Tag Archives: Movies and Tea

My August Adventures

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Can you believe how fast 2020 is going by? We’re at the end of August in a blink of an eye. Its been a bit of a whirlwind this past week but the previous time before was pretty alright as well.

Hiking: Colline du Lac Trousers (Bolton, Quebec)

Colline du Lac Trousers

Kicking off the month before all the rainy and thunderstorm season hit us sporadically for the rest of August was a hike. I wouldn’t call it little since it was one of the longest hikes we’ve done in the past 2 years. You can check out the full hiking trail recap HERE.

Movies and Tea Podcast

As we kick off the Season 5 of Movies and Tea in audio version for David Fincher with our Alien 3 episode HERE, the Youtube channel is slowly catching up as the Season 2 transfer has started for the Guillermo del Toro episode.

Deep Blue Sea Podcast

Movies and Tea had the pleasure of being guests on the Deep Blue Sea Podcast which deep dives into one of my favorite shark movies ever, Deep Blue Sea and discusses chapter by chapter. The instagram post of the episode is above has the link to the episode. Give them some support on this uber fun project.

Fantasia International Film Festival – Virtual Edition

With only a few days left of Fantasia, the movie roster is pretty much set with only a very little of these not seen yet either because of live screenings or simply last minute decisions for on demand films and I haven’t gotten around to watching it yet. That said, a lot of the earlier movies have reviews up already and you can find them all under the Movies section on the menu above. Fantasia going virtual is great since it gives more time to cover more films but at the same time, I still miss some of the theatre reactions and meowing pre-show and whatnot but then this might be the new landscape we’re faced with. Overall, I chose some pretty decent movies with a few that I absolutely loved.

Workout/Gardening Update

Not a ton happened in terms of both of these things hence why I’ve done this section together. I managed to get in one run which was a decent length and relatively alright pace. There was a lot of rain and I’m not so intense that I want to go out and brave the rain for a run just yet. Excuses, I know… The weather has cooled down a little so I’m hoping that after film festival coverage and work crazy phase is done that I can get back to some more runs.

As for the gardening, mostly everything is over. We still have the peppers and two cucumbers still alive. Our raspberry finally decided to have some fruits so we had some harvests now. The bee garden is looking decent as well. The one that’s doing the best has to be the water lily in our bucket that has been having a lot of flowers.

That’s it for this August Adventures!
What have you been up to?

My July Adventures!

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These might be some unusual times but July has been right on cue with the hot and humid weather along with some random downpours. There’s a few changes as things get back to some form of normal since Montreal is pretty much in their last phases of deconfinement as offices has the okay for up to 25% of staff to get back to work and masks are mandatory on public transit and indoor public places. I’ll talk about all those things below as well as some updates of July.

Hiking: La Boucle du mont des Trois-Lacs

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After some rainy weather, we finally found a day to go out for a hike to hit the other trail in the same spot where we went in the previous hike. You can see the recap of this hike HERE.

Movies and Tea Podcast

Movies and Tea Podcast is still going pretty strong. We’ve been wrapping up Season 4 for Ang Lee and After Hours this month and will be starting up Season 5 for David Fincher shortly.

On Youtube, we’ve been posting up on a weekly basis and we’re pretty much updated almost the entire first season. As we step into Season 5 for Movies and Tea, it will be updated on Youtube while still catching up on the older episodes in between. Above you can find the latest episode updated on Youtube.

Back to the Office

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As #workfromhome ends for me, I've been preparing by checking out different #facecoverings as it becomes mandatory to wear #masks on public transit. In the last few weeks, I ordered from @sofsdesigns @hoplagogosses which both are pretty good. For both, I had to make slight adjustments to the ear loops to fit more snug. #sofsdesigns has a space to put a 3rd layer for filter and nose band. It has its pros especially in high heat to choose whether to add that extra layer. #hoplagogosses has a nose band and is 3 layers fitted which is good as already all done so very convenient and the nose band is good quality. The black cherry one is a free trial from my friend @surprisesdephoebe who has been trying to make her version of the best mask suitable for her family and kindly made me one to try which turned out really well. Its not for sale but I had to share it since it fit the best. #buylocal #madeinquebec #quebecproducts #handmade #covid19life

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Back to the office doesn’t really have much to talk about. I wasn’t exactly excited about it since the whole public transit thing is rather stressful mentally. It was okay for the first week or so until the buses started getting more people, probably because of 25% capacity of office able to open. I’m trying to keep a relaxed mindset about it all and just make sure to stay on high alert. Of course, with masks mandatory not only on public transit but expanded to indoor public places, its all about amassing face masks since the government has said that its something that will likely remain mandatory for the foreseeable future.

