Adventures & What’s Up – February 2023

ADVENTURES UPDATES

As you can see, February was not a whole lot going on. I had a few personal things that happened which I don’t plan to discuss. Things like dentist appointments and financial planning, fun grown-up things, right? I do have a big dental work coming up which will cost a bit of money so yay, I guess. Anyways, positive vibes here only even if I’m so tired, I don’t even have the energy to write as much as I used to. I will address all that in this segment and some little changes.

Baby Update

Triple V is growing and learning new things every day. February had a lot of things from figuring out how to drink from a sippy cup with a valve to starting to move towards drinking independently from a sippy cup for his snacks and meals. We’re working towards getting rid of the actual baby bottles so he can drink on his own. He’s still figuring out how to tilt the bottle when its the sippy cup without a valve. Work in progress, right? He also finally started baby babble and is continuing his teething journey. At the same time, we’re in the lovely 8 month sleep regression as of recently so its just waking up and doing some babbles or trying to get himself on all fours sometimes. Nighttime baby monitor sometimes can be pretty cute and funny despite feeling so tired. We are currently starting up a second cold thanks to some wonderful cold weather that we got but definitely not as worse as what we caught at the beginning of the year.

New Monthly Segment

While I’m not writing a lot lately, I’ve been still watching a lot of random stuff and its starting to dawn on me that I’m going to temporary need to change things a little around here to keep up a decent production. Although January and February lull is usually fairly normal around here, its been incredibly low and I’m not too happy about it since this is an outlet for myself that I really do love. With that said, I think the best course of action are monthly segments, they have a rounding up effect for the things I’ve seen but don’t really feel I have enough for an entire post dedicated to that one thing and lately, its about anything that I can put in the background and take care of my child or just relax after his bedtime or when its time with the husband, nothing too violent. All that basically leads to a lot of reality/competition/variety TV.

The new segment for each month is going to be a Reality TV Roundup which will include all the stuff I watch which involves real people in whatever context it may be and focusing mostly on Netflix and Chinese shows. Obviously, I’m starting a tad late so you will see the January roundup very soon and then after that it will be released on some time during the second weekend of each month. Music Obsessions releases the first weekend so we’ll spread it out a little.

Not sure who it will interest but I think it’ll be a nice change of pace for myself and will be a lot of fun.

Valentine’s Marathon, Upcoming Podcast Release and the forgotten Blogiversary

My brain’s apparently gone to mush and there’s been a lot of things that I simply forgot. The first being that January 17th was my blogiversary and I didn’t even mention it last month because like I said, I forgot. It just slipped my mind. The original plan was to get the all-new podcast up for then but plans have changed and I need a little more times in lieu of this wonderful baby phase I mentioned above to the next month, preferably before my birthday as a little gift to myself for starting up an individual podcast project.

Another thing I mentioned was Valentine’s Marathon and while I had a pretty good plan down, I just didn’t really feel like watching romantic films and ended up watching one Taiwan romance drama instead. BUT, I will talk about that more in the next section!

WHAT’S UP

BOOKS

• Mr. Happy
• Thomas’ Snowsuit
• The Lost Dinosaur Bone
• Just Some Lost Treasure
• Mortimer
• The Berenstain Bears’ Trouble at School
• Something Good
• Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too
• Angela’s Airplane
• Mickey Mouse and the Best Neighbor Contest
• The Berenstain Bears and the Slumber Party
• 101 Dalmatians
• Donald and His Friends

Currently reading: Broken Darkness

Suffice to say that my main reading has been with Triple V and traverses a lot of books from when I was a kid with the Mr. Men series, Robert Munsch, Lil Critters and Berenstain Bears along with some Disney books. A lot of great memories as I read them to him since he doesn’t really understand any of it but he is starting to get interested in what I say when I’m talking and my facial expressions and actions.

For myself, I am working through Broken Darkness which is a reading commitment that I need to get done. I had wanted to get it done for end of this month but best plans and all, right?

MOVIES

• Lady Vengeance (2005 rewatch, Review)
• Dr. Jason Leong: Ride With Caution (2023)
• F9 (2021)
• A Trip To The Moon (1902)
• Hidden Blade (2023, Review)
• Decision To Leave (2022)
• Great White (2021 rewatch, Review)

Probably one of the lowest output in movie watching in a long time and involved a lot of rewatches but everything was pretty good and a lot of fun, other than Great White which dropped half of its stars from my first time watch rating. Hidden Blade drove a lot of traffic on Twitter and the blog which makes me happy since it was a screener and the movie is really good on all elements. I’ve always wanted to watch A Trip To The Moon and caught that before it left MUBI (which I have until early April). Dr. Jason Leong’s new standout comedy is a real hoot. It was so much fun and had a lot of good laughs. F9 and Decision to Leave’s review is in the making but both stand on very different levels: one is just entertaining and the other probably deserves a second viewing to really grasp all the small nuances and details that Park Chan-wook likes to do.

Definitely thinking about an Asian month soon since I have a lot of films on MUBI, Netflix and Shudder to get through. I’m probably going to try and make that happy.

TV

• Drunken to Love You (Netflix: Love You 醉後决定愛上你, 2011)
• Lockwood & co. (Season 1, 2023 Review)
• Gilmore Girls (Season 1 rewatch, Review)
• The Mole (Season 1, 2022)
• 28 Days Haunted (Season 1, 2022)
• Gilmore Girls (Season 2 rewatch, Review)
• Gilmore Girls (Season 3 rewatch, Review)
• Physical: 100 (Season 1, 2023)
• Gilmore Girls (Season 4 rewatch, Review)
• Perfect Match (Season 1, 2023)

Currently binging: Who’s The Murderer S8, Memories Beyond Horizon S1, Night in The Greater Bay S2, The Last of Us

A lot of TV watching on my front as well as I dive once again for probably the fifth time into Gilmore Girls. Its my stress-free and fun TV binge. Between this and a lot of reality TV, this is where I am. Of course, I did get in a romance dose with a 2011 Taiwan romance drama that I had never seen. There was almost a decade that I didn’t watch a lot of Asian anything and now its about catching up to what I can get my hands on when I see it around. I did manage to binge Lockwood & Co. which I enjoyed immensely and can’t wait for hopefully a Season 2 seeing as it kind of ends on a cliffhanger but I do also plan on getting to reading the books. Seeing as I already announced the Reality TV Roundup segment, I’m going to leave the whole chat about the reality TV on the backburner plus a bunch of these are mostly silly stuff, the only one that I enjoyed a ton was The Mole although 28 Days Haunted was pretty decent even if the last one of the season overturned all the effort of making it not staged. Either way, more on that later on.

