Comments on: Metrication progress in Malaysia

By: Michael Glass

Michael Glass — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 02:10:38 +0000

While it is true that some rural areas are advertised in acres in Australia, in built-up areas, both land and building sizes are given in square metres. The main hold-outs in Australia are the measurement of screen sizes, which are measured in the diagonal and very often given in inches. I find this frustrating, but there does seem to be a tendency for television screen sizes to be given in both inches and centimetres and one popular chain (Bing Lee) just gives television screen sizes in centimetres.

From the description above, it appears that Malaysia is not as far along the road to complete metrication as Australia.

By: philh

philh — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 10:04:50 +0000

I stongly agree with Jeremiah’s last sentence about road signs. They pervade our society and make it impossible for people to think in metric.

Personal height and weight is another area. We may not talk very often about height but weight is very much on peoples minds. Most of UK society still think in stones and pounds including people in the health services.

By: eric

eric — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 01:38:19 +0000

The writer of this article does not sound anti metric at all, quite the opposite in fact. Maybe there is a distortion because that paper appeals to English speakers only?

Using acres, Australia’s rural land sales are pretty well stuck with this unit despite sales contracts in ha/m^2 only.
Remnants of imperial: as long as America remains the biggest market USC will dominate in many spheres.

By: Jeremiah

Jeremiah — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 14:29:20 +0000

I was in Malaysia a number times from 1990 to 1996. As far as I could tell the economy was fully metric. The things one encountered on a daily basis in both the consumer and industrial areas was metric. When you drove you saw kilometres, when you spoke of the weather it was degrees Celsius. When you shopped it was the kilogram, the litre and the metre.

I wasn’t looking to rent or buy property so I didn’t notice if any advertisements used units that were not metric. I also didn’t scan the newspapers looking for non-metric.

Those who are opposed to metric will always search for those obscure and seldom encountered areas where obsolete units still hang on and make it seem like the obsolete units are not only alive and well but in daily use.

For example, if one still measures their height in feet and inches, how often does one bring it up in conversation. To those who hate SI it might be a daily event like a greeting (Good morning! I’m blah feet/inch tall today and weight blah stone/pounds, how about you?). I can’t remember the last time I was asked those figures and never ever bring up the subject in a conversation.

How often does one shop for TVs or fans? Those who hate metric would no doubt run to the parts of the store that sell these items just to get the warm and fuzzies about seeing some imperial still in use. But unless you have a need to purchase a new fan or TV you are very unlikely to encounter these units.

I’m sure that those who hate metric spend a lot of time making lists of where they can encounter obsolete units still in use. But if you were to study those lists, it would be in areas that are seldom encountered by most people in their daily routines.

This is why it is important for the UK to change its road signage to metric. Road signs represent a daily experience. Once this is changed it would mean that the continued use of obsolete units would be regulated to obscure and rare uses.

By: Martin Vlietstra

Martin Vlietstra — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 09:34:07 +0000

Looking at this article it would appear that the Malaysian Government is metric (their civil service probably follows the British model), but that consumer protection has few rules (or at any rate the use of metric units is not enforced). In contrast South Africa (and I believe Australia) made it unlawful to sell measuring devices that showed imperial units. You could weigh yourself in pounds on your old bathroom scales, but when it came to replacing them, you had to buy a metric set. It is possible that Singapore did the same.