Tag Archives | kids

Compensating For The Lack of Public Spaces in Beirut

One of the things I really struggle with every weekend is coming up with a new place to take my kid to for some outdoor fun. The options in Beirut are quite limited due to the lack of public spaces/gardens so most of the times we end up at a closed playground, which I absolutely despise, and sometimes at some place up in the mountains when the weather permits.

However, I’ve been lately thinking that the Municipality of Beirut actually does have the capacity to compensate for this lack of public space during the weekends and holidays at minimum, and they can seriously focus on this instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on what they label as attempts to revive Nejmeh square.

Beirut has a lot of big schools such as Lycée Abdelkader, La Sagesse, Makassed and International College to name a few, in addition to many public schools as well, and most of them have large fields with kids playgrounds. So why not can’t the municipality agree with a couple of large schools in every area to open their doors during the weekends in order for the people to enjoy a casual troll or jog away from the polluted streets or even bring their kids to play and spend some time.

I know the whole thing is not as simple as just opening the schools’ doors and it definitely needs money and human resources to make it happen, but the municipality can take it as an opportunity to provide jobs for part timers who are willing to participate. Moreover, schools can also benefit by offering to rent small kiosks for business owners for example.

So yes, instead of pouring money into pointless projects and initiatives, how about we simply try to make use of what’s already available?

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Giveaway Day 7 – 3D Printing Pen from Virgin Megastore

Today’s giveaway is presented by Virgin Megastore and consists of a 3D Printing Pen (3Doodler Start Essentials Pen Set). This 3D Pen is most suitable for kids as it inspires creativity, design, planning, building and spatial understanding. It is also quite safe to use since the pen nozzle and plastic can safely be touched with no burn risks.

To qualify for the draw, go to +961’s page on Facebook, answer the giveaway post, and I will randomly select one winners tomorrow morning.

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Giveaway Day 6 – Surprise Gift from Early Learning Centre

Today’s giveaway is once again aimed at parent readers and mainly the ones with very young children. Early Learning Centre is on-board to provide a gift for one lucky reader, and as was the case with JouéClub, the gift will be determined to suit the age of the winner’s kid.

What I love most about ELC is that they have a lot of toys made of wood among their wide product range that serve to develop the child’s motor skills, in addition to being made in a way to withstand bumps and collision since toddlers just have a thing for throwing everything anywhere. (At least mine does!)

To qualify for the draw, go to +961’s page on Facebook, like the giveaway post and tag your friends in a comment. One winners will be randomly chosen and announced tomorrow morning, and I will make sure to coordinate with ELC in order to choose the right toy depending on his/her kid’s age.

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Giveaway Day 3 – Surprise Gift from JouéClub

I know a lot of the blog readers are married with children (my circle of friends at least!), that’s why I decided to reach out to JouéClub and was so glad to have them participating in the giveaway series. Settling on the gift/toy to offer however wasn’t an easy task for us since they vary so much from one age to another, so we decided to leave it till after I do the draw, and the awesome staff at JouéClub will then pick a suitable gift depending on the age of the winner’s kid.

JouéClub of course needs no introduction as it is the go to place for everything toys related and is with no doubt the dream store for every kid! What some people probably don’t know though is that they also have many toys and gadgets for adults as well. In addition to the popular Parrot drones for example, you can also find some cool board games such as the Game of Thrones edition of Risk and Monopoly. So basically it has something for almost anyone!

To qualify for the draw, go to +961’s page on Facebook, like the giveaway post and tag your friends in a comment. One winners will be randomly chosen and announced tomorrow morning, and I will make sure to coordinate with JouéClub in order to choose the right toy depending on his/her kid’s age.

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Surprise Gifts For Child Beggars in Beirut

Child beggars have increased around Beirut over the past few years and at times can be quite irritating due to their aggressive attitude. I personally usually just avoid giving them any money because I know they’re certainly part of a scheme that exploits children and I never want to end up supporting such thing.

This guy however roamed around Hamra during Christmas time and randomly gave toys to some of the kids he found there on the street.

What caught my attention the most is that they all kept asking for more toys for their brothers and sisters. Not sure if they really meant it though or if they were just acting smart to get more stuff, but either ways the smile on their faces was absolutely priceless!

Needless to say, the government definitely needs to address this issue because no kids deserve to grow up this way on the streets.

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This is How I Built My Own Netflix At Home

Ever since we had kids our life changed 180 degrees. With the new responsibilities, my wife and I began spending more time at home, going out less, and naturally started watching more TV at our place.

At the beginning things were quite simple, whenever we had something interesting in mind I would go to some BitTorrent website, download the files, and then transfer them to a USB drive in order to watch them on TV. But as time went my collection became so big that I started losing of what’s on my hard drive, and having to use the USB stick each time I wanted to watch something became annoying. So I started searching for solutions and ended up building my own Netflix at home.