GAMES

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• Boxes (Demo)
• Planet of Lana (Demo)
• Blue Wednesday (Demo)
• Mika and the Witch’s Mountain (Demo)
• Bionic Bay (Demo)
• I Am Future (Demo)
• Alt-Frequencies
• Far: Changing Tides

Currently playing: The Gunk, Disney Dreamlight Valley

Steam Next Fest happened so I caught up with a few demos. Some of them were really great especially Planet of Lana which was exceptional and definitely right up my alley. The other one would be Mika and the Witch’s Mountain which I also ended up backing on Kickstarter because it looked so great. Plus a game inspired by Kiki’s Delivery Service seems like something I would have thought existed already but finally someone’s doing something about it. I’ve been pretty much working through the Google Play Pass games since I have it for 3 months on a 90% discount so its pretty sweet. As much as people think mobile games are dumb, there’s some pretty good ones and one of them is Alt-Frequencies. I’m working on a review for Game Warp but I am thinking of checking out their previous game which I own but haven’t played yet. I’m moving through Game Pass with a similar mentality except chasing after games before they leave the service. This month of course was Far: Changing Tides which I describe as Journey but operating a ship. Its pretty great as well, we have a recording lined up for Game Warp so you can look forward to that if you follow the podcast.

A few games currently playing but I’m probably going to put them aside for the next batch of games leaving. Yes, I said batch. Not sure where I’ll find the time but I’m definitely going to try my best to finish Paradise Killer and give Guardians of the Galaxy a whirl to see whether I want to work on that one as well.

That’s it for this month’s Adventures/Updates and What’s Up!
What have you been reading/watching/binging/playing?

Adventures & What’s Up – December 2022 + 2022 Overview

Hello everyone! As we enter the last day of 2022, its time for the adventures post which is honestly more of a general update. We will get through that quickly, jump into the What’s Up which is a little more and wrap things up with the 2022 Wrap-Up! A quick rundown just in case you are here for only the Wrap-Up for 2022. If you are, just scroll all the way down and skip all of my other nonsense. Let’s go!

ADVENTURES & Wrap-Up (More Like Updates)

Retiring of Photo Challenge Posts

For those joining now, this blog started out as a photography blog. I started most of my blogging doing daily prompts and weekly photo challenges. However, the years have gone by and my blog is running very low on storage space and trying to not buy more space, I have decided to retire the photo challenge posts. If you want to follow my photography (and other creative outlet), its on Avenue of Daydreams.

If you go there now, I haven’t posted since October 2021 but it will be back in 2023. I will talk more about that in the 2023 Upcoming Plans post.

Baby Update

Triple V entered his 6 months in December. As he goes through some funky times with what we think might be the beginning stages of teething and some random babble, he’s definitely starting to recognize people more and realizing when he sees strangers aka family that we haven’t seen frequently and feeling either shy or scared. He’s starting to be stronger with more tummy time and baby gym activity time, a pretty routine sleep schedule even if he doesn’t sleep throughout the night very often. He even started with eating starter cereals and beginner purees.

Time sure flies by as we watch him grow up day by day and becoming curious with everything around him. It sure feels like those baby safety gates are going to be put up soon as well as getting on with babyproofing the house.

Christmas, Gifts & Boxing Day Haul

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Christmas celebrations happened before the main event this year as we couldn’t go for the evening festivities due to the early bedtime for Triple V so only dropped by for the afternoon at my in-laws. We celebrated with my mom on Christmas day for lunch as well. Still, it was pretty neat to see family since we’ve been keeping to ourselves since the pandemic started then my pregnancy in pandemic times so this year, while we were cautious, we still wanted to keep in our family bubble since Triple V isn’t vaccinated yet.

There’s no surprise that Triple V was the main winner in this department with new clothes from the grandparents and a generous collective gift of a jumperoo. On our front, we got the reasonable gift of some French storybooks since we have an abundance of English ones handed down from me. He also got a new walker from his grand aunt. On my front, I truly felt like a mom as all my gifts are very grown-up from my mom gifting me noodles (it was a joke so that we could fluff up the Christmas tree to look like it had more gifts to have better pictures) and a Christmas tablecloth (which I actually don’t have one considering all the Christmas decorations we have) and a white wine (which is currently in storage because I’m not really drinking yet since I’m still breastfeeding).

Boxing Day this year, much like Black Friday, was a huge disappointment. There wasn’t any incredibly good deals. We basically only picked up things that we needed and had some type of discount. As for other things, we kept those expenses at a minimum. We didn’t actually do any day off shopping since we only went to the grocery store to restock.

• Michael’s: Picture Collage Frames *3 (for the new family/baby photos)
• Roots: Baby Clothes (for Triple V and gifts)
• Yves Rocher: Skincare products
• Steam: Cris Tales, Emily is Away <3, Far From Noise, Oure
• Playstation: Just Shapes & Beats
• Amazon (caught the tail end of the Boxing Day sale): Sippy Cup, Bodyweight Scale, Cat Water Fountain, Diapers
• Google Play Pass (super sweet deal for first month free and 3 months after that at 69 cents/month)
  

WHAT’S UP

BOOKS

• The Very Best Christmas Present
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
• Alvin and the Chipmunks: Merry Christmas Mr. Caroll!
• Mr. Snow
• Mr. Silly
• A Grouch’s Christmas
• Mr. Sneeze

Currently reading: City of Ember

Surprising that its all children’s books, right? Of course not! That’s all my reading time is nowadays. As you can see that I’m trying to get back into some normal reading as I did start City of Ember.

MOVIES

• The Blob (1988)
• Highwaymen (2004)
• Dazed and Confused (1993)
• Warriors of Future (2022 Review)
• The Sparring Partner (2022 Review)
• Big Brother (2018 rewatch, Review)
• John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017 rewatch, Review)
• Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)
• It Takes Two (1995 rewatch)
• Into the Deep: The Submarine Murder Case (2020)
• Pulse (2006 rewatch)
• I Believe In Santa (2022)
• Scrooge: A Christmas Carol (2022)
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966 rewatch, Review)
• Christmas With You (2022)
• The Christmas Chronicles (2018 rewatch, Review)
• A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965 rewatch, Review)
• The Small One (1978 rewatch, Review)
• Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983 rewatch, Review)
• The Polar Express (2004 rewatch, Review)
• Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022, Review)

An absolutely fantastic movie viewing month. Not so much a great writing month as writing reviews seem to be getting harder and harder or its just I’m picking the wrong movies. A lot of rewatches this month as well. I’ve been trying to keep on top of the Netflix new releases so those reviews will go out even if its in 2023. However, I was so excited after watching Glass Onion that you can already check out my thoughts on that.

