Today is D day! We’re going to the Museum of the Future! We’re excited but a bit apprehensive. Soumaya and Sylvestre have warned us that we could be disappointed. Once we get there, we scan our tickets in a machine and it gives us individual bracelets with a microchip inside (with our name, gender and age). It will be used throughout the museum to interact with machines. The beginning of the museum feels like a guided tour. We are in a group and a museum agent tells us it’s the year 2070, we’re about to embark on a journey to a space station. We are also introduced to the museum A.I. We enter an airlock (elevator) and through the “windows”, we see the Earth move away from us as we reach outer space. Côme is impressed, he really believes we’re taking off the Earth. Once up there, it feels like we’re in a spaceship. We can see the Earth from afar, there are stations explaining what the space station is used for (it is actually a place where energy from the sun is dispatched to Earth). Although we should feel in awe, we are a bit confused regarding the use of the different stations. Sometimes they are only written in Arabic and their use is not very kid friendly. Côme, however, manages to become an Asteroid Fleet Pilot.
We then move on to another section of the museum. One that is dedicated to the biosphere. There is one main theme throughout the entire museum: saving the planet, sustainable energy and reducing waste. We’ve got to admit, Julia and Doo are a bit skeptical about this message here in Dubaï, a city that grew in the desert, a city in which air con is used everywhere, a city where every piece of nature is surrounded by water pipes, a city where everyone drives an SUV… In this section however, we enter a room with the holograms of most species on the planet. Sort of like Noah’s Ark. It’s beautiful and we even have a machine scanning the specimens to tell us what they are. We are really enjoying this room and find every species we are looking for, except for mosquitoes. Which is a good thing though, who would want to save mosquitoes this time around?
The other section is about well-being. How we can recalibrate ourselves through sound, scent and visuals. And the final section is about future technology with a focus on vehicles and robots. There’s even a machine scanning your body and face to tell you about your personality and what you need (in case you wonder, we haven’t tried it… remember, we have our microchip on us, and THEY are watching :D). After this final section, there’s actually another section dedicated to kids. Adults cannot enter and kids can play in 5 different areas that stimulate them differently. Côme stays there quite a while and the area he likes the most is an area where you paint on the wall with flashlights.
We stay at the museum until its closing time, and even though we saw some good ideas, we can’t help but feel a bit underwhelmed. The museum is nice, but we somewhat expected more.
Soumaya and Sylvestre then come to pick us up at the museum to go to a Yemenite restaurant. They want us to discover the way people eat in Dubaï. We go to a private room, sitting on the floor. Children are thrilled to be able to move as they please. The atmosphere is great, it feels like we are spending time with lifelong friends. We are gathered around huge plates and we can even eat with our fingers! We talk about traveling, they also plan to travel for a while. They order another Kunefe because they are surprised we didn’t like it in Istanbul. This time around, Julia likes it. Doo, still not. Côme and Lana are having a blast at the restaurant, they can roam freely. Then it’s getting late, the restaurant staff kindly signifies us that it’s time to leave, we’re the last customers. When we part, we are sad we were not able to spend more time with them but we promise each other we will catch up somewhere around the world… some time.
Today, Côme:
Did not understand: why the species scanner did not work properly.
Learnt: that ant robots existed.
Loved: to paint with a flashlight.
Julia:
Did not understand: how the wheels from the bike of the future could turn.
Learnt: that we could genetically modify a tree so that it doesn’t burn.
Liked: the dinner.
Doo:
Did not understand: how to switch from Arabic to English in some stations.
Learnt: how to use the species scanner.
Loved: to roam around the different species in the museum.