so, visiting day was on sunday. first you see all these big muscly macho boys marching about in their silly camo outfits, and then, you see their mommies just a few steps behind lugging BAGS UPON BAGS of biscuits and instant noodles and toilet paper and you're like, these are the boys who are defending our nation!

anyway, for a brief teenybopper moment now- i have to update my celeb crush list!

1. criss angel. previously i used to be put off by him because he reminded me too much of marilyn manson, and then there's his psychotic trailers where he's not wearing a shirt and it's too bad but criss just does not look good shirtless in those trailers! he does however, look good shirtless at other times. not that i was looking of course, i just happened to notice. anyway, criss looks way better without his drag queen makeup when he's explaining how he was actually quite scared that he would die doing his stunt. because that's when he's all humble and down to earth and when he looks at the camera, it looks like he's really talking to -you-. and his voice has this slight spaced-out-yet-mature-and-brooding quality to it, and did i say that he looks like he's really talking to -you- when he looks at the camera? and i know this must sound pretty stupid but i just found out that he's thirty nine; i somehow always thought he was much older! thirty nine!! that's like only two decades older than me!

2. jon bon jovi. yesterday i watched jon on oprah and i had one of those special -moments- where i just stared at the TV with my mouth sorta half opened and with a little dazed expression on my face. if the ceiling had collapsed on me then i would probably have noticed maybe ten minutes later. did you know jon bought a football team and does charity regularly at a children's home in philadelphia??? and have you SEEN him recently??? i mean i always loved his songs plus i've been hearing mark sing various renditions of aaaaalwaaaaaays quite a bit recently but you know me, i'm quite slow with these things.

on a side note, i seem to be liking older men these days, which is a bit disturbing. then again, i'm sure we all go through our little phases and at least mine isn't about cocaine or some other life-threatening hobby...

3. ace young. this one doesn't really count because it was quite short lived. actually it only lasted one episode- the one where he sang in the still of the night and did his sexy, soulful, looking into the camera trick that he always does whenever he screws up and needs to get people to vote for him. but this time i admit i fell for it a bit and became a bit of a mindless prepubescent ace supporter. (don't judge me; i am SURE there is a bit of a mindless prebuscent teenybopper in all of us) anyway this promptly died by the next episode when he sang drops of jupiter by train, which is possibly my favourite song of all time, and he TOTALLY MASSACRED it! hello he couldn't even get the WORDS right and we're not even talking about a friggin medicine dictionary! it's just drops of jupiter, which happens to be one of the best songs ever written and EVERYBODY should have the lyrics ingrained in them from birth. certainly, this is travesty blasphemy disgrace!

finally- driving! having been quite lazy the past few months, i've only just started going for more regular lessons, and i am finally getting the hang of the clutch and the whole manual car thing. the other day it stormed and i could hardly see the cars on the road and i was so scared i didn't even have brain space to screw up by stalling the car, and, surprisingly, it was one of the best lessons i've ever had. not so good, however, was the other time when i was stuck in a jam and a bit low on caffeine. so when the car in front inched forward a bit, i was in the midst of falling asleep, and let go of the accelerator a bit too much. next thing i know, the instructor had slammed the handbrake down and was going ballistic on me. turns out i was 1 cm away from the car in front, and would have totally crashed if not for her emergency brake. that was quite scary yes, and it did the job of waking me up a bit for the rest of the ride. anyway, today i was doing perpendicular parking and steering in reverse is a bit trickier than it looks. it kinda goes against whatever little psychomotor logic i have, and we're not talking about a big quantity here. when you want to reverse to the right, you kinda have an instinct which says turn the wheel anticlockwise to the left, tracing the motion of the back wheels. but instead you're supposed to turn the steering wheel to the right! which explains why everytime i try to park it begins with me turning in the wrong direction and then frantically swinging the wheel back in the other direction as fast as my hands can go...

9.01 pm update: i've just watched idol and i totally forgive ace! despite the theme being country music he was SMOLDERING. in fact he only went off key a few times at the start, which is better than many other of the contestants fared. so we all know what that means- another happy celebrity crushee restored safely to my list!