TV

• Snack vs. Chef
• Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields (Limited series)
• Wednesday (Season 1, 2022 rewatch)
• Too Hot To Handle (Season 4)
• Cook At All Costs (Season 1)
• Dance Monsters (Season 1)
• Emily in Paris (Season 3)
• Line Walker (使徒行者, 2014)

Currently watching: Meteor Garden (rewatch), The Circle S5

Trash TV, cooking and reality shows seems to be the highlight of December. However, Dance Monsters is a super fun show that just got its finale right at the end of December. Snack vs. Chef is pretty fun as cooks replicate popular snacks and candy bars while Cook At All Costs was pretty fun as well. On the contrary, Emily in Paris felt like a lot of the same which is still fun but its getting a little repetitive. If they get a Season 4, maybe the finale of the 3rd will change the dynamic. We continued with watching the latest Crime Scene which looked at The Texas Killing Fields were was a pretty good documentary. These limited series always uses a case to cast light on a bigger societal problem. Finally, as of today, I finished Line Walker which is Hong Kong series from 2014 which I of course missed since I haven’t watched HK series in many many years. This one is seriously really awesome ( you will see how awesome in the recap before).

I’m taking a little break from Chinese variety shows right now as I started too many and need to sort out which I want to continue watching.

GAMES

• Tricky Towers (Single Player Trials) – in progress
• Lake (2021, Review)
• Doors: Awakening (2019)
• Pinball FX

Currently playing: The Gunk, Doors: Origins

I’m slowly getting back to some gaming here and there. While my PC died, I was into playing Tricky Towers (Single Players Trials) and I’m still working on that but its fairly sporadic so there’s not really an end to that one, much like Pinball FX which doesn’t have an end either.

Putting the Google Play Pass to work, I finished playing Doors: Awakening and working through all the Doors games on mobile which I had played before but they were only partially free and charged money for the second half of the levels. I don’t like that mobile game business model so I never entertain it. So now, the situation is a little different with the Play Pass. Its a fun puzzle game

Finally, I played Lake which is something of a postal worker simulator with story and narrative choices. Its honestly a hidden gem since it blends in a lot of relaxing moments and dives into a pretty fun small town story. I did start The Gunk and is probably about halfway through (based on my playtime and the How Long To Beat average) but its a really good one. There’s some exploration and resources and crafting and adventure. I’ll talk more about it after I’ve finished, possibly in a review.

2022 WRAP-UP

Much like last year, we are foregoing the blog site statistics. Let’s face it, its not going to look pretty with things going back to normal, the numbers so a great drop before steadying again and I never really did it for the numbers. Plus, life changes with a newborn in mid-June did throw off the rhythm even more than when I was going through my pregnancy and choosing sleeping earlier over stressing out over blogging at unreasonable hours. The posting rhythm is coming back slowly but I’m pretty sure it will never be where it used to be a few years ago.

With that said, lets look at some other numbers:

• TOTAL FILMS WATCHED: 213 films (2 less than last year only!)
  • 34 rewatches
  • 41 short films
• TOTAL BOOKS READ: 17 books (majority of it are children’s books)
• TOTAL TV SERIES BINGED: 92 seasons binged (3 rewatches)
  • Japan: 1
  • Hong Kong: 1
  • Taiwanese: 2
  • Korean: 3
  • Documentary: 12
  • Mainland China: 13
  • Chinese Variety Shows: 14
  • American Reality Shows: 20
  • American: 26

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Top 10 First Time Watches

1. Knives Out
2. Deep Rising
3. Turning Red
4. Time
5. Profile
6. Underwater
7. Tokyo Godfathers
8. MexZombies
9. Waitress
10. Love and Leashes

Top 10 TV Seasons

1. Light The Night
2. The Silent Sea
3. Wednesday (Season 1)
4. Line Walker
5. All of Us Are Dead
6. Who Rules The World
7. Shining For One Thing
8. Mr. Bad
9. Boo, Bitch (Limited Series)
10. Mom, Don’t Do That

Overall, it was surprisingly steady in terms of numbers. Last year I didn’t do the specific breakdowns so not sure whether short film to full length ration was similar. Books increased a lot mostly because I read tiny short children’s books but then I did read a Dr. Seuss compilation books and that’s 13 stories as 1 book entry. I’m not here to get all picky with the numbers. I didn’t expect anything to be even close to these numbers so that’s already shocking enough for me.

A quick look at last year’s plans/goals:

1. Goodreads Reading Challenge: 15 books surpassed at 17 (even if I did cheat a little with children’s books)
2. Podcast launch: Did not happen (will address that soon)
3. Partial Revival of Disney and Studio Ghibli project: Mostly did not happen, only one post for Porco Rosso went up
4. Personal Goals: Eat healthier is slowly getting there, Did not stream at all, 98% done for nursery and 90% done for office (just some filing left to do)

In the foreseeable future, streaming services will be my best friend and I will be focusing on new releases on Netflix, Shudder and Amazon Prime with Netflix being the main priority. However, these are considered upcoming plans and I will talk about more of that tomorrow!

Remember to head back for the Upcoming Plans 2023 tomorrow!
Happy New Year’s Eve!!

Adventures & What’s Up – October 2022

ADVENTURES

Hiking: Parc National du Mont Saint Bruno – Seigneurial Trail

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Baby Update

Triple V is moving along quite nicely. He likes to remind us in his own ways that he will always keep us on our toes when he gives us false belief that he is falling into a routine and then changes it up right when we think we got it down. As I’m typing up this post, his favorite activity at night is rolling over from his back to sleep on his tummy and doesn’t realize that he got it all backwards and apparently most babies learn how to roll from tummy to back first but he haven’t quite mastered this 100%, more like 10%. 1 out of 10 times during tummy time, he will do it once and then forget how he did it or maybe it was all a coincidence of the right motions. Who knows, right? I’d wager that he probably doesn’t even know.

4 months vaccinations also came around and while he reacted much more this time, he was a pretty decent champ about it and settled down fairly quickly. No side effects and was overall pretty good afterwards other than some sporadic fussiness.

Our 4 months checkup got postponed for some unknown reason the morning we were supposed to go after confirming the day before. Very bizarre. We have some questions for the doc this time as we’re starting to wonder whether he’s ready for solids soon among other things.

We did a fun little Halloween photoshoot at home with a little fluffy pumpkin outfit. I’m not going to share it here but it turned out pretty nice.

Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2022

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Toronto After Dark Film Festival was an extremely last minute decision that I signed up to give it a go as my first film festival coverage after having the baby. Its only a few days long and it offers the remote coverage option which I do love. They had some great feature films and short films this year. All my coverage is already up other than one that was requested for the review to go up a little later so you should see it soon. You can head over to my Toronto After Dark Archives to find it if you missed it.

