A Billion

I knew that a billion isn't always a billion, depending on where one is...but I had no idea how pervasive this problem was.

1 000 000: Everyone agrees it's a cool million. So that's good.

1 000 000 000: Well I think it's a billion...so that must mean I follow the short scale. Apparently though, if you're from somewhere like Italy, Croatia, Ecuador, or Belgium, this is either a thousand-million or a milliard. Umm.

1 000 000 000 000: The short scale goes with trillion, but the long scale says that this is a billion, and that all of us in the USA, the UK, Iran, and the Ukraine were premature.

1 000 000 000 000 000: Either a quadrillion...or a billiard.  Yes, like the ball.  I know.  Rather understated, I think...

And so we continue merrily along with my quintillion being someone else's trillion, my sextillion being their trilliard, and hopefully I figure it out before I meet my foreign, mysteriously wealthy CEO, because we are literally talking about millions - I think we can all agree on that figure - of pairs of shoes.