Gardening Update

All the garden vegetables are doing fairly good. Everything’s have some kind of vegetable growing. We have an abundance of cucumbers and Hungarian Wax peppers. I’m hoping that at some point we’ll get more than the one or two squashes. The downpours will hopefully  help.

Quick Road Trip to Ottawa

I didn’t take any pictures but I went to Ottawa for quick Chinese grocery store run since I had some things that I needed but some Chinese grocery stores here don’t have a lot of. At the same time, it was mostly also a chance to take care of a wrong delivery item from an online order for Eddie Bauer that I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of calling and getting a Fedex pickup and whatnot. Its just nice to take a road trip since there’s no other form of travelling that seems reasonable in the current times. I got a chance to pick up a hiking bag on discount at Eddie Bauer, half a dozen of donuts from Maverick Donuts, ciders from LCBO as well as the above-mentioned grocery run. At least one less thing to deal with for the whole Eddie Bauer wrong item situation that got sorted out fairly easily.

Workout Update

  • Run: 8.19km/ 1hr1min
  • Pool Workouts

With only one hike and one long run this month due to the extreme heat, I’ve been moving every week’s workout into a few pool workouts. Its been mostly about endurance and resistance workouts as well as swimming. Going back to the office also means that I can get back to the normal everyday walking. Point is, I’ve been trying to get more active and lose some weight and stay fit.

Cute Kitty Pic

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That’s it for this July Adventures!

My June Adventures!

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In a blink of an eye, we’re at the end of June and summer is here. Weather’s been a bit nuts here with a crazy heat wave/drought and then the last few days has been raining and much more comfortable. A little update on the Montreal confinement situation or well, we’re pretty much deconfined at this point although still get cases everyday so you can decide how you feel about that situation. Of course, with this ease of situation, my work situation is getting back to pre-COVID normal soon, which I’m not too sure how I feel about it but I don’t make the call so I just have to follow through with it. Although, today’s announcement (I’m writing this the day before posting so I don’t know yet if its going to happen) is supposed to make wearing face masks mandatory on public transit so that’s definitely rather reassuring.

COVID-19 is part of our lives now for over 3 months now so it has to be addressed before we head into other things that has gone on this past month! Let’s check it out!

Nike Training Club – 4 Week Program

I’ve slacked off during the entire lockdown phase and really struggled to get back on track with working out. The weather is warming up and hiking is starting back up (as you will see later on) which also requires a little bit of outside training to make sure my muscles are strengthened and build a bit of endurance to do the harder trails so I’m getting back on track with another 4 week program on Nike Training Club to kick things off. This time is different from before as I’ve added in the running option.

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As the month ends, I should be getting back. Thing is, the weather turned so nice that I ended up being the most motivated to go running as you can see above so I didn’t stick to the program a whole lot but at least it made me want to be more active in other ways like pool workouts and hiking and running while still adding one of the workouts from the program to get some weights or body weight exercises in. At this point, its more of a guideline than following the program and its in the final week.

Movies and Tea Podcast

As I’m getting a rhythm of getting our archive on Youtube for Movies and Tea on a weekly basis, if you  haven’t caught up with the first season of Movies and Tea, you can start catching the episodes every Monday. The general idea now is that while we get through Season 4, I’ll be updating the archive of Season 1 every week until we start up Season 5 and that will be uploaded when it goes live so that we’re not always behind. Currently updated to Season 1, Episode 5 with our big Resident Evil Franchise episode.

With that said, I’m not going to go share all the episodes of Movies and Tea posted on Youtube but here’s the latest one above so that you can go check it out and subscribe to our channel if you enjoy it!

Hiking: Mont Cathedrale (Carre) & Marais du Kingsbury

Brompton - Mont Cathedrale

First hike done and the recap of the hike is already posted so you can check it out HERE.