COVID-19 Self-Isolation

As we are typing this up, my husband finally got COVID positive. I’m negative so I can still take care of Triple V. However, we have him quarantined in his so-called man cave so at least among all the sickness, other than having a crappy sofa to sleep on, he has all the entertainment he needs. Its been kind of a one woman show at our house. Luckily, its at the tail end of it now and we’re almost out of the self-quarantine for him and self-isolation for us.

Halloween Marathon Wrap-Up

Finally, October ends with the Halloween Marathon wrap-up! The very very sad turnout of this year really came down to just lacking motivation to write up some of the reviews because of fatigue and dealing with an inconsistent baby. I figured it wouldn’t look too huge of a catalogue even if I started early. While the marathon has ended, I will be getting those last few horror films reviewed and finish up those TV shows I had planned to watch. You will see which ones in the What’s Up section below!

WHAT’S UP

Books

I’m not going to lie, the only books I’m reading are board books and children’s books right now. I’ve gone through this Little Critters Collection that my husband’s coworker gifted to Triple V. We’re reading some early readers board books from Dr. Seuss and also my Dr. Seuss Favorites: Baker’s Dozen. That’s the general name of the collection and we’ve gone through quite a few stories since we have a little reading slot in the afternoon usually. Also, The Monster At The End of the Book and this French one that I got from some Easter thing when I was young called L’ami de Pan-Pan, I think. Triple V understands none of it but he does like to look at the pictures, some more than others.

Movies

• Hocus Pocus 2 (2022, Review)
• Avengers: Endgame (2019)
• Home Again (2017)
• The Night House (2020)
• Patti Cake$ (2017, Review)
• Mary Poppins (1964 rewatch)
• Nightmare Alley (2021)
• Mulan (2020)
• Prey (2022)
• The Good Dinosaur (2015)
• Big Ass Spider (2013)
• Sing (2016)
• The Lair (2022, Review)
• Day Zero (2022, Review)
• Canadian Shorts After Dark (Review)
• International Shorts After Dark (Review)
• Pre-Feature Shorts (Review)
• The Secret Life of Pets (2016)
• MexZombies (2022, Review)
• Evil Eye (2022, Review)

Man, it was a busy month in movies. I actually spent a lot of time catching up on Disney Plus. The mad dash until the monthly subscription ended. I managed to catch up on the Phase 3 of Marvel Cinematic Universe with only Spider-Man: Far From Home left which is miraculously still on Netflix so will get around to wrap that up ASAP. However, surprisingly enjoyed Avengers: Endgame. Nightmare Alley was a little unexpected in a not so good way while Night House was a fantastic horror film that I’m halfway through the review. Live-action Mulan was also better than I expected much The Good Dinosaur which is a pretty underrated Pixar film in my opinion. I already talked about the Toronto After Dark stuff in the Adventures section above.

TV

• The Floor Is Lava (Season 3, 2022)
• Nailed It! Halloween (Season 7, 2022)
• Great Escape 密室大逃脫 (Season 4, 2022)
• Beautiful Youth (2019 rewatch)
• Easy-Bake Battle: The Home Cooking Competition (Season 1, 2022)
• Mr. Bad 我的反派男友
• Dahmer (Incomplete, 2022)
• Drink Masters (Season 1, 2022)

Currently binging: 101 Scariest Movie Moments of All Time, Singing With Legends我們的歌 S5, Heart Signal 心動的信號S4, Rock & Roast 脫口秀大會S5, Hello Summer Relationship 相遇的夏天S4, Love Between Fairy and Devil 蒼蘭決, Unsolved Mysteries Volume 3, The Watcher, Call Me By Fire 披荊斬棘的哥哥 S2

Suffice to say that it sure looks like I’m knee deep in TV but to be honest, a lot of these are heading into their final episode this or next week. The main highlights worth talking about is probably the new Netflix shows. I always love watching Nailed It and their latest season is kind of a cross platform promotion using Halloween as their basis for some more Halloween outfit worthy shows like The Witcher and Cobra Kai. Its a pretty short season but still very enjoyable. The Floor is Lava is always fun to watch. Its kind of the next best thing since they stopped doing Ultimate Beastmaster. Next is the latest competition show around mixology Drink Masters which was a super fun competition. I mean, the creativity and the technique was not just competitive but learned a lot about the mixology terms and spirits, etc. I’m a big fan of Antoni on Queer Eye so it was enough for me to love Easy-Bake Battle which I think was a pretty creative one since it focused around cooking hacks and was all about homecooking. Finally a cooking show which is useful in my everyday life!

After all that, I guess I should address two shows on the list. The first being Dahmer which I watched about 2 episodes and decided that I’m not going to finish it. Its a rare choice for myself but call me sensitive after having a baby but it disturbed me quite a bit plus I also find the whole concept of making a show based on these events rather distasteful. I can watch these things as documentaries but making a show about it just seems wrong. You can tell me I’m wrong but hey, my husband finished watching it and also found it unnecessary and wasn’t quite as spectacular as everyone that recommended us to watch it says it is.

On a happier note, I binge watched Mr. Bad on iQiYi. Its the perfect formula of what I love in TV dramas since the main leads are two of my favorite actors and actresses in the Chinese drama world plus the show has a nice premise and a decent twist. A pretty positive show and a positive look at relationships. I’m always about those and not the lack of communication and creating drama where there normally isn’t. This one is just sweet romance with their own hurdles because of their situation.

Games

Currently playing: Life is Strange: True Colors, Madison

I’m not exactly gaming as much as I should but I’m slowly playing a little when I get the chance. My main thing right now is finishing Life is Strange: True Colors which I finished the first episode. So far, there’s some nice ideas to it but you can still see how the developer change comes into play. Its just one chapter so I’m waiting for the next few episodes to see how it goes before making any opinions on it.

As for Madison, I am currently streaming this with my friend BrandelSavage on his Twitch channel. I’m really there to just hangout and help out and give some moral support when he gets scared. We already did 2 streams and due to the above situations that happened in adventures, the Halloween weekend stream got postponed. It should be coming up soon. So far, its an interesting horror game, we’re at a plot point that is a bit of a headscratcher so hopefully the game justifies it by the end.

That’s it for this Adventures and What’s Up for October 2022!
What have you been up to?

What’s Up & Adventures – April 2022

Welcome to this month’s wrap up for What’s Up & Adventures for April 2022.

April is always a crazy month work-wise and adding in a lot of the current situation, its been a lot more bonkers as well. Hence the later than usual recap post. While adventures is a little lacking, we have been getting things together in general. Lets take a quick look at some fast updates before we jump into the much more interesting Wha’ts Up portion.

New Season – Movies and Tea Podcast

While I am still working through the reblogs for the previous season, Movies and Tea blog and our podcast platform everywhere is already updating the new season of the podcast as we go through our Quentin Tarantino season. For myself, its a whole new adventure since its almost three quarters first time watches.