Using my mobile I currently can browse everything I have ever downloaded on a sleek and nice interface (like the one above), and it only takes a second to play whatever I want on my TV which isn’t even a smart one!

The reason I’m sharing how to do it is simply because the setup has always impressed my friends especially when they’re around to watch our favorite series, moreover it’s a convenient solution to control what your kids are watching instead of letting them browse YouTube and stumble upon horrible videos.

Anyway, here’s all you need to set it up.

A Faster Wi-Fi

Playing multimedia over your home network means you will need a relatively fast router. In my case the media I stream within my local network is almost all in Full HD resolution, so my home router has to cope with some good amount of bandwidth, which is why I opted to get a TP-Link Archer D5. It is a 1200Mbps ADSL modem router that runs on two channels simultaneously, a 300Mbps 2.4Ghz channel that I use for my older devices, and a 867Mbps 5.0Ghz channel that I dedicated for newer devices equipped with “fast” Wi-Fi adapters (802.11ac) and this is the channel that I use for media streaming to my TV. Another important detail to add is that it has Gigabit LAN ports.

Network Attached Storage (NAS)

A network storage is a hard drive that you connect to your home router via eithernet in order to acess your files from any device you have. Think of it as your own private Dropbox or Google Drive. The one I have is a 4TB Western Digital My Cloud box that I bought for ~$250 two years ago. Once you go past its easy setup, just map it to your computer in order for it to appear under “My Computer” (if you are using Windows) and from there on you can easily access it just like a regular drive to store your files on it. It’s very important for this storage box to also have a Gigabit ethernet port to ensure high speed file transfer.

A NAS is not mandatory for the setup to work though and you can rely on your computer hard drive instead, but with HD movies having an average size of 3-4GB you can never have enough storage. I personally have a Lenovo Yoga 900 laptop with 256GB storage, so instead of storing downloaded files locally I transfer them to the NAS instead.

Google Chromecast

I have a 46″ Samsung TV that I bought back in 2011 when smart TVs were not really a thing back then. Chromecast is a small device that you can plug to an HDMI port in your TV in order to be able to cast or mirror the things you see on your phone or laptop to the TV. It makes watching videos off the internet (whether on YouTube or reruns from TV websites) much cooler.

Plex Media Server

This is the software that does all the magic and you can download it for free from Plex.tv for both computers and mobiles. Setting up Plex is also quite easy, once your install it on your PC open it using your browser and point it to where you have all your media files stored (in my case the storage box), then just give it a bit of time to download the needed metadata which includes the plot of each movie or series episode you have, along with their posters and rating.

Putting it All Together

This is the easiest part, just lay back and make sure your computer is powered on since that’s where the Plex server will be running, and then launch the Plex app on your mobile to browse your catalog and cast whatever you want to your TV.

What happens in the background can be summarized as follows, your mobile communicates with the Plex server on your computer, orders it to fetch the desired movie from your network storage and to mirror it on your TV via Google Chromecast.

Tweaks

  • Instead of manually moving the new media files you download to the network drive, you can use small handy tools like SyncToy (using the option “contribute”) to automatically transfer newly downloaded files to the network.
  • Plex also has the capability to automatically download the matching subtitles for your media file, so you can turn on that option to save time searching on SubScene and the alike.
  • If you want to avoid keeping your computer on whenever you want to watch something, then you can buy a Raspberry Pi 3 (a small computer the size of a pack of cigarettes), install Plex server on it and then attach it to your router. This way you will make it act as a mini server on your network.
  • To avoid manually checking for new episode of your favorite series you can use special BitTorrent clients such as DuckieTV that can do this automatically for you.
  • Since Plex allows creation of multiple channels with different content each, I created a special channel for my little boy with cartoon and animated stuff and just taught him how to use the Plex App on his iPad. This way I can control what he watches and avoid these sick videos on YouTube.

And this is pretty much it! If you intend to build something similar and needed some help then just let me know in the comments.

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Ton Amie Liliane is Coming Back For One Last Performance

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If you grew up in Lebanon in the ’80s then Liliane Karam (AKA Ton Amie Liliane) must have played a good role in your childhood!

Back then kids shows were not abundantly aired like today so we used to eagerly wait for them on the available TV stations every afternoon, and among the shows and cartoon series I used to watch at that time “Ton Amie Liliane” was my favorite. I think the only other show that came close to it was “Kif W Leish” with DéDé in the ’90s.

A couple of days ago I came across this cool news on Annahar reporting that she is currently collaborating with her daughter Lara Rain to prepare for a new play that will start showing on time for Christmas on Platea theater Jounieh before moving to other Arab countries and Canada.

So if you have kids, let it be your excuse to go re-live old memories since Liliane will be performing some of her old songs, and it will also be an opportunity to let them get a glimpse of what we used to enjoy when we were young! I personally will get my little kid a ticket once they’re out for sale.

