On January 28 we went to the Toronto Zoo to say good bye to the pandas. And February 9 we visited RIT.

The two adult pandas at the Toronto Zoo are going back to China. It was the perfect excuse to visit them. I don’t approve of the concept of zoo, but of course it has improved a lot in the past few years. Still, seeing those poor animals trapped and jailed for our amusement, even if it serves a “higher purpose” like educating the visitors about the need to preserve nature, and even if it helps fund research… it still feels wrong.

Nevertheless, one has to appreciate the rare opportunity of being at a close distance of such amazingly beautiful animals such as cougars, wolves, tree-kangaroos… and, of course, the silly roly-poly pandas.

I asked my son to pay close attention, as some of those animals will soon be extinct. It truly breaks my heart to think about what we’re doing to this planet.

On an unrelated visit, February 9 we braved the snow storm to visit Rochester Institute of Technology. I was very positively surprised, it was really nice.