to tell me the scale figure so I could translate it into pounds for them. They all stopped weighing themselves.)

These days, I still have a little trouble with European recipes and sometimes use an online conversion site before I go grocery shopping. However, my measuring cups and so forth are marked in both systems, probably because these items are sold in both the U.S. and Canada.

Yeah its weird how we one and the other. I do everything in metric except for peoples heights. Which is always 6ft 1 or what ever 193 centimetres means nothing to me.
In Australia we have different names for our beer glasses depending on which state you are in. In South Australia a large glass is called a pint (even though it isnt a pint). This bothers interstate drinkers who love to point out its not a pint. Where upon I point that when they asked for a schooner they should have gone to a boatyard.
Years ago I cylced around the UK and I was somewhat annoyed at how slow I was going before it occured to me that the distances were in miles. Turns out I was still going slow mind you.

Hmm let's see. I'm comfortable in inches and yards or in centimetres and metres about equally, but longer distances I'm more comfortable in miles.

Weight.. I grew up with stones and pounds but now I think in kilograms.

Temps: primarily Celsius, secondarily, Fahrenheit.

Thinking in two systems came quite easily due to an accident of timing. I was a preteen when the U.K. converted from pounds, shillings and pence to metric. Dealing with such a change at such an age helped me be quite casual about thinking in more than one system at once.

I'm ok with either one as I've lived almost thirteen years total in Europe.
I actually know square meters better than square feet.

I am a Metric whimp! I only do: weight in pounds and ounces, height in inches, feet etc. Distance is miles, unless it's a farm, which I believe is acres! I have a little calandar with Metric conversions in the back. I get nervous when I look at it.

I think temperature in Celsius, always.
Height is a mixture of both. I know how many feet and inches I am, but have always measured myself in centimetres (My mum is 5'6, and I am an inch shorter than her, so it works...)

Groceries I buy in grams, I drive (well give it a year or two and I will) in kilometers, weight is kilos, but I find it easier to visualise something under 2 metres in feet, but anything above 2 metres in metres.

As for thinking, I think 'oh, thats miles away' and stuff like that. 'Oh that's kilometres away just doesn't sound right'

I'm with veronikka! It's funny, when I was in school, we studied the Metric system for all of a week, and just sort of dropped it. To be honest, at the time, I was happy it was over with because I have never been one for math. Since I have never had to think in Metric, I have to make the conversions, and that just scrambles my tiny little brain!

I weigh myself in stone .. but don't know pounds or the kilos. I weigh food in metric but measuring dry things like flour I like to use cups. At the deli I'm more than likely to say "two handfuls of bacon bits" or something because i wouldn't be entirely sure what I would get if I asked for a measurement. I do smaller measurements in metric but longer (people height) in imperial, but switch back to metric for travelling distances.

On our road out from town there are a couple of landmarks, like the eight mile hill and the eleven mile tank, that I wouldn't have a clue how far that is in kilometres BUT I know that the next door neighbours mailbox is 25kms from town and wouldn't know what that was in miles.

Colour me confused.

I can only think of car engines in metric off the top of my head simply as they always used them (no idea why, it was long before they did for anything else) and the rest may as well be in zargons and quercits. Especially distance. 73 centipedes and a squirrel may be too big to fit in my house or too small to see, I can rarely visualise any of the lengths with 'metre' in them (besides whole metres as they are near enough to a yard to make some sense).

However we went metric with our currency in 1971 but if I really want to know what something costs I just convert it back to the old money, 8 shillings for a Mars Bar which would have cost about 9 pence (ie a 1000% increase from 4p to 40p) shows what diabolical inflation we really have.
I remember when I went to Sweden in 1974 they charged 60p for a small bottle of lemonade and I wondered if we'd ever get close (12 shillings while ours cost about 2 at the time). We still haven't quite caught them up for that particular item but I expect most other items have.

Sat, you are up on a late one!

And so are you, Jonno!

I think conversions are easier when you're in a marketplace and can see how much of something you're getting.
The French have one notable holdout from the old system...livre or pound. if you want oranges from older market sellers, you could get by with 'une livre d'oranges'. At least I used to hear that and was surprised. instead of a demi kilo, they say une livre in some places.
they use 'pouces' or inches (literally thumbs) for TV sets too.

I think it's much harder to learn the English methods than it is to learn metric so I'm glad I was born to one and learned the other one as part of my second language.

Generally speaking, I think in Imperial units, though for temperatures I can work happily with Celsius or Fahrenheit.

The only real exception is for the small quantities that make up my typical bachelor’s shopping list. I’m quite at home with a couple of kilos of potatoes or a litre of fruit juice. Indeed, I’ve set my “bilingual” kitchen scale to give me readings in grams. But with larger quantities I can only think in Imperial units. If I hear that someone is 170 cm tall and weighs 70 kg, I have to convert to feet and inches and stones and pounds before I know whether he’s shaped like a beanpole or a barrel or something in between.

I think of longer distances in miles, never in kilometres (it helps that we’ve kept the mile for road signs in the UK).

As for money, of course I count the coins decimally; but my mental arithmetic, like satguru’s, is done in old-fashioned £sd. If I have to divide, say, £5 by 3, it’s £1 13s 4d without thinking: it takes a second longer to make it £1.66 recurring. It’s all rather academic anyway, since a pound is worth virtually nothing any more and our pence will soon be like the centesimi into which the Italian lira used to be theoretically divided.

I was interested to hear that the French still sometimes speak of a livre. I’d read about this, but I can’t remember hearing it used. But then, the French continued to count small sums of money in sous for more than a hundred years after the Revolution, until five centimes ceased to have any value at all. We Brits, on the other hand, stopped talking about shillings almost immediately when we decimalized our currency. A few years after decimalization, when inflation was roaring away in the UK, I asked a very young Sainsbury’s saleslady the price of some bacon rashers, and I was a little taken aback to be told “Eighty pence a pound.” I shrieked out “That’s a shilling an ounce!” One or two older people in the queue realized what I meant, but my sense of shock meant nothing to the girl behind the counter, who had no idea what a shilling was. The Germans, I think, still routinely call a half-kilo a Pfund and fifty kilos a Zentner (hundredweight).

Livre is still used for the term pound in the currency sense also (pound sterling).

I think in metric. When I go to the grocery, I think in grams and kilos. When it comes to temperatures, I think in Celsius. That is so interesting, because I lived in US for one year and I tried to think thier way, but it was really difficult. I could use all the mesurements, but really hard for me. One thing I can say: I miss my time in US!

Metric doesn't exist in my universe.
After being educated in Imperial & LSD (money, of course), Europe decides that we all have to start using our fingers & toes for counting, instead of our brains.
Metric measurements are creeping into astronomy too. Distances were big enough in miles, never mind kilometres.
I think of kilometres as incomplete miles, you know, something not quite right about them. Abnormal!
As for weights? A complete mystery.
I still think of coinage in shillings & pence. Too late to change now. No! Never, no way! I'll bet you ten bob I don't!