Summer Game Fest

summer game fest

We might have lost E3 this year but Summer Game Fest is the next best thing with a bunch of conferences spanning over May to August. We’re a bit late to the party so missed out most of the May events but June included the Playstation 5 reveal and conference (Recap), EA Play Live (Recap) as well as PC Gaming Show 2020 and a new show called Future Games Show (Recap). We didn’t get around to doing the recap for PC Gaming Show and now its already weeks later so a bit late to do it however, you can check out our thoughts on the other shows. There was a bunch of other things like developer showcases which present the new Crash Bandicoot game titled Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time.

Cute Kitty Pic

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That’s it for this June update!
I’ll share some garden updates next time. I just forgot to get all my pictures taken.

What have you been up to?

My May Adventures

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Its hard to think that May is over with and at this point, its been more than 2 months in lockdown mode. Montreal is getting into reopening phase so we’ll see how all that goes probably in the June recap as it hasn’t completely started yet, really just starting up. With that said, I still worked from home in May. Things have slightly slowed down but there’s a shift in my own responsibilities and whatnot. Its been a bit crazy, not just the general situation but the weather went from some light snow in the beginning of the month until this last week of May hitting the 30+ degrees Celsius mark so its insane. Not a whole lot to talk about in these adventures but I’m mostly following up from last month’s Adventures post with podcasts and gardening, etc.

Movies and Tea Update: We’re on YouTube FINALLY!

Last month’s adventures, I had talked about working on moving the audio podcasts to Youtube as a new platform to see if we can get some more audience there. After an entire month of trying to do it but never quite getting it done, I gave myself a kick in the pants and did it. The first episode of Season 1 of our archives is finally on. The plan right now is that archives once a week until our current season ends and then I will upload Season 5 in between of putting up archives in between. That way, the old stuff is going up and the new episodes as well.

I’m debating on whether to do some more content after all the main business is done! All up for discussion with my awesome co-host, of course…because as we always say, we hate free time. 😉

Garden Update

There’s probably more to update here. There are a few more containers as I also did try to grow almost all the seeds that I had in the house. Some came out and some didn’t but its still somewhat of a waiting game other than the butterfly garden flowers, which seem to be doing fairly well in both of the containers. I will probably share a picture of it once it has more progress than baby leaves.

The trip to the garden center was also decent. Its more that, probably because of COVID-19 and the later season and unstable weather, there was a very limited assortment of vegetables or plants or whatnot. For example, the zucchini was not even grown from seeds and I wasn’t going to take the risk so skipped it. All of this year’s vegetables are new trials: Butternut Squash, Squash, Delicata Squash, Hungarian Wax Peppers and Marina Cucumbers (which we’ve had before but never grown..my mom has though). It’ll be interesting to see what comes of it all. More updates next month.

The whole staying at home as given a whole new motivation to weeding though so hoping to take advantage of the nice weather and the extra time from working at home whenever I can to get the garden back up to how I’d like it to be.

Game Warp Podcast – New Episode

If the lockdown did anything for us, its getting us back into our Game Warp groove. I’ve definitely been gaming more even if its not for actual podcast recordings but its built up some backlog for game reviews and mobile game roundups to potentially go up as its all in the works right now. Above is our latest episode that you can give a listen!

Online Battle of Ingredients Group Hangout

No pictures here since I like to respect everyone’s privacy and online names and whatnot. We didn’t forget Battle of Ingredients and are waiting for this whole social distancing to go at some point to resume normal operations. We have thought about doing some online edition but its my fault mostly that work and changing seasons has added a lot to the to-do list so not a ton of time to think about it. However, the crew did get together for an online dinner together and then a Jackbox party together so it was a lot of fun. New times calls for new measures to still hang out with our friends and stay in touch.

Cute Kitty Pic

Kitty Cat

That’s it for this May Adventures!
Its mostly little updates on the different projects right now!

What have you been up to during this lockdown period?
Is your city reopening gradually?

My April Adventures!

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As we step into April, the world is in a surreal state with COVID-19 running out lives back to the safety of our homes for those who aren’t essential services and/or can’t work from home. I don’t want to talk too much about it on the other posts but as Adventures is more of a personal offering, its hard to not touch on it. I’ve been saying whenever I mention this that its important to stay positive and with that said, we look at the pros of the situation (despite all the bad) and that is we learn to appreciate and be grateful that we still have this blogging community to hide away from the surreal reality surrounding us.