You can check it out over at the blog HERE or on most podcast platforms.

Baby Things and Preparation

I have really held off on talking a whole lot about the pregnancy since my little not so hidden announcement at the beginning of the year or last month’s office move/nursery setup. As the nursery starts shaping up and my due date is a little over a month away and the last stretch of preparation shows up, its fine time to talk about something probably not so important but something I always thought was a somewhat memorable moment if and when I had a baby and its buying the first pair of shoes.

Not to mention, one of April’s highlights was going for the second ultrasound as the first one had a minor little abnormality which was all normal in this one. All around good news so far plus seeing the much bigger baby then was a pretty touching moment.

What’s Up – April 2022

Books

• The Girl On The Train (Review)

Currently reading: Nevernight

Still relatively on track with reading as I try to use the commute to the office to read as much as I can. The Girl on the Train is a pretty decent read. I do hope to watch the adaptations at some point.

As for the currently reading selection, Nevernight has a world building which is pretty extensive but there are some elements that I am finding a little annoying. I am still fairly early in the book so I don’t want to make any judgments quite yet especially since beginning of books are my usual hurdle.

Movies

• Virus (1999)
• You vs. Wild: Out Cold (2021)
• Ronny Chieng: Speakeasy (2022)
• The Mitchells vs. The Machines (2021, Review)
• Desperado (1995)
• Knives Out (2019, Review)
• Rebecca (2020)
• The Invisible Man (2020, Review)
• The Sadness (2021, Review)
• The Crazies (2010, Review)

Movies are still going relatively strong this month. Even the writing is pretty on track as well. The movie reviewing writing slump is slowly going away. With that said, this month was full of fun film discoveries from all genres. Nothing really disappointed too much except one or two. The interactive film You Vs The Wild: Out Cold was kind of a snoozefest but these things are never too long so it helps fill up some time when I couldn’t decide what to watch next. As for recommendations for this month, Knives Out, The Mitchells vs. The Machines and The Invisible. If you don’t mind a massive trigger warning and gut-wrenching gorefest, The Sadness is a decent choice as well.

TV

• Another Me (2019)
• Archive 81 (2022, Review)
• Falling Into Your Smile (2021)
• Bullsh*t The Game Show (2022)

Currently watching: Yes I Do (Season 3), Who’s The Murderer (Season 7), Gypsy, Falling in Love With a Scientist, Infinity and Beyond

Looking at the TV list, it sure feels like eons ago that I finished Another Me at the first half of the month. Probably because the TV series had a lot of issues for the most part and hit a whole new level of melodrama that started bothering me. The ending did kind of redeem itself a little though. The film version which I have yet to see did get lots of praise so I will hopefully watch it at some point.

With that said, Archive 81 is a cliffhanger ending and cancelled Netflix series which is somewhat of a pity since it is pretty good. Netflix did add Falling Into Your Smile which is a Chinese drama that I had my eye on last year but its from a channel which geo-locked the series when I wanted to watch it. Highly recommend. This might just be the series for me to get back into some form of TV binge for the Chinese dramas since I am so behind on it.

Games

• Erica
• Football Game

A light gaming month to say the least. Both of these games were fairly short in content. Erica is an FMV game which is basically an interactive film with 4 endings running at around 2 hours per run. Considering that I didn’t do the run again and did some research and think the ending I got was the good one, I just left it at that. The second game, Football Game is a short point and click game which is a little bit laborous with little favors and tasks which all comes down to a deeper story for the thriller as it came to a rather vague but depressing ending. I will try to get a review up for these two over at Game Warp but its a daunting since game reviews have fallen into the abyss for myself.

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for this Adventures and What’s Up for April 2022.
Hope you enjoyed! Let me know if you’ve been up to some exciting stuff.

2022 Upcoming Plans!

Its 2022! After spending an entire year in the pandemic last year, life has definitely changed from watching new releases to just real life in general. Routine and everything has definitely taken a shift. Its the new year and we can only hope that we will hopefully escape the pandemic in some form in the coming year.

With all that said, yesterday we wrapped up with a 2021 overview and today is to share what to expect in 2022. Not a whole lot of change in general but for those new to the blog, it will give a general guideline of what to expect. I will try my best to achieve the majority of it but some things may not actually pan out. Its just how life works in general. If 2021 has taught me anything, its to just let things flow.

Enough of that and let’s move on to the actual plans!

BOOKS

Goodreads Reading Challenge 2022: 15 books

Last year was a massive fail in terms of reading. So I’ve basically opted to half the goal from last year. This goal feels overall attainable. One book or so a month seems pretty doable in general. I recently did a clean-up of my books and the goal is to go through the physical TBR books sitting on my bookshelves.

MOVIES

Movies will be basically the same thing as this year. I truly don’t believe new theatrical releases are in the horizon in terms of actual theatre visits so I’m going to focus on Netflix, Shudder and Digital rentals for most new releases. At the same time, this year’s big change is to take a year off of festival coverage. I will talk briefly about some life changes below as we get into some personal plans.

• Focus on Double Features format
• New releases or screeners get single reviews
• Marathons:
  • February- Valentine Romance
  • October – Horror
  • December – Holidays
• Ultimate Decades Blogathon: annual blogathon that I co-host is back and announcement post will be coming in a few weeks
• Movies and Tea Podcast: podcast that I co-host will simultaneously be shared here as we dive into more director filmography and themed seasons

TV

All TV binges this year will focus on Netflix content for the greater part.

Where will the Chinese-language dramas that I consume go? That’s in the next section below!

TRANQUIL DREAMS PODCAST

After a few months of hiatus, the podcast will be making a return. This time, I’m going back to the original concept of what I had initially wanted to do with the podcast: Chinese-Language Dramas!

The podcast still needs some structural elements to be finalized but I will be covering Chinese-Language Dramas. What does that mean? Mainland Chinese, Taiwan and Hong Kong TV dramas. The main focus will be those accessible on streaming services since they are becoming more and more available on Netflix alone and I feel like it doesn’t get talked about enough since there are a few gems in general.

I am debating to have a Chinese and English version but that’s a whole other discussion which I’m not sure I’m ready to commit to quite yet in terms of time and editing alone. I do also have another idea for moving the once Sunday lists here as a monthly podcast segment but its a little more work so still under consideration.

MONTHLY SEGMENTS

Mostly the same:

• Music Obsessions: first weekend of every month
• Adventures & What’s Up: combined together at month-end

PARTIAL REVIVAL: BAKING THROUGH DISNEY & STUDIO GHIBLI

Look, Baking Through Disney is behind us. There’s no point in dwelling on something that probably won’t happen at this point. I bake desserts pretty much once a year. I’m not saying that it won’t happen again since I have been having the thought lately (due to some upcoming changes) but it won’t be happening in a good part of this year. However, I’m going through a bit of a burnout on horror films which makes the movie portion for horror marathon a big maybe whether I will do it by October or not. Maybe I will be out of it but other factors come into play (also something mentioned later in this post).

