Thursday, October 29, 2009

Going by numbers

Although I have been here already for 27 years, it still takes some effort to get the numbers right. The way people here count is different - like, twenty-one is actually one and twenty. And this gets a bit confusing when you go beyond one hundred - because you can't distinguish between 260 and 62 (being that they are both two and sixty). I get across this problem by just mentioning two hundred and sixty, instead of two and sixty.

And the way people here count the storeys in a building is different. The first floor is the ground floor, and the second floor is the 1st floor. This is the way it is in most of Europe. And to make it even more confusing, sometimes there is also a mezzanine floor. Once, when I thought I was already at the third floor, I realized that I was still at the first floor, since the first floor was the ground floor and the second floor was the mezzanine floor...

And the time, well, is also different. Half three is actually 2:30. And the Dutch say things like 10 before half three - which means (after computing in your head) that it is 2:20. It is not too problematic when it's the whole hour, though. And the dates here are in dd/mm/yy format instead of the Philippine style of mm/dd/yy. Thus, we would say: it is 21 March 2010, instead of saying March 21, 2010.

Well, I guess it is just a different way of looking at the world, and because I was born and raised in the Philippines, I will have to exert extra efforts to "translate" the way we count to the way Europeans count.