Those of us lucky enough to have a home are being advised to stay in it in order to curb the spread of coronavirus in Myanmar.
You can social distance yourself from insanity and boredom with a vast library of entertainment and educational resources that organisations across the world are offering for free during this unprecedented time.
We have rounded up some of the best links to keep yourself amused and productive at home. And fear not folks, we will continue to add more so that we can power through to a world where Covid-19 is the one forced to stay at home and look for things to do, while all of us go galavanting about again.
Feel free to send us more ideas at [email protected] or through our Facebook page.
Threatre and opera
The National Theatre has launched a new initiative making a selection of its productions free to stream on Youtube. A new performance, including One Man, Two Guvnors, Jane Eyre and Treasure Island, will be released each Thursday evening and will be available to stream for seven days.
Every night, starting at 6.30pm German time and running until midnight, a different play from Berlin’s Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz vaults will stream. Most productions have English subtitles.
Metropolitan Opera is streaming free nightly shows.
Vienna Opera is also streaming free broadcasts for your quarantine pleasure.
If you need even more opera, the Bavarian State Opera is giving free access to performances.
Art, museums, tombs, and temples
Check out Google Project Arts & Culture, an online platform through which the public can access high-resolution images of artworks housed in the initiative's partner museums.
The British Museum, National Gallery, London's National History Museum, National Museum of Natural History, and Royal Academy are among the museums and galleries offering virtual tours.
The Louvre Museum opened three virtual tours to the public.
The Vatican Museum has also opened its doors to netizens around the world, offering an online view of the paintings by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel.
Enjoy a selection of The Met's many videos, articles, and online resources. In the programs we're sharing today, you'll learn about contemporary painters like Gerhard Richter and medieval jousting practices. You'll discover art-making activities for the whole family and watch concerts by musicians from around the world. And you'll find everything from cutting-edge 360-degree videos to downloadable catalogues from past exhibitions.
The New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) holds about 84 thousand works and has plenty of free online courses.
Transport yourself to the sands of Giza and explore the 5,000-year-old tomb of Queen Meresankh III!
Meanwhile, in the once-grand kingdom of Mrauk U stands the Htukkanthein Temple, a fortress-like ordination hall set on a 30-foot high hill near the other notable temples of Leh-myak-hna and Shait-thaung.
Although this virtual tour lacks background information on the visuals, it does offer a cool way to explore the temple, now that conflict and the pandemic has closed it off to travellers.
King Man Phalaung built the structure in 1571. The main entrance on the east side of the monument leads to a 700 feet-long labyrinth passage that eventually reaches a peculiarly shaped room with a rising floor.
The passage has 179 Buddha images in niches, and, along with the central image, this makes an auspicious number of 180. On either side of the niches are male and female worshippers holding lotuses, said to be depictions of the nobility who donated for the construction of the shrine.
Different hairstyles and fashion of the upper class marking the period can still be seen on the seated female figures.
Another vaulted hall on the southwest side may have been used for meditation or for royal ceremonies, while a snail-shell shaped passage leads to an egg-shaped shrine room with a vaulted dome ceiling. Seated on a high throne in this room is a large Buddha image.
Reading and listening
Apple Store is giving you, the public, a wide selection of free books and audiobooks.
Project Gutenberg has a collection of 60,000 non-fictional books and educational material, all free of charge and on any subject that readers would be interested in learning.
Audible is still offering free 3-day membership. Go ahead and soak up that spoken audio entertainment! Kids everywhere can also instantly stream an incredible collection of stories, including titles across six different languages, right here.
Popular children's author David Walliams is also releasing his audio stories for free.
Language skills
Award-winning online reading programme Reading Eggs is a great way to help children aged two to 13 continue building their essential reading skills from home—and now it is offering 30 days’ free access.
Find fun animated stories and rhymes for kids at the Magicbox English Kids Channel.
The material on the British Council’s LearnEnglish website is offering some ideas on how you can make the most of your time by practising your English.
Here are some more free interactive listening lessons, reading exercises, quizzes and games on ESOL Courses to sharpen up your English skills.
Extra stuff
Get the hell out of a Harry Potter-themed digital escape room!
Learn about animals with these live zoo streams.
Find out how to get to the moon and other fun space-related things in Nasa’s video gallery.
Join Zooniverse, the world’s largest and most popular platform for people-powered research. This research is made possible by volunteers—more than a million people around the world who come together to assist professional researchers. Zooniverse research results in new discoveries, datasets useful to the wider research community, and many publications.