With all that said, I’ve been missing animated films and think its a great time to jump back into it so I do want to review Disney films preferably in the order of the ones I have access to or can rent (unless Disney+ has another cheap subscription month), very much like how the original project was structured minus the baking and creativity part. With that, I do also want to go through the Studio Ghibli films seeing as they are mostly available on Netflix right now. Perfect timing and all.

PERSONAL LIFE GOALS (AND A LITTLE UPDATE)

Most of the blog stuff is pretty much updated above so we will do some quick personal life goals. Last year’s workout goal in general worked at its best during the summer. This year is a little bit more different.

Let’s start with the update and real life news/update that may create the biggest change for my life and blog. I’m pregnant and due in a few months so anything in the second half of 2022 will be a big unknown at this point. With that said, the life goals will be very much oriented towards this new change.

• Eat healthier: For obvious reasons, this is already underway. I am in the process of boosting calcium since lactose intolerance doesn’t exactly help in that department. Along with that, also boosting fruit consumption since I was very bad at that last year.
• Streaming Once A Week: After that one stream last year in March, I’ve been thinking of streaming regularly for a while but never really had the right timing. So, I thought I’d take baby steps and set in one stream every weekend. I will probably do an official announcement once I finally take the step to start it up.
• Set Up the Nursery & New Office: The news above basically means I’m working on clearing out my current office to transform into the nursery. I mean, this is a gradual to-do list. There’s a general plan right now so this kind of links to the above goal since I do want to transition to the new office area in the house before streaming. Less hassle that way.

FINAL GENERAL NOTE FOR THE BLOG

I’ve been slowing down on writing this past year. A lot contributed to it. With the new changes in life, I don’t foresee writing frequency increasing and I don’t want to stress over it. The goal is to get a post up every 2 to 3 days. Plus, after a decade of blogging, I do want to jump into some new projects hence the solo podcast with this new structure and also streaming. Maybe when those things happen, I will also want to write more. It will take time for a new routine to build in so some of the newer things will be lesser frequency. Either way, I am going to maintain the quality instead of quantity.

2022 will hopefully be a great year despite the craziness in reality!
Happy New Year and Wishing Everyone All the Best!

Do you all have some new projects? Feel free to share it in the comments!

My November Adventures 2021!

Wow! November is already done! Some things wrapped up and the final film festival coverage wrapped up for this year already. A lot of little preparations went up and some more thinking started for next year’s plans. Basically a month with a few things that are too early to talk about but still a few overviews to work on.

Halloween Marathon Extended Done!

Last month, I made the executive decision to extend the Halloween marathon. Suffice to say that the big part of it was a fail however, it did give it a chance to align with the final film festival coverage of the year which had a few horror titles to add in. With that said, the next marathon is just around the corner so let’s hope that it goes better than this one.

Still, for those interested in the Halloween horror marathon list, its been updated on the menu already right HERE.

Blood In The Snow Film Festival

Blood in the Snow Film Festival was the final film festival coverage for us. There’s nothing else after this for the rest of the year as we head into the holidays and a lot of other housekeeping and year-end round-ups start up. The remote coverage for their on location film festival portion was pretty nice. I covered all the full-length features and due to time constraints didn’t get around to any of the short films. If you checked out the Halloween marathon link above than its essentially the same in part. However here are the films covered from my favorite to the least enjoyable:

• Vicious Fun
• The Chamber of Terror
• The Family
• Motherly
• Woodland Grey
• Peppergrass
• Flee The Light
• Funhouse

Restaurant: 1930 Shanghai

After craving some soup-filled dumplings aka Xiao Long Bao for an entire month, I finally got to go try out this restaurant on location. I’ve only had them last year takeout. It was still great but the travel time does take away from the fresh hot element. I forgot to take pictures of the pan-fried dumplings but they were all pretty good. I do think that the pan-fried combination of chicken and cabbage wasn’t too great and the juicy sweet pork dumplings were a tad on the too sweet side and preferred the classic soup-filled dumplings and the pan-fried leek, pork and shrimp ones. These two were very delicious.

Announcement: Holidays Marathon

December is here and with that the holidays marathon. A little change this year due to the simple lack of material tp cover at the current moment that I am interested in and some other year end stuff to deal with so will probably start the 10th which gives it two weeks and possibly run further into before new year’s if there is suddenly more films to cover.

The Coming Plans Update (follow-up from last month…)

Last month, I had mentioned the possibility of talking more about my current predicament that is causing the whole lower frequency in posting, etc. However, after some thought, I wanted to talk about for the new year with my new plans. Give it another month to settle down and have some better routine before I talk about it. However, with that said, this so-called new routine is breaking in fairly well. It doesn’t reflect too much in the posting as I am still getting back into the groove but its definitely looking up. Either way, we will see in the coming month. But boy do I have some news for the New Year. Since let’s face it, December round-up is mostly year-end overview things and holiday stuff.

That’s it for the November adventures!
Not exactly any adventures to talk about but its kind of nice to get some stuff out of the way.
How has your November been?

My February Adventures

In a blink of an eye, February is over! A tad late, much like everything else in February. Its really unbelievable probably because the first two months of every year is just a pile of deadlines overlapping each other for work so I don’t really know what’s going on in actual life. Work is just taking a real good hit on my energy accumulated from the past year, so I just gave up on forcing myself to get some crappy post up and taking longer to release better content but less frequent. Hopefully you all have been enjoying the little content that I have posted up.

With that said, Montreal is definitely looking much more like winter in February. Some lower temperatures and a few snow falls and one or two snowstorms. With curfew still in place and things gradually opening back up more, its been rather mixed feeling on the whole situation in Montreal about how its improving on the pandemic front. The numbers sure look better but…as this post goes up, spring break (aka what started up the pandemic last year) is also happening.

With that said, all the everyday life stuff caught up, here were some few highlights of February! There’s not a lot as you can probably imagine but still, here we go!

Valentine’s Marathon (kind of)

Like past years, I tried to get a Valentine’s Marathon going! Try being the key word here. It was probably the last amount of posts and the furthest from the actual tentative schedule that I had initially planned. Still, I tried to do the most I could. I still managed to get my highlight post to end the marathon done and less movies meant some better picks overall. You can check it out HERE.

Ultimate Decades Blogathon 2021

We’re halfway through Ultimate Decades Blogathon currently (well, in the last week of it). The changed format is pretty cool and the selections by our guests have been very interesting for sure. If you haven’t caught up with it, you can check out the entries HERE.

