Comment by tuan

this reminds me of issue I had when I heard American on TV or movies use number of blocks to describe a distance, for example: "my house is three blocks away from here". I thought block is a unit, just like meter or kilometer. I've wondered for a long time how many meters in a block there are. Just for comparison, in Vietnam, we say something like "my house is about 100m away from here" or something like that. If you look at the map of city like Hanoi, Vietnam, you'll see why we cannot use "blocks" to describe distance.