Your COVID-19 Quarantine Guide to Happiness
Among many global health, economic and societal disruptions, the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak has forced millions to physical isolation. Combine that with extensive news coverage on the pandemic and an unknown future, and it’s no wonder that anxiety is on the rise. How do we maintain our own mental health and well-being and that of our community?
Here are some tips about responding to Covid-19:
Social Distancing
Social distancing is something each of us must maintain from each other at all times in order to fend off a global pandemic. Life comes at you fast! But one person who was apparently way ahead of the curve we’re all trying to flatten now is filmmaker Wes Anderson.
While it would be a reach to suggest Anderson actually anticipated that it would one day become standard hygienic praxis to maintain six-feet of distance at all times, the director’s visual depiction of isolation sure looks prescient at the moment.
Enjoy Your House
Millions have been asked to stay in and venture out only for necessities in an effort to stem the disease’s spread. It may sound like a vacation from reality, so make yourself comfortable with your house and do some activities to keep yourself happy.
Take some stay-at-home inspirations from Enya, Aphex Twin, and Daniel Day-Lewis, or listen to some wisdom of Samuel L. Jackson’s “Stay the f**k at home!” below.
Wash Your Hands (and Sing)
World Health Organization has recommended people wash their hands for 20 seconds to protect themselves against contracting Covid-19, or as long as it takes to sing Happy Birthday twice.
William Gibson, 17, said he wanted the public to have a wider choice. He wants to fight the spread of coronavirus by creating an online tool which pairs song lyrics with NHS hand-washing posters.
The not-for-profit Wash Your Lyrics site allows us to enter the title of our chosen song and artist to automatically generate a poster matching the lyrics to the 13-step washing routine.
Create yours here.
Keep Focus
Music for Brainwaves is a project of art and science in equal parts, a collection of three specially written musical pieces as the result of in-depth detailed research conducted by a team of music scientists from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Using existing theory, extensive research and data, the team has identified key frequencies and oscillations that guide the brain into certain receptive states. It is the first time that research of this kind has been created for public usage, with extensive scientific testing and proven results.
Based on this knowledge, Erased Tapes commissioned three of their composers — Michael Price, Högni and Ben Lukas Boysen — to work closely with the scientists in producing three scientifically informed pieces of music. Consequently titled “Focus in 12–18Hz”, “Ascend in 8–13.9Hz” and “Dream in 0.1–3.9Hz”, each track utilises relevant tones, frequencies and rhythms to affect the brain in a beneficial way.
Relax Your Mind
Luxury hotel chain Aman is acknowledging the stress of the times and connecting with customers and prospects by sharing the wisdom of its meditation specialists. Visit their Instagram page for meditation and wellness tips, or go to Aman Wisdom Meditation page for a more comprehensive best practices.
Equinox Hotels’ AM + PM Rituals are yoga-based routines that are specifically crafted for working out either in the morning or evening. Not only can exercise make you happy, but it can also help with mental clarity and soothe body aches from sitting on your couch all day.
The AM Ritual is designed to get you ready to face your day with focus and calm. The routine is made up of targeted stretches designed to help to gradually transition your body from sleeping postures and deliver oxygen to the bloodstream.
The PM Ritual is designed to relieve stress at the end of the day and help you ease naturally into sleep. This routine increases circulation, relieves tension, and restores balance. Exactly what you need after staring at a computer screen all day.
Play Games
Pass through the dunes once, and you might find a buried pirate ship and rows of swaying palm trees. Encounter the area a second time, and it might be strings of hot air balloons bobbing in the breeze. Each run in Alto’s Odyssey is wholly unique, and elements blend together with enough variation that I’m still running into new things, hours later.
Eli Cymet, one of the game’s lead producers, said that “a sense of home” created a safe barrier for exploring these uncharted territories, both in and out of the game. Home, he said, was not meant as a single, physical place, but rather a state of mind that can be brought from place to place — so long as your friends and family are with you.
The feeling of immersion was the case in Alto’s Adventure, and it holds true in Alto’s Odyssey, thanks to the gorgeous scenery and the hypnotizing soundtrack scored by the British composer Todd Baker of Monument Valley fame.
Torin Borrowdale composed a special second track for the game’s second mode, the immersive Zen Mode, which was a feature carried over from the first game that makes it impossible to lose. Several elements are removed and you can just get lost in the scenery for as long as you want.
Download Alto’s Odyssey on iOS and Android.
Other games to explore:
Monument Valley 2, iOS here, Android here
Osmos, iOS here
Polysphere, iOS here, Android here
Watch Inspiring Shows
Now is a good a time as ever to finally get into that new show you’ve wanted to binge, or that movie you’ve been itching to watch but just haven’t found the time.
