What can I do while being locked in?

Here are some suggestions for activities that are NOT watching TV. ;-)

1) Virtual Museum Tour
This week I will bring you to Aras an Uachterain, the President’s Residency in Phoenix Park, for your weekly Interactive Tour. The President lived upstairs and downstairs are the state rooms that you can visit. At the moment only virtually on this mini-tour, but once the world opens up again, you can visit Aras an Uachterain on Saturdays for free. president.ie/en/explore-visit/interactive-tour

2) Help for Parents
With the lockdown taking even longer and playgrounds not opening up for quite some time, I’d say, some more help might be welcome. Here are a few more suggestion about what to do with kids:
www.ispcc.ie/engaging-activities-for-children-during-covid-19/
www.parentsplus.ie/post/resources-for-individuals-families-and-parents-during-covid-19-crisis/

3) Philosophy Classes
Practical Philosophy Ireland regularly runs 10 week long “Introductory Course in Practical Philosophy”. These courses cost normally EUR 140, but now for the first time (and possibly the only time) the course is offered as an online course and is free! :-O There is a 10 Euro registration fee, but that should definitely be affordable.
If you are interested, follow this link for the Monday course (if you prefer to do the course on another day, just change the “Choose class” field). There are only a very small number of places left:
practicalphilosophy.ie/enrol/1ol/pp-l101/1ol-pp-l101-mon-19:30
The first class will be in the week beginning on Monday.

4) Online Courses – Lowest price
You might have seen in previous weeks that I like Udemy courses. Not all are great, but there are many really good ones. The problem with Udemy is, though, that they always fiddle with their prices and I was hoping that we would get the lowest price special offer soon and finally it is here! From Tuesday (05 May at 22:00) until 14 May, all courses are just EUR 9.99
You have lifetime access to the courses, so if you ever wanted to buy anything, do it from Tuesday. If you use this link here, then you also help the Dublin Event Guide (for no cost to you!): click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=/WFVYmx8raQ&offerid=624447.12811&type=3&subid=0

5) Books
In the “books” category, I like listening to book summaries to then decide if I want to get a book or if maybe the summary is enough. I use two book summary services. The first one is readitfor.me/91927 and the second is the app “Story Shots”. Both are free in the basic version.
To buy your eBooks (or paper books) I recommend Book Depository because they are usually cheaper than others and they always include delivery for free (and by using this link you help the Dublin Event Guide): www.bookdepository.com/?a_aid=dubevg
…
And I looked for two books again for you this week as a recommendation:
+ The first one is “You Can Heal Your Life” by Louise Hay. It is an inspirational and educational self-help book, that will change the way you look at your life and especially at your challenges in life. (www.bookdepository.com/book/9780937611012/?a_aid=dubevg)
+ The second book that i will mention today goes in the same direction (you probably have detected a bit of a pattern in the type of books I recommend ;-) ). It is “Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway” by Susan Jeffers. Another life changer, that deals with the fears that hold you back. (www.bookdepository.com/book/9780091907075/?a_aid=dubevg)

6) Physical Exercise
Now that the radius around your home is extended to 5km, you can go for a 41km walk if you can just walk along the circle at the furthest point. That is nearly a marathon! No more complaints about limitations.
And speaking of Marathon, there are two mad (in a good way!) guys who have decided to do a Triathlon at home and indoors! They are a little luckier than some, because they have a endless training pool that will let them do the swim of 3.8 km without leaving the relatively small training room. Then they will cycle 180 km on a stationary bike and finally the 42.2 km marathon run will happen on a treadmill.
And you can watch them while they do all this! The Triathlon will be live streamed on Facebook: www.facebook.com/events/571648496805888/ Kevin Ryan will start at 05:30 and Ian Purcell will swim from 07:00. They are collecting money for the Children Hospital in Crumlin.

7) Gospel Music and the coolest online mass!
You will have to endure me going on about this for another while: We have moved our weekly Gospel Choir Mass online and are reaching thousands of people every week.
Pop in and have a listen. It is a mass and if you hate that, it might not be for you. But you don’t need to be religious or catholic to get a bit of an emotional lift from the Gardiner Street Gospel Choir Mass. It will be at 19:30 every Sunday and will be live streamed at www.facebook.com/TheGSGC/

8) Mikey Smyth’s Charity Gig
Mikey collected nearly EUR 1000 for Pieta House on Friday and as far as I know, he is continuing his weekly gigs where he is playing guitar and is singing. The event is free, but you are invited to give a donation to the charity he selects. Join Mikey next Friday (20:00-21:30) at www.facebook.com/mikey.smyth.37

9) Dublin in the olden times
I love looking at historic video clips to learn how our “forefathers” lived and for the “British Isles” the British Pathé film archive is one of the best sources. The full range of available videos is here www.youtube.com/user/britishpathe If you go to that page and then look for the magnifying glass under the red subscribe button (on laptop) to search within the channel and then type in “Dublin”, you will find some fascinating clips!

10) Life Imitating Art
RTE wrote about a Dublin family that is imitating historic paintings and they are doing an amazing job! Look for their work under #parentalpandemicportraits on Instagram and read the article at www.rte.ie/news/2020/0430/1135918-life-imitating-art-in-lockdown/