Primates

Vic and I went to the zoo yesterday, and I decided that primates were my favourite animal species, but then I realised that includes humans. Damn. Guess I'll have to pick again.
The monkeys were just so cute...little ones swinging from trees and so on, and huge gorillas just lumbering about, orangutans with cute faces and the mandrills with crazy coloured faces and asses...the mandrills especially looked mad, like a made-up animal in a sci-fi film, so like humans but so different. As Freud would say, it's unheimlich, or uncanny.

First Freudian reference of the diary, high-five!

There was an element of urgency added to our zoo visit as we turned up at 3:15pm and closing time was 5, or earlier for certain enclosures. The woman who sold us our tickets was just so concerned that we got to the gorillas in time that we found ourselves actually running through the zoo feeling really panicked. Actually, I highly recommend viewing animals with a deadline...it never got boring. Highlights included the pygmy hippo which jumped in the water while we watched and swam around, loads of kangaroos, and a real life duck-billed platypus (I used to have a cuddly-toy one as a child). Plus one of the wild-cat things did some snarling. The bears caused us some distress as they were wandering in pointless, restless circles, and didn't look too happy in captivity.

Other highlights of yesterday included a trip to the videoshop. It was rent one, get one free...so it's been a bit of a movie marathon around here. Confession: we've watched Hitch twice in the last 24 hours. John, are you proud? Actually it's so good, so much better than I expected, although sometimes the physical comedy goes on a bit too long for me. Eva Mendes is amazing. Yesterday we also watched Ned Kelly (Uncle Andrew pronounced it "a C minus movie") and we have an Australian thing called The Castle, plus Coffee and Cigarettes still to watch. Woo!

Given the above I think you'll agree that it's pretty impressive that Vic and I have left the house at all today, but we struggled on in the face of the film-viewing-pressure and made it to the Queen Victoria market today. It was amazing, like the most enormous delicatessen you've ever been in. Melbourne is such a middle-class, fresh, organic, wholefoods type city. It's easier to find a healthfood shop, boulangerie or organic butcher than it is a supermarket (seriously; Vic and I got lost earlier trying to find the Safeway and eventually located it underground). We bought some fun bread and fruit and tofu-based cheese (I'm experimenting with the veganism).

I also bought the new Bret Easton Ellis book so now the 13 hour coach trip to Sydney isn't looking so bad after all.