Wednesday, July 16, 2008 . 2:08 PM

I have to say that I'm totally charmed by the efforts of one Singaporean boy attempting to break into the Taiwanese music scene through the humongously successful Million Dollar Star.

Granted he's not exceptionally good-looking, but he's so earnest that you can't help rooting for him. It's kind of like the Forest Gump thing, really.

Like the fictional Guo Jing in Jin Yong's classic Legend of the Condor Heroes, Huang Jing Lun is a blockhead. And I don't mean it in the degradatory sense. Host of the show likened him to the 40-year-old virgin played by Steve Carrell (she was referring to his dancing) and I have to agree. It was painful to watch him dance, but strangely, you can't look away. And at the end of it, you realize that you are part grimacing and part smiling at his desperate effort.

I feel precisely the same way towards my 3-yr-old Maltese... and babies. I feel weak in the knees and giggly... as I would if I saw a really hunky guy, so I guess Huang's tactic worked, to a certain extent of course.

Which sets me thinking:
If he was a girl, would the guys be charmed by the bumbling, awkward, shy girl act?