In England you can’t get more than 70km from the sea. Say “I live close to the sea” will mean that you live within walking distance from the sea. In Australia, the same sentence may mean you live within 70km of the sea.

In business saying “We just have to cover costs” can mean different things to different people. The definition of costs varies with your frame of reference.

What does the average citizen think when they learn a company has made $2 000 000 profit? The business man who knows that this company has $10 billion in capital and the return is only 2% has a completely different .

You can apply the question to idiom as well. It means nothing without a common frame of reference. “A bit down the road” can mean 100k in Australia and 1k in England. Singaporians would have no concept of “a country mile”.