But instead of listing off some of the more obvious choices on Hulu and Netflix currently, here’s a list of some shows that you might not know but are certainly glad to have found out about:
The 19th annual Tribeca Film Festival, a sprawling melange of films, talks, events and street parties, had been slated for April 15 to 26. Instead, select programs will migrate online during those dates. Visit their website for further updates.
Coachella 2020 is postponed until October, but you’ll still be able to get a taste of Coachella on April 10 at noon, when the 2020 edition of the desert music fest would’ve kicked off. That’s when Coachella: 20 Years in the Desert, a behind-the-scenes retrospective of the annual event, will premiere on YouTube. Visit their website for further updates.
Radiohead have launched a massive digital archive called the Radiohead Public Library, collecting every aspect of the band’s career from 1992-to-date in a highly curated and organized format.
You will find everything from rare B-sides and live recordings, to high-res live performance footages and TV appearances, much of which has never before been seen. Additionally, you can create your own personalized library card, and order previously out-of-print merchandise from past eras of the band.
Visit (Virtual) Museums
As part of widespread efforts to contain the spread of coronavirus, many of the world’s major cultural institutions have closed their doors. Museums across the globe have announced temporary closures, from the Vatican Museums to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Smithsonian Museums. The Musée du Louvre in France just closed indefinitely after briefly reopening to crowds, and it announced that two upcoming exhibitions will be postponed.
But the inability to set foot in a museum for the foreseeable future need not be synonymous with the absence of art from our lives. Under the Instagram hashtag #MuseumFromHome, cultural institutions have shared several informative posts about their collections and other artworks in an effort to continue to share knowledge and culture with the public, despite the closings.
Google has partnered with over 500 museums and galleries worldwide in an effort to increase access to the arts. The platform allows us to browse featured museum collections, or use Google’s interior Street View to wander gallery halls.
Some of the world’s most sought-after museums are on the site, including Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, the National Gallery in London, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and South Korea’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. You can even experience the famous spiral ramp inside New York’s Guggenheim Museum.
If the endless scroll of potential sites to virtually visit feels daunting, Google’s top 10 museum list might help, or you can look for a museum based on location using the map. You can also search for works by historical era or by artist.
Plus, Google supplements these offerings with its own content. You can listen to the musician Maggie Rogers on Vincent Van Gogh, explore Miami through its typography, view Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun’s scandalous portraits and more.
Cooking!
If there were ever a time to learn how to cook, it’s now. With the coronavirus prompting millions to stay indoors, people are stocking up their pantries and watching online cooking tutorials like never before. And this week, Australia’s celebrity chef Maggie Beer will join the online ranks: she’s launching a new video series called Cooking with Maggie on Instagram and Facebook.
The video tutorials — which will be shot on a phone — will cover everything from full dishes, to tips on how to pick good produce. Beer will film one video per day, and tailor the content based on what her social media followers want to see.
Separately, British restaurant chain of Asian food, Wagamama, launch a new free video series to teach people how to cook some of its staple dishes, such as Chicken Katsu Curry, Yaki Soba, Cha Han, and Wok Fried Greens.
The online series, titled Wok From Home, will feature cooking lessons led by the pan Asian restaurant chain’s executive chef, Steve Mangleshot, who has worked at Wagamama for more than 20 years.
The series will be posted across Wagamama’s various social media platforms, including Instagram and Facebook.
Be a Family Person
National Geographic is launching a new online hub, NatGeo@Home, which pulls together all of National Geographic’s family-friendly educational content into a one-stop shop for parents and teachers alike.
The free digital resource combines the educational content from the National Geographic Society with those from National Geographic Kids and other tools and services. This includes access to the National Geographic Society’s Learn at Home portal, where you’ll find educational content like articles, lessons, videos, other online activities and more.
The new site is also home to the Explorer Classroom, which offers live video talks from conservationists, scientists, filmmakers, explorers and other experts (the recorded version is available on YouTube). The talks will cover topics like wildlife, ocean conversation, photography, space exploration and more.
Learn Something New
Online-learning site Coursera is offering 100 classes for free from now through May 31, 2020, to support access to online education for the one-third of people around the world who are currently under lockdown to prevent spreading the new coronavirus.
The free courses span many categories, including mental health and well-being, career development, cloud technology, language learning, and understanding public health and global emergencies. They vary in aspirations as well, from developing new skills for a promotion or career switch to academic to personal or family practical planning. They’re also catered to a variety of demographics, from high school and college students to adults. Most hail from universities, like Yale, Stanford, and the University of Pennsylvania, but a handful are offered by companies such as Google and Amazon.
Meanwhile, Harvard’s learning platform edX also announced a new, completely free course on ventilator operation for non-ICU medical professionals being reassigned to ICU units to combat Covid-19. The entire course can be completed in two to five hours, and it’s free to access. All you’ll need to do is click “enroll”.
