Order Of The Phoenix

Dumbledore's Army (DA), movie stills from
Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix

Dante's Inferno

I try this test on and off, usually around my birthday every year. It was getting better a few years back, Level 7 I think, but lately, it's Level 8 again. I don't think I'll sink any lower, but I'm trying to. hehehehe...

Oh hell...

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the
Eigth Level of Hell
- the Malebolge!

Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Extreme
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Very High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Extreme
Level 7 (Violent)	Extreme
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Extreme
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Very High

Take the Dante's Inferno Test

Mother Of All Jams

Today, I was stuck in a massive traffic jam. The worse part of it was that all roads heading from north to south have to pass through 4 major expressways and they were all jam-packed with drivers trying to avoid jams from all of them. The one I'm taking doesn't charge toll and is the most direct and fastest route to my office.

When I left my house at 0730H this morning, I turned on the radio and found out that there was a big accident involving a trailer, a car and a motorcyclist 3/4 of the way down closer to work. I wanted to take another express route, this one charges toll, so heck. The radio then went on to say that there was also an accident on this one with the tail-back all the way to blah and blah. Sigh, I've run out of options here. I followed the usual route, travelling at an average speed of 25 to 35 km/h. I could have gotten out of my car and run to work faster, but let's not go there.

When I was halfway to work, I decided to take another route that runs perpendicular to the usual route, and then later turn back and make a big round. I know, at this point in time, I was desperate to get to work on time, and I could almost make it.

Taking this new expressway, I saw an exit that could take me to work through a short-cut. I took it. I regretted it. This short-cut turned out to have another huge traffic jam. There was no way to make a U-turn back onto the expressway, and I had to get off at the next intersection which was far, far away to take another route to work. I called in to work to tell them I was going to be late, I wish I could have said I was turning back and going home.

I was basically navigating with the street map and driving at the same time, trying to see which small lane or short-cut could get me through all this jam. It was a most infuriating morning. By the time I got to work, I had been on the road for 2 whole hours! I could travel to another country by plane and be there in 2 hours for crying out loud! The usual travel time to work is 40 minutes!

Here are the things that made the traffic jam worse:

1. An accident or a breakdown anywhere along the route. The vehicles, depending on which lane, just sit in that lane, blocking traffic and everyone has to change lanes to go around them and avoid them.
2. Radio annoucements help to alert you to traffic jams, but I think that they also cause them to a certain extent. Everyone will be taking the same route to avoid the jam, thus creating another jam and so on and so forth.
3. Idiotic drivers who change lane whenever there's a gap in front of the next car to get ahead. These asshole drivers cause people who are driving to brake to let them in, thus causing a slow-down.
4. Having buses or heavy vehicles along the route. These vehicles are generally slow, they are slow to accelerate and slow to change lanes. Slowness is not acceptable in traffic.
5. Having too many intersections with no traffic lights to control the traffic flow out onto the main expressways will just slow everyone down. This is because drivers from the intersection tend to cut into the fastest moving lane to get ahead. When they do this, everyone has to slow down to avoid them.

I wish there was another way to avoid these jams, but with the number of cars on the road here increasing, I really doubt that it can be avoided, if ever. I know that my friends overseas tell me that in their country, their traffic jams don't move, the cars just sit there for hours, the whole motorway is almost like a gigantic temporary car park for rush hour traffic!

Perhaps we need a helicopter service here. I think if I start that, and charge a $50 fare for those who need to take my helicopter services to work, I'll be richest person on this planet.

But in the end, I guess I just have to be thankful for small things.

Futuresex | Lovesounds

The long awaited second album from Justin Timberlake, titled Futuresex/Lovesounds is simply amazing! I was fortunate enough to get a preview of the entire album. Justin has not only drawn you in with his amazing innovative rhythms but also his bordering of music between pop, rock, R&B and hip-hop.

The first single Sexyback is already topping the charts at number 1 in Australia and America (Billboard charts Pop 100, Top Digital Download etc etc etc all at No.1). Lyrics for this song is limited, but it's the electronic rhythms and sounds that draw you in and dance to the beat or at least turn up the volume to listen to something different and unique.