Working From Home

There’s not much to say about working from home other than the fact that April was a crazy month. March was just adjusting to working at home and then April hit so hard because staff decrease and I had to work a 2 person workload. Luckily, I had some help as I slowly got the office set up with the printer and getting new cartridge and stuff that took longer than usual to arrive because of the current situation. I’m starting to realize how hard it is to work non-stop for such a long time. Luckily, April is over and my staff will go back up to almost normal so I can work through May, hopefully more peacefully!

Game Warp Podcast
(& Learning About Headliner)

Game Warp is slowly coming back to life as we settle through our direction and how the shows that we’d like to do in the coming while. Our latest podcast is a review discussion on Life Is Strange 2 which recently won the BAFTA Games Award for Best Performer in a Leading Role with its character of Sean Diaz. We did record this before the whole awards thing so its just a coincidence that we released it at the same time.

As I struggled through how to structure the audio podcasts to be more appealing, my wonderful co-host told me Headliner which is how I made this video. Learning about new things is one of the fun things about blogging and podcasting. Hopefully you like the podcast! Of course, you prefer the audio version, you can find us on Anchor and a ton of other platforms.

Right before this post went live, we released another episode for Game Warp as a list/discussion piece on Greatest Female Characters as well as listing our favorites.

Garden Coming Alive

I do have a bunch of pictures for another Instagram post but then I never go around to posting it up. The garden is indeed coming alive and much more vibrant than the beginning of April. Blueberry is starting to show signs of life along with raspberry and strawberry. The trees are coming back as well. Then we have the perennials especially the new ones last year in the bee garden are mostly all coming back! I promise to share pictures soon on Instagram!

Movies and Tea Podcast

Nothing like blogging more and recording more for podcasts during this time. Movies and Tea is releasing on a good schedule now as we are having a decent backlog! Its all thanks to my awesome co-host Elwood who gets all these shows edited and released, of course! Ang Lee season is almost over. Above is the penultimate episode of Ang Lee for Lust, Caution.

On other news, which I hoped to share with you all this time around, Movies and Tea Podcast will be on Youtube soon. Its a new avenue and will be done with Headliner in the audio format as well. The channel is set up but its mostly putting up all the archive episodes gradually. I’ll give an update in May for sure!

New Objectives

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Everyone is trying to make the best of staying at home as something that they are tackling. I’m sure when you flip through your feed that you see a ton of your own friends tackling baking, cooking, entertaining others through music, streaming, etc. For myself, I’m more of an introvert and while I did say that I would stream if I got to work at home during this ordeal, things didn’t quite turn out that way, as explained in my “Working at Home” section above. However, I did set myself a new goal and that’s to pick one song to play on the piano really well (maybe not perfectly since I’m far from that) but be able to play it and sing at the same time. I’m mostly doing separate practicing right now: piano and singing done separately but soon, I might be able to start putting it together. The song that I picked is Encounter by Stefanie Sun, which is one of my favorite songs and I used to sing it well enough but singing is a tad rusty nowadays. Call it practice or whatever but its been really fun doing this.

Cute Kitty Pic

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That’s it for this April Adventures!
What adventures, right? Shameless self-promotion is what this mostly consists of!
I’ll try my best to get a better routine down in May once I have more time!

Movies and Tea #26 – Sense and Sensibility

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Back to regular programming on Movies and Tea as we continue on with Season 4 as we take a look at Ang Lee’s filmography. After the Father Knows Best Trilogy, Ang Lee heads over to make the Jane Austen adaptation of Sense and Sensibility. Taiwanese director adapting Classic English Literature is definitely an interesting combination. Head on over to Movies and Tea to listen to our latest episode as we discuss Sense and Sensibility. While you are there, tell us your thoughts on the adaptation.

Movies and Tea

Having captured the attention of the mainstream studios with his Father Knows Best Trilogy Ang lee would now set himself the challange of adapting the classic Jane Austin novel “Sense and Sensibility” while working from a script from first time scriptwriter / actress Emma Thompson.

