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CIVILISATION

As we'd both managed to secure babysitters on Saturday evening, Sureka, Chris, Duncan and I decided to go out to dinner. We went to a little restaurant called Simbiosi in North Ryde (Dayan's ratings: Food 7/10, Service 8/10, Ambiance 8/10, Overall value 6/10).
Sureka made the brilliant suggestion that under no circumstances throughout the evening were we permitted to discuss kids or dogs. We only broke the rule once - opting instead to have low key conversations about religion, architecture, politics, entertainment, food & wine, travel and the like. We enjoyed some fine dining, and a few nice glasses of red, with no guilt, no labour and no distractions.

Very civilised indeed.

And how very tempting to make this a regular ritual...

ZOO FRIENDS

Last weekend, Duncan and I took Jahan to Taronga Zoo. (Some pics here). Needless to say, Jahan loved it - there's not a lot more to say about that. So the point of this entry was actually to deliberate the remarkable way in which parenthood can dramatically alter a person.

I grew up in Africa. Where I lived (well, not far from there), the animals owned the land. Herds of majestic African elephants, giraffe, impala and buffalo would graze freely in thousands of hectares of National Park; prides of lions would hunt amongst the beasts - nature was left to fend for itself. We were the outsiders. We would visit the animals as they rested, driving through their land in our little jeep, and if we got eaten... well, them's the breaks.

The first time I went to Taronga Zoo, on a high school excursion in 1983, I cried. The elephant courtyard was no more than a few hundred square meters. The lions were kept in a tiny enclosure behind sheets of thick glass. The deer were behind bars. And three magnificent giraffe fell over each other in an area smaller than the block of land on which we lived. I couldn't bear it. And I swore then that I would never voluntarily return to this place.

Well, isn't it interesting (and somewhat ridiculous) how things change. After having battled my resistance to taking Jahan to the zoo for some 20 months, I conceded to sheer guilt, finally acknowledging how much it would delight him. And the look on his face when he saw those animals was reward enough.

Am I still just a little bit disgusted that Africa's most precious assets were contained in glorified cages for all to see? Well... yes. But I guess, as with many things over the years, passion sometimes gives way to passion of another kind.

So we left the zoo last weekend, not only with a delighted child, but with rolls of film, brochures, posters, and a sense of gratification I never dreamt I would feel from ever visiting a zoo. Oh... and a year-long membership for multiple entry.