le futur et Montréal

There is a place in this world that was tailor-made for me to be relentlessly happy.

It is a city of 1.5 million.
It is a bilingual city, though officially francophone.
It is both historic and modern, creating a brilliant melding of picturesque European architecture and a contemporary city feel.
The cost of living is extremely cheap for being the 2nd largest city in Canada.
It has its own NHL team.
It is extremely gay-friendly.
The public transit is supposed to be very good (really important to me!!)
I hear the people are beautiful.
Compared with Europe or Asia, it is still culturally very different from the U.S., while not being too far from home.

Cette ville, c'est bien sûr Montréal.  If you have not sorted that out for yourself already.  I need to live in Montréal.  We're meant to be together.  It could totally happen except that I don't know how I would (easily) find a job there.  I have passable French, which could vastly improve before moving there, if I knew it were a sure thing, so I'm not worried about that.  But as an American applying for jobs in Québec, I totally don't have the advantage! If you've been keeping up with international news, Canada's job market is no better off than the U.S.  Darn darn darn!

Where I'm probably going to end up instead is Washington, DC.  While this is also a fine option, especially for American cities, it just doesn't fit the same mold I was hoping for.  I try to find positive comments on DC, but most people are complaining about the traffic, the crime, the high cost of living, the pretentious self-important people, etc.  The worst things I've heard about Montréal are the high taxes (probably how they balance out the cheap cost of living) and really bad potholes.

I'm not trying to rag on DC, but I just have a lot of my own stigmas about East Coasters.  It's difficult to understand unless you are coming from the liberal, laid-back, relatively ultra-friendly West Coast.  But who knows, maybe I'd like it.  I haven't been to DC since I was 14, and I've never even been to Montréal.

You might think this is silly, like, "Ky, why are you freaking out about the future so much? You don't need to worry about that right now." I'm not freaking out about it, and I'm not necessarily worrying.  I'm probably going to be living in varying developing countries over the next 3 years anyway.  But what about after that? You gotta know where the jobs are (i.e. Washington, DC, for me).  On top of that, it's been my dream for several years to live in Montréal, and I wish that I could realize that dream.. but at this time it is unclear to me how I will do that.  I'm interested in a career in diplomacy and linguistics, which is generally government-specific.

Anyway, if you are interested, here are a few of the key blogs I've read on either city most recently:

Montreal

Washington, DC

This is obviously not the only research I've done (lol), but I felt that they outlined my overall findings the best.  If you can find better info for me, I'd love it!