It's that time of the year again ... for rice dumplings! YUM. I just realised I don't eat anyone else's rice dumplings other than my grandmother's, and for good reason. My grandmother's rice dumplings are to die for.

It's quite a major production. She'd wake up at the crack of dawn and start boiling water in the huge vat to dunk the wrapped dumplings in. My aunt would come and help with the wrapping, and by evening, we'd have huge plates (you'd need two people to stretch out their arms to cover its circumference, and I'm not kidding about that) of rice dumplings ready to last the entire Chua family (at least 19 people, excluding colleagues and friends that some of them give away to) for at least a week.

But honestly, I can't stand tao sa. It's so effin gross: sweet and melt-y, even worse than chocolate, and that's saying a lot, since I hate chocolate with a passion (yes, I'm weird, shut up), and ice-cream. I wish my grandmother made more rice dumplings with no tao sa. Or that gao luk thingy. I have no idea what it's called in English. Chestnut, maybe? Idk. But I think it's chestnut, boiled chestnut. Ugh.

Apart from that, it's awesome.

And you know what else is awesome? Me being on page 271 of Bedful of Moonlight. I was so ready to give up writing it at page 180, because I thought my story was going nowhere and dominated by too many conversations. I'm still worried about that, but I figured what the hell, I'll just finish the damn thing and ask for opinions. Like what Jerm said, if I keep worrying about how the story'll turn out, I'll never finish it. And since I'm already at page 271, I might as well finish those last 40 pages or so. I am so going to look for representation for this one. I just hope Michelle Andelman wouldn't have been too frightened off by Lilies (melodramatic, remember?) to turn this one down.

And I just heard No Boundaries by Kris Allen on radio (987fm). Good stuff. Kris is a solidly talented musician. I wish him all the best in his career. Same goes for Adam, who is already a star despite not being the new American Idol.

Why am I back on this topic? Lol. Guess the two of them are my favourite contestants on AI so far. And I heard something about Michael Sarver (the oil rigger, top 13) telling Adam where he came from, 'people like you are either hidden in the closet or dead'. I don't know if it's true, but I actually like Michael. I don't believe he'd say something like that; he seems like such a decent guy, even if he does look like a small-town hick. Most guys from middle America have got that wholesome look (e.g. KRIS), even though they may be quite parochial on certain things that I won't get into here. But the thing about big-city boys is that they are more liberal-minded and wordly. Though that again can be a downside, because they're so much more experienced and stuff.

What the hell am I rambling on about?

Never mind. Anyway, I watched some of The Hills yesterday. Yes, I'm completely guilty about that. It's like a guilty pleasure. Wait, no. It's like schadenfreude. Like watching a senseless train wreck. Watching these air-headed girls walking about Beverly Hills in their Louboutins, talking (scripted) about their boring lives and boring (or assholic, in the case of Heidi Montag) boyfriends and high-schoolish drama about who made out with whose boyfriend. Long story short: Lauren Conrad, the main character, was best friends with Heidi Montag, who later fell for Spencer Pratt (aka Douchbag of the Century), who destroyed the friendship between the girls when Heidi chose to be with Spencer and give up Lauren. Speidi (as they're all calling them) then made up a rumour about a Lauren Conrad sex-tape that got Lauren so pissed off she confronted them in a club. Barack Obama commented in a speech that the first thing he was going to to as president was to stop the feuding between Lauren and Heidi. Anyway, then, Lauren finds new bffs (*rolls eyes*), Audrina Patridge, as well as her co-worker from Vogue magazine where she interns, Whitney Port. Whitney and Audrina aren't all that close because Audrina doesn't work with them, but she's friends with Lauren and Heidi. Now another of Lauren's high school best friends, Lo Bosworth, comes to live with her, and there's a lot of tension between her and Audrina, because Lo is a possessive bitch who doesn't know how to share her friend with other people. On the boy front, Lauren makes a new friend called Brody Jenner, with whom she shares an ambiguous relationship, but eventually Brody (who is cute, but is also the Player of the Century) gets a girlfriend while Lauren's away in Paris for work. Also, she broke up with her almost-as-douchy-as-Spencer boyfriend, Jason something. Have I bored you yet? I must have. In case I haven't, Lauren not does not approve of Spencer (HA, that's an understatement! She HATES him with a passion, and the feeling is mutual), and neither does she like Justin Bobby, Audrina's on-off boyfriend for four years, who is an asshole and treats her badly (but Audrina goes back to him everytime, what an idiot). He is rude (burping loudly, deliberately at dinner) and selfish (he doesn't help the girls carry their luggages, but only carries his own little duffel and walks ahead of them) and talks like his tongue is made of lead and with his head horizontal most of the time. But then there was some rumour about Lauren hooking up with "your friends don't fathom me" Justin Bobby (I know, confusing), and then Lauren and Audrina fell out, but got together again. And then Audrina moved out because of the tension between her and Lo, and now it's just Lauren and Lo, and Whitney's moved to NYC for work (earning herself a spinoff show called The City). Then Audrina starts falling for Brody, which makes his psychotic bitch of a girlfriend maaad, and there was some confrontation between them in a club, and Brody was like, "I just want this over with." And back to LC, I've just heard something about Lauren and Heidi - get ready for this - patching up. I saw something on YouTube, where the two of them were crying, and Heidi was saying, "I'm happiest when I'm with you. All my good memories are of you," and Lauren pulled her into a hug...

Okay, see why this is bad TV but good trash? Completely addictive, but brainless. But come on, Nathan Bransford is addicted to it too (to date, he has 40 posts with The Hills as a label, and they're funny as hell, as usual - Nathan's seriously the most entertaining blogger ever), so I prefer to see it as being in touch with pop culture.

I just realised how addicted I am to Nathan's blog. It's almost unhealthy. I can read it all day. And yes, I know, I'm procrastinating. I'm supposed to be writing, but here I am. And yes, I've used 8 I's in this paragraph so far. Where's the nearest soup kitchen?

All right. Enough rambling. Shut your mouth, Joyce. But they're already shut. Okay, shut the mouth of your mind.

Wait. Am I talking to myself?

Clearly, I need to get out more often.