Chinese New Year Celebrations

Chinese New Year came around on a super busy phase and with the pandemic, it was a very simple version. I did manage to pick up some beautiful flowers. The bouquet split into 2 vases: one just tulips and the other of the rest of the batch. My mom also gave me some forsythias. The flowers did give the house a nice burst of energy and aliveness.

International Packages Arrived

I don’t know what I was thinking when I decided ordering online was a good idea. BUT, everything arrived after the expected over 1.5 to 2 months time. The first from Hong Kong (ordered at end of November) as I had this weird rush while browsing through an online store in Hong Kong to find a film and ended up picking up three movies, 2 of them that still hasn’t popped up on any online streaming service over the span of the wait. I can’t wait to watch them.

Next is a bunch of T-shirts from QwerTee (ordered end of December) which I didn’t take a picture of when I got the package so here’s a few of them. I have a Digimon Agumon Digivolve that’s currently in the wash and I also got my husband a FF7 Continue screen. It might have taken a while to get here but the quality is pretty nice. They do have some pretty good designs.

Update: Tranquil Dreams Podcast

As some of you may have noticed, Tranquil Dreams Podcast has been far and sparse and that mostly has to do with the real life job that’s taken over my life. With that said, as much as I wanted to do the podcast, I just took into consideration that there was no way that I could do it. However, instead of going back to the old written format, which I did for 3 weeks, I’ve decided that podcasts will aim to be weekly but if they aren’t, then the podcast itself will cover the missing weeks, just for my own organization sake and not having to flip back and forth as its a bit crazy some times to track. However, it will not exceed every 2 weeks.

You can check out the most recent episode HERE.

Cute Kitty Pic

My work companion when I’m working from home
She tends to sleep and snore a lot so its really just moral support that she offers

That’s it for February adventures. Nothing too exciting!
What have you all been up to?

My March Adventures!

Welcome to the March Adventures! March is a big month. Not so much for work (such a rare thing to say over here) in the beginning until the pandemic was announced and things took a flipside and changed the working situation and the general routine.  Not quite the way I expected my husband and I to turn a year older but hey, what can you do, right? On a happier note, as a lot of us have shifted our lives at home, I’m 34 today and celebrating in the beautiful confines of my home, still employed and healthy! In the state of things right now, its important to be grateful and appreciative for the things that we have!

Ultimate 2010s Blogathon Done!

Early March wrapped up the Ultimate 2010s Blogthon that I co-host with Drew’s Movie Reviews as we celebrated with our fantastic guest reviewers their favorite/most significant 2010s movies. You can find all the entries HERE.

Day Off

I had a day off in early March after a 10.5 days work week to recuperate. The husband also had that day off so we ended up going to do some shopping since I needed to upgrade my skincare routine. You can see the new purchases. I had a birthday discount card so it was alright. We also had a lovely lunch at La Belle et la Boeuf eating some burgers.

Little did we know how things were going downhill after this date outing.

Kavala & Boulangerie Ange

Right before we had all the social distancing orders from the government, I did manage to have a few last hurrahs with friends.

The first was checking out the new bakery at a new condo district called Boulangerie Ange. We did pick up some bread, croissants and baguette while trying out their breakfast combo. Its pretty good and would definitely be something to check out later on when things get back to normal.

We also managed to squeeze in another restaurant hangout with our Battle of Ingredients crew at a Greek tavern called Kavala. I was going to do a post on it but have decided to postpone it as its not like restaurants are currently open (other than takeout and delivery). Either way, it was a delicious place but I’ll talk more about it afterwards. On that note, Battle of Ingredients is, of course, on hold until further notice when things get back to normal.

Work Changes & New Routine

After a week of nerve-wracking public commute to work with all kinds of preventative measures in the bus and sanitization and home cleaning, my boss figured out a way to let me work from home. Although, above is only immediate needs for the week or so and I do have to pop back into the office every week or so to grab new documents and drop off work done, its been a fairly quick adaptation to working at home although its somewhat changed my routine as I’ve needed to add in time for doing things I’d usually use for reading and walking to work as workout. Still, I can’t complain as I still have a job as we’re considered essential services when the province lockdown came into effect. As of writing this post, I have already gone back to pick up another crateful of documents to work on as we’ve outlined the goals for the next few weeks.

New Routines and Plans 

View this post on Instagram

Gettin back into some #baking and back to the basics with making #chewy #chocolatechip #cookies . #sweets #chocolatechipcookies #snacks #dessert #chocolate #chewycookies #homebaking #homemade

A post shared by Kim (@tranquildreams) on Mar 29, 2020 at 6:21pm PDT

In lieu of the current state of events, I have already talked about new routines. While I’ve been trying my best to keep up with setting a new routine, mostly with better chore management during the week. I’m slowly finding more time to get in the other projects. You should be seeing more baking related posts (yes, Baking Through Disney should show up after a few little basic baking to get myself back on track to make sure I’m still good with the basics and organization. At the same time, I have an huge amount of backlog of double features and TV binges to write as well as a lot of  book commitments and blog tours to work on over the next little while. Content should be back on track as I know the last 2 weeks or so have been a little all over the place.

At the same time, Elwood and I have been working hard on getting ahead with both Game Warp and Movies and Tea podcast recording so remember to check out our wrap up for Season 3 as we look at Ang Lee and then our After Hours and Shark Week. You can check out Movies and Tea HERE and Game Warp HERE. More podcasts and written reviews/posts will coming up from myself at least as I start finding time to wrap up a few of them. In terms of gaming, I might actually start streaming soon as I kind of made a deal with myself that if I had the ability to work from home and had more time that I’d start doing that..just deciding on the game to stream right now.

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for the March Adventures!

I’m going to assume right now that if things stay the way they are, I will have to be a little more creative with the April Adventures as its less adventures in the going out but more what I’ve been up to at home. I have some buried project ideas and whatnot that I want to find time to do so we will see.

On that note, feel free to share what you have been up to? Have you been confined to your homes as well?

My Weekly Adventures: The 8th Blogiversary

This weekly adventures is a tad later than usual…because of the big event that Tranquil Dreams is 8!!

It all fits perfectly because I didn’t have much that happened other than working on some personal matters that I don’t prefer to share here. On top of that, its a whole lot of overtime at work and you all don’t want to hear about that just as much as I don’t want to talk about it, I’d presume. Then there’s the obvious issue of being sick which I had mentioned briefly on a What’s Up. So all in all, not a ton of fun activities in the last two weeks.

 

Normally, I have the habit of an annual vlog to celebrate the blogiversary but let’s just say that the plans fell through because I forgot I had to film and ran out of time. I have to say that it might be for the better. Before we move onto the more Weekly Adventures bit, let me write a little on celebrating the blogiversary today.

