Changes in Montreal

The weather is really fantastic today. I've had a great time thus far meeting friends and family in Montreal. The weather has been nothing short of fantastic. It is really an amazing time in Canada.

First, Montreal is really a beautiful and fun city. The downtown core is quite green and rural compared with Tokyo, a NY style metropolis. On the street where I am staying there are numerous green trees lining the street. Nearby is the famous Mount Royal Park, designed by the same man who brought us Central Park in NYC.

This area has undergone a tremendous revivial. I recall when I was young the area was dilapidated. The mall "La Cite" was run down, and home to a mere handful of merchants. There were vacant lots all down St. Famille St. The lots at the bottom of Mt. Royal were unused.

On St. Laurent small retailers predominated, but there was an increase in Clubs, and drinking establishments. I think right now there has been a trend the other way. Some of the bars have closed. However, what has taken their place is not so much the shops that used to exist, but rather cafe's and specialty food stores. There has been an increase in the number of hairdressers, and soap retailers.

This is most definetely the trendy place for McGill students to live, which is esentially nothing new, there are also the urban professionals.

The mood here in Canada is definetely much brighter than I had anticipated.

It was so much fun to see my neices and nephews yesterday. Sabina is now a curious and talkative six year old, who is really preptually a curious active and friendly child. I am really impressed with her level of confidence and creativity. For example, I urged her to go ask the neighbor if she could use their pool. She didn't hesitate, she simply went downstairs and asked them. That level of confidence and daring with serve her well in the future.

Do you prefer to interact with really small children, or children that can speak? For me at least I prefer children that are at least able to talk. I find babies to by somewhat boring. I mean I know that they are curious about the world, and making different faces, and learning, but they cannot speak. It is the ability to communicate in language that I think makes children especially interesting. When a child can speak you have a combination of the child's unformed mind, capable of all kinds of reasoning, with the language of adults. The child can take the language that we have, and use it in creative ways. They can express thoughts that are suprisingly mature, or immature.

Children are lots of fun to hang out with. I think when I was teaching ESL in Korea I developed an appreciation for how interesting they are. They are especially non-judgmental, playful. Sometimes I feel sorry for adults. I think we are missing that creativity that children have, and we would be much better off if we embraced our inner child. That sounds so new age. But, I think that the New Age people were onto something in that respect.

I always remember reading about a famous physicist who said that he prefered children to work with than physics graduate students. I'm not sure exactly the reason he said this. It dosen't seem like children would be capable of understanding physics at all, and they would likely become bored with complex mathematical equations. I think he was simply expressing frustration with the fixed notions that adults often have when they approach complex problems. Advanced science especially seems to require the ability to jettison outmodded ideas in favor of one that is more effective. You can't do that if you reflexively cling to an idea.

I always try to remind myself that notions should be provisional, but it is precisely because it is so inherent to human development that you cling to your personal idea regardless of reality showing you that idea is false.

So really you get back to a kind of Zen bhudist teaching, or something from empricism, or existentialism. Just let yourself experience reality, and learn from the information that you are receiving from the world.

You can't help but learn a great deal from simply listening to things, or seeing them, touching, ect...

Failing to see something, or disregarding what you see in front of you in favor of some idea that is in your mind is kind of like wearing some kind of glasses that are rose tinted. Everything that you see will have a rose color, and you don't even realize that you are wearing rose colored glasses. If someone asks you to take off those glasses you think that they are asking something impossible.

Once you realize that you are wearing glasses and you can change them you start to become more free to see things in a different light. You can then gain a deeper understanding of phenomena. I won't say more accurate since that implies that your new understanding is somehow more real, but that is simply not the case.