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Movies and Tea #25 – The Father Knows Best Trilogy

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Movies and Tea has officially begun its SEASON 4! This season we are doing a retrospective of Ang Lee’s films. The first episode is our heavier one as we dive into his debut films which make the Father Knows Best Trilogy: Pushing Hands, The Wedding Banquet, Eat Drink Man Woman.

Head over to Movies and Tea blog to listen to our discussion of these films. Let us know whether you’ve seen these films and your thoughts on them!

Movies and Tea

Season 4 kicks off with a Lee’s first three films which are commonly refered to as his Father Knows Best trilogy with the three films connected by thier themes rather than characters.

Pushing Hands – Moving from Beijing, elderly tai chi master Mr. Chu (Sihung Lung) struggles to adjust to life in New York, living with his Americanized son Alex (Ye-tong Wang) and daughter-in-law, Martha (Deb Snyder), a writer who seems to blame him for her own paralyzing inability to focus. But when Chu begins teaching tai chi at a local school, his desire to make a meaningful connection comes to fruition in the most unexpected of ways.

The Wedding Banquet – Wai-Tung (Winston Chao) and his boyfriend (Mitchell Lichtenstein) are living happily as a gay couple in New York City even though Wai-Tung has not come out to his Taiwanese parents (Sihung Lung, Ah-Leh Gua). To get his…

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Movies and Tea #22 – Somewhere

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Next up in Season 3 of Movies and Tea in the Sofia Coppola films is 2010’s indie drama film Somewhere starring Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning. Its one that definitely feels like its less talked about probably because its less known than her other works.
Head over to Movies and Tea to listen to our discussion of Somewhere. While you’re over there, drop us a comment on whether you have seen this and your thoughts on it.

Movies and Tea

After the mixed reception to Marie Antoinette returned with Somewhere a film similar in style to Lost In Translation while also working memories of her own childhood growing up on her father’s sets as she here we follow Upcoming badboy Actor Johnny as he reconnects with his daughter Cleo and perhaps in turn finds what’s missing in his own life.

Further Viewing

Wonder Boys
Nowhere
The Rules of Attraction
Jersey Girl
Definitely Maybe
We Bought A Zoo

Music on this episode

Phoenix – Love Like A Sunset Part I
The Police – So Lonely
Keith Mansfield – Funky Fanfare

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After Hours – Love, Death + Robots (Season #1)

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Season 2 officially wraps up with our final After Hours pick. This time, Elwood picks our first anthology series, Netflix Originals, Love Death + Robots. We try to touch on all the little stories here as well as talk about the ones that impressed us the most.

As Season 2 wraps up, you can already see that the banner on Movies and Tea has already changed with our next feature director, Sofia Coppola for Season 3. With that said, guests are always welcomed to join us if any of the movies interests you. Just drop me or Elwood an email or leave us a comment. Its almost completely unfamiliar territory for myself so it’ll be a fun dive into her filmography as we change not only film genre and our first female director highlight.

With that said, head over to Movies and Tea to check out our latest episode and share your thoughts on Love Death + Robots!

Movies and Tea

Wrapping up season #2 our final bonus episode has us looking at Love, Death + Robots for our first boxset binge.

A project from David Fincher and Tim Miller whose initial plans to
remake Heavy Metal were mophed instead into this anthology of short
animated tales with seemingly limitless scope for the stories which can
be told as we discover from this first season.

So get ready for alternative histories, monsters, shocking twists and of course love, death + robots!!

Music on this episode

Keith Mansfield – Funky Fanfare

Listen to the Show

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After Hours: Europa Report

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The next After Hours episode for Movies and Tea is here. This time, its my pick for Europa Report, a found footage sci-fi of sorts.

Head over to check it out and tell us if you’ve seen this one (or even heard of it)!

Movies and Tea

On this episode we check out the indie sci-fi found footage movie “Europa Report” which recounts the fictional story of the first crewed mission to   Europa, one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter.

We question if sci-fi can effectively be done on a budget as well as the effectiveness of the found footage genre plus more.

Further Viewing

Life
The Martian
Moon
Event Horizon
Gravity

Music on this episode

Keith Mansfield – Funky Fanfare
Bear Mccreary – Theme from Europa Report

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