2019-05-01

Today is the International Labor Day holiday. But this doesn't apply to the U.S. There is a Labor Day holiday on the first Monday of September in this country. The U.S. is stubborn in many of its traditions. Even the measurement units are still the old fashioned English units such as foot, yard, pound, and gallons, etc. instead of adopting the International Units.

This has caused some problems when we went overseas to do some engineering work. We have to first convert the measurements that the local engineers provided to us, conduct engineering calculations and analysis, and then convert the results back to the international units for the locals to use.

But because of the U.S. dominance in the engineering and science fields and perhaps the size of the economy, other countries compromised with the U.S. when working with us. That's why there have been many initiatives from the authorities of this country to change the measurement units to the International Units but they have never succeeded.

Anyway, back to the May 1 holiday topic. Since it's not a national holiday here, it'll be just a normal workday for us. But I will take a personal day off to go to the beach. You need to take an extra break once in a while. This seems to be a good time to do it. Summer is almost here. We'd better enjoy the weather before it's getting too hot.

Happy holiday everyone!