On February 27, Winston kindly invited me and Sarie to a soft opening of The Mind Museum in Taguig. It was a great experience, but I don’t know if I’m willing to shell out Php 750 for it. I think it’s probably more worthwhile to check it out if you have children, or if you can avail of the student’s and/or teacher’s discounts, which is a dramatic decrease from the price.

I’m in love with the design and the structure itself, but there’s a lot of improvements they can still make (i.e. displays, readability/copy, screen presentations, etc) for it to be truly “world-class.” It was still pretty fun to see all the displays, though. I wish I paid more attention in science when I still had school.

The Mind Museum opens on the 16th of March. Book tickets here now: http://www.themindmuseum.org/

We were greeted by this robot-type thing named Aedi. I don’t actually know if she functions via a motion sensor because she was already talking when we got there and then she kind of stopped mid-sentence.

After an informative (but pretty text-heavy) display on The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, there’s a “fork in the road.” To your left is a Filipino-centric area where you can learn more about native animals and the state of the environment in the Philippines. It’s more concentrated on biodiversity and ecology. It’s kind of sad to see how it doesn’t seem like the right people are focused on the conservation of our natural environment. We have so many beautiful animals that I’d never even heard of and I probably won’t be able to see them either, since they’re habitats are continuously destroyed.

To your right is a more science-oriented area, where you can learn more about the world on a basic, atomic level.

There were several field trips on tour with us! It was nice to see kids engaging with the displays. I think that the museum’s mostly geared towards educating them, as opposed to being “worthwhile” for adults.

One of my favorite parts is the space station. It’s a dark dome-like area with a planetarium and a bunch of displays that have simple information, but also a brief history of space exploration, which is one of my favorite things:

A display on the solar system.

Phases of the moon.

Sarie in space! With my LC-A+ :)

Pretty space suit! Agh, it must be so cool to be licensed to travel in space.

A walk through a tunnel that simulated gravity (!) brings you over to prehistoric times. Kinda like time traveling, by way of the stretch of my imagination.

Historical dioramas.

Fossilization process.

What’s this?!

Stan the T-Rex!

The Mind Museum has a replica of actual dinosaur bones, if I’m not mistaken. Sarie and I laughed at how doofy T-Rex’s arms made them look.

This is a lightbridge type of thing but they were cleaning it when we were there. Pretty colors, though.

Here’s a cool globe where you get to view the earth in several different ways (with clouds, without clouds, according to temperature, typhoon routes, arctic behavior, etc). It also shows the planets in relation to the size of the sun, which was an incredible thing to realize.

And then people came.

Modern day displays of technology and culture.

Solar powered bugs!

The Force is strong with this one!

Bad picture of an idea that I love.

Boo!

That’s all, folks!

Before I entered college, I wanted to be a history major. Actually, a tiny part of myself still pines away for that lost dream. When I was filling out college applications, I wanted to put HISTORY as my first choice for every single school I was applying to. Alas, my parents didn’t see that in my future and highly discouraged me from taking the major. “What are you going to be?” they said. “A historian?”

In some ways, I am thankful that I did not take history. It is something I am deeply interested in, and I’ve always been engrossed in history lessons, strangely enough, but my memory would probably not hold all the details and the different histories would intersect and intertwine and I would just end up making a mess out of world history. I think, if I took that major, I would have flunked out of college a long time ago. I still find history fascinating, and on occasion, I’d leaf through history books I’d buy when I was feeling particularly resentful that I never got a chance to be a historian, or attend cool lectures about the Civil War. I think, as a student, I’d have enjoyed this direction immensely, but as a viable career option and possible step into my then-future? I would not have fared very well.

In any case, here’s a rundown of what went down during the French Revolution, which is one of my favorite Important Happenings In The World Ever. Understandably, as it was very much crazycakes. Each bit is about six minutes long, and it discusses most of the important points, which is amazing but also pretty terrifying. Enjoy!

P.S. John Green talks pretty fast, so brace yourself.

Interesting post was brought to you by my uncharacteristically busy schedule (no, for real, I did not know what to do with myself) and John Green, who is one of my Favorite People Of All Time, and who has unknowingly saved this blog from attracting flies, and gathering dust, and stuff.

I promise pretty interesting postage once I get back on my feet. In the (alleged) words of Marie Antoinette, “Let them eat cake!”

… Just kidding, that doesn’t make sense. What I mean is that I hope you have fun, enjoy your weekend, enjoy this brief history lesson, etc. No kidding, though. Those are great videos. Go back and watch them if you haven’t.