For one, its a massive thank you to everyone who has stopped by here, liked a post and the other bloggers and podcasters that I’ve worked with. Its pretty fantastic to think that I’ve been doing this for eight years and that now its part of my daily life and the content has grown and changed as well. Its also been a journey where I’ve learned a lot not only in finding my writing style and simply writing better but also the fact that without here, I wouldn’t have learned video editing and audio editing and learned how to be a part of podcast co-host and co-host a blogathon as well. At the same time, I never thought that I’d get the opportunity to cover festivals and review screeners and all that fun stuff. All in all, a HUGE THANK YOU to everyone whether you drop by today or later on or before this post existed.

This past week was a nice little work up to this because I had one announcement and one little decision in the making which is the only Weekly Adventures worthy parts…

Ultimate 2000s Blogathon Announcement

In case you missed it, Drew and I announced out Ultimate 2000s Blogathon on Monday. Sign up and submissions are open for 3 weeks. We are looking forward to it all. Its the 4th year that we are doing what we have called the Ultimate Decades Blogathon this time of year and the 2000s has such great movies that we are looking forward to what picks show up.

If you missed the announcement, you can find it HERE.

To Come: Videos, Vlogs, Discussions and more

Ever since I stopped doing What’s Up videos, I’ve been pondering this video business for a while. To be honest, I’ve been thinking about this even during that phase. Doing every other week seems to be hard to keep up with mostly because it just falls out of routine and seems a bit redundant. So I decided to do a monthly What’s Up roundup sort of thing. At least thats the idea for now. The goal is to eventually get something much more entertaining like discussions or compare and contrasts on movies and adaptations or their remakes or reboots or sequels. Something that I like to talk about preferably so it can really be anything. I might do audio and just do clips in the background more than myself showing up in the videos.

I still have some decisions to make but I think its a nice way to liven up the Youtube channel a little and do some extracurricular video editing practice. I did think about doing like a podcast style as well or maybe just doing an audio version as well.

All in all…

We’re 8 after all! I’m looking forward to changing things around and a part of me wants to go back to where it all started with a bigger focus on food and baking which I honestly miss a lot. I miss the days that I watched a lot of Chinese and Taiwanese TV series and Hong Kong movies and I guess its the years that its been here that I’m not as afraid to take those risks so I’ll slowly get that going as well. Its been on my mind for a few years now and I never figured out how to integrate it so I’m going to just go for it once I find the right structure and angle.

That’s it for this special Weekly Adventures!
Thanks to everyone for being a part of this journey!
Being here for 8 years means that I’ve seen many bloggers come and go.
As for myself, I see myself going further a little longer 🙂

Overview of 2018 & What’s Happening in 2019!

Welcome to the annual overview post. I didn’t get a chance to get to it yesterday so I’m doing a quick one with the look forward to 2019. We could do two posts but I’m honestly not really in the mood to overload anyone with these posts. Its more of a reminder of what I’ve achieved in 2018 and new or adjusted plans to work with for 2019!

OVERVIEW OF 2018

2018 was a rough year in general. I had some PC issues in the beginning of the year which caused a whole lot of crazy as I had to get another PC built which put a lot of stuff behind. We had some other personal issues that caused a lot of worries and issues. However, 2018 is over now and as I look back, there were some really nice achievements and that is what matters. I started Tranquil Dreams to focus on the positives in the first place so that is what we’re going to do right now.

How about some stats to start? I haven’t done those in a while, it feels like at least.

Total Posts in 2018: 374 posts
Total Views: 69,450
Top 5 Countries: USA, India, Canada, UK & Hong Kong SAR
Top 5 posts published in 2018

• TV Series Index
• TV Binge: Ultimate Beastmaster (Season 2, 2017)
• Fantasia Festival: Under the Silver Lake (2018)
• Top 15 Anticipated Movies of 2018
• TV Binge; Zumbo’s Just Desserts 

And then for some achievements:

• Goodreads Challenge – 30 Books
• Fantasia Festival coverage of 20 films
• Festival du Nouveau Cinema coverage of 9 films
• Blood in the Snow Festival – remote coverage of 8 films
• Montreal Comiccon coverage for Game Warp Podcast
• Ultimate Decades Blogathon co-hosted with Drew’s Movie Reviews
• Started up and co-host Movies and Tea Podcast with Elwood
• Set Up the Facebook page for Tranquil Dreams
• What’s Up segment on Youtube
• Set Up a Weibo social media account

What to Expect in 2019!

2019 is here! A lot was done last year when I look back so I’m hoping to keep up and polish some social media skills and hopefully promote the blog a little better. Its all about working on the content right now. A lot of my issues this past year when I look back is procrastination and that sprouted from lack of organization or following through with tentative schedules and just not having the motivation from all the garbage that life threw at me. Then I added on a few segments as well (probably should of mentioned in the above section).

Resolutions: Less Procrastination (because none would be impossible) & Better Organization

BOOKS

• Goodreads Challenge: 40 Books (might increase to 50 depending on what happens)
• More focus on Graphic Novels and Comics
• Getting back to reading Classics
• Other TBR books that I own, outstanding book requests and blog tours

MOVIES & TV

• What stays the same: Most movies and TV from Netflix and rentals and Web series on Youtube as well as film festival coverages
• Adding in focus on Chinese language Asian movies and TV series (could be China, Hong Kong SAR, Taiwan, Singapore)

FOOD & DINING

• Battle of Ingredients, Goodfood recap, Food Festivals and Restaurants
• Baking Through Disney revival (whether its Disney reviews and conceptualizing baking projects)

WEEKLY/MONTHLY SEGMENTS

• Music Obsessions (first weekend of each month)
• Wine Recap (10th of each month)
• Weekly Adventures (15th and 30/31 of each month)
• What’s Up (everyday Wednesday – possibly back to video format)
• Sunday Lists (biweekly to monthly frequency)

The main shift this year is the focus on Chinese language Movies, TV and possibly books since I’ve been meaning to get back to some Chinese reading. I’ve felt like a part of what started off a lot of my interests in the first place so when I moved into blogging and gave up a lot of it, its been always something that I’ve been trying to get back to. Its a risky move because no one really reads those posts but this space is about my interests and I do want to share those interests with you especially since a lot of it is now moved to more modern platforms like Netflix and Youtube having access.

Other than that, after some thought, I’m also heading back to more food-oriented content. It might be a slow start but I have changed my approach on the Baking Through Disney project and will start on reviewing Disney films while figuring out how to approach the design for baking. That way the project doesn’t get held up and ends up falling apart again.

As for What’s Up, as I’ve mentioned before, will end up going back to a video and written format. Both formats are fun to do so depending on time, I will work on trying to have both of them  paired up.

Its kind of long but quite a bit of the same going on!
A lot of the repeat for those new to the blog to see where you can navigate.