In our house we’re really terribly good at living very well on not-much-dough-but-lots-of-debt. Often, i don’t even feel horrified by the house of cards thing we’ve got going. Montreal is like that, it’s beautiful here but for some reason it can be hard to make money. There’s isn’t the same commerce rush that NY has, and that Toronto sometimes manages to convey. We anglophones (even those of us who are bilingual) are in a bubble inside a bubble. Maybe it’s the gaps in communication and in networks, and even a bit of old mistrust, but for whatever reason it can take a while for new trends to filter through and for consumers here to jump on board. There are great bands here (bc it’s possible, as i said, to live on the cheap) and really frickin funky culture, but not a whole lot of investment or devil-may-care expenditure. It used to be that everyone would leave, or at least it felt like it. But now people are coming back, because they love it here, and just telecommuting to their jobs. And this gives me hope. My dream work is from my house or one of the ridiculously lovely corner cafes- sending writing out, doing editing online, doing some teaching and learning on the side. Maybe this will
be a city where people live and hardly anyone one physically works. Maybe in the future we’ll all work a few days a week at the local bakery or bar or paper just to help out and stay in touch, and do our major livelihood stuff online.
Speaking of the future, Elran mentionned today that they’ve finally shipped that eletronic paper stuff out to be tested by engineers. We were wondering what it’ll be like to have piles of squaking, programmed wrapping paper in the recyciling bin, or if we’ll reprogram them to say stupid things and stick them all up on the bathroom wall. I want a computer that folds up like a bit of paper into my back pocket, that I can write on with a special computer pen- think of how much more stuff i’d write down believing that i’d remember it!