ANNONCE SURPRISE:
Bientôt, je chanterai cette chanson sur scène pour vous!
Décembre 2016 va être magique!!

A mon ami* …votre chanson préférée, et une des miennes aussi <3

Posted by Ton Amie Liliane on Sunday, October 9, 2016

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Australian 60 Minutes Show Crew Arrested for Documenting Children Abduction in Beirut

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News outlets reported yesterday morning that two kids were kidnapped in Hadath by gunmen while waiting for the school bus with their grandmother. As hours went by, the police claimed that their Australian mother was behind the whole thing since she was separated from the father and the two were apparently fighting over the custody of the kids.

Such affairs are not unusual in Lebanon and they sometimes get eventually settled between the parents at a police station, but I was quite surprised this morning to read that it wasn’t really that simple as it turned out the mother planned the abduction in coordination with some private child recovery agency from Australia that helps recover parentally abducted children, and wanted to get them out of Lebanon through the sea to Cyrprus. And it doesn’t end here, she even got the Australian 60 Minutes show involved to film the whole operation as it happens.

The Lebanese police however uncovered the whole thing and ended up arresting the abductors and 60 Minutes crew including presenter Tara Brown (the Australian media is currently buzzing about it by the way) while the mother managed to escape to the Australian embassy along with her children.

I’m not sure how legal this children recovery thing and if journalists are even allowed to document such operations, but it definitely sounds baffling! Let’s see how things will unfold for those in custody right now.

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Best Free Places to Bring Your Kids in Beirut

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My little kid Malek is turning 3 in a couple of months, and ever since he learned how to walk we started adjusting our plans every weekend to make sure the places we’re going to are suitable for him to play around and have fun. But soon after we began searching and trying few places, we’ve came to realize that Beirut is quite unfriendly for kids simply due to the lack of open and green spaces.

There are very few public gardens around the city, and the well known ones like Sanayeh garden get super crowded on weekends that a kid can barely take a turn on the toys, which eventually makes you opt for some private playgrounds instead. So here are five outdoor places that I’ve found to be pretty suitable for toddlers and can be enjoyed during Spring before it gets too humid.

1. Horsh Tabet Public Garden

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Among the public gardens in Beirut this one is my favorite because it doesn’t get as much crowded as others. It has a small playground at the lower level and open green spaces for kids to enjoy running around, not to mention that you can easily find a parking spot outside it.

2. Ramlet El Bayda

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I never go swim in Ramlet El Bayda and I wouldn’t recommend it. But a few weeks ago I decided to take advantage of the beach being empty and took Malek for a walk there. I first thought we were going to spend no longer than 30 minutes before he gets tired but ended up staying more than 2 hours since he totally enjoyed playing in the sand. If you’re up to it then I recommend you do it while the weather is still relatively cool before it gets crowded with swimmers.

3. Baadba Forest

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Ok this isn’t technically in Beirut but it only takes 10 minutes from Achrafieh to reach there. It is a private property owned by the Antonin Monastery in Baabda but accessible for public. You can go there for a small hike with your little ones and some kids bring their balls to play football in an area that serves as a small field.

photo via Hisham Nasr

4. Horsh Beirut

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Horsh Beirut is unfortunately closed on weekdays and only opens for families on Saturdays only. Needless to say it’s pretty cool there and feels very liberating for the little kids due to its large area. If it only was open during the rest of the week though!

Photo via Beirut Report

5. American University of Beirut

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I know The American University of Beirut isn’t a public place, but accessing it is free as long as you know someone who can admit you to it. And in a city where everybody knows everybody it shouldn’t be a hard task for you! A friend of ours got us in a while ago and Malek enjoyed it so much there. We first got into the green oval where he played for a little while before moving to the lower part on Ain El Mrayseh side where there’s a very nice and well maintained kids playground. And best of all it’s very secure, it really felt like an escape from Beirut.

Photo via AUB

No matter which place you choose to go, I highly recommend you go there early in the day as you might sometime have the whole place for you! We usually head to our destination around 10 which gives us enough time to enjoy almost any place before it gets too crowded.

Let me know if there’s any other place worth adding to the list!

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TSC Lebanon is Now Offering Children Free Fruits

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In order to encourage children to eat healthy, TSC Lebanon just announced on their Facebook page today that they will start offering each kid one piece of fruit to snack on while shopping with their parents. And for that purpose, fruit baskets will be available at the entrance of both TSC Achrafieh and TSC Signature (Beirut Souks).

The initiative is certainly not new as I have lately read about the same moves made by grocery stores in the US and Europe, still you can’t but salute TSC for it.

As a parent, I always find myself buying my 2 year-old son some biscuits to keep him busy while my wife and I do our shopping, but a banana or an apple would definitely be better for him.

Let’s hope they extend this offer to their other branches in Zouk and Jnah as I know a lot of parents are going to appreciate it!

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