If there was ever any question about whether sexy was in need of reviving--a doubtful proposition at best, given the sheer volume of JT's gyrating counterparts--he lays it to rest instantly over a small but insistent Timbaland-concocted beat. On that track, Timberlake's appeal is his sweet but newly thuggish-sounding voice--here's a good kid gone bad, and he's determined to convince us of it not only by tossing a few well-timed motherfuckers our way but also with such lyrics as "I'll let you whip me if I misbehave."

The rest of FutureSex will feel familiar to anyone who picked up 2002's brilliantly funk-flecked Justified: "Love Stoned/I Think She Knows Me," shifts from Michael Jackson-esque paranoid trilling to pulsating guitar rock; "Chop Me Up," a collaboration with Three 6 Mafia and Timbaland, gives up the grit rap-style but still manages to recall both Prince and Stevie Wonder; "My Love," with T.I., mines classic Timberlake territory with meltaway lyrics like "I can see us holding hands walking on the beach/Our clothes in the sand"; and the straight-up but groovy lament "Losing My Way" asks, searchingly, what may be the silliest question a squeal-inducing pop star has ever posed: "Can anybody out there feel me?"

There are times when Justin blends in his beat-boxing rhythms, which he does oh-so well, into the music which creates the human touch to all that electronic music and static-music. Although his lyrics are not as fantastic as song writers like Rob Thomas or Richard Marx, his ability to blend and bend the sounds in the music to suit his audiences is enough to pull you in to buy this album. I can forsee that most of his songs will definitely become timeless dance-floor anthems once remixed by all those DJs out there.

Justin Timberlake has definitely up the ante and changed the direction of the music industry by continuously challenging and changing the face of music. This album has moved away from his dirty pop music he created when he was with NSYNC into the electronic realm.

I highly, highly recommend this album to anyone who is willing to keep an open mind to how the direction of music should go in the future - an amalgam of sound.

9 out of 10 stars

Prison Break

I thought that this TV series was going to be another boring one. Intelligent TV series don't get any better than this. All those stupid reality series were just spreading on TV like a cancer that won't stop. There are only a few good reality series out there, but we're not here to talk about that.

Don't get me wrong, TV series like Lost are good, but somehow when mysteries drag on and on and on through 2 seasons with so many character developments and so many changes, they tend to wear you out. At the same time, watching a TV series with a continous plot week after week just makes you forget what happened in the earlier episodes, especially when something develops in the later episodes. Another example will be the TV series 24 (which I daresay didn't deserve to win the Emmy's this year!) which you have to watch in 24 hours, otherwise, it's just a waste of time trying to figure out what happened in episode 1 or 2 when you've reached episode 23 or 24.

Anyhow, Prison Break is just plain addictive! This series is about how Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller) cooks up a really elaborate plan to get himself into prison to free his innocent brother, Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell), who is on death-row. The reason why he so confidently enters prison to break his brother out is because he got his hands on the original prison blue-prints and ultimately has the entire blue-prints and escape plan tattooed onto his body.

The cast of characters is unique to any prison environment. And one of my favourite characters is Theodore Bagwell aka T-Bag (played by Robert Knepper), who's a murderer, a sexual predator and a white supremacist. The actor who portrays him goes through many changes and is very skilled at portraying the mannerisms of his character to perfection. I won't spoil the series by revealing too much.

The character developments here are so much more straight-forward than Lost. And with all good TV drama series, like The X-Files, all you have to do is throw in a huge conspiracy with the government and it becomes a classic. My only quarrel with the show is that the character Michael Scofield gets to move about the prison a bit too liberally. Granted that it is possible, but if you watch the series, some of it is rather improbable, but it's entertaining nonetheless to see how they cover up for one another.

I purchased the DVD mainly because I wanted to do a marathon and didn't want to wait for it to be telecast here. It was suppose to have started in April 2006 here, however, they chose to telecast Lost Season 2 first instead and I couldn't wait. Now all my friends and colleagues are just getting their queue number to borrow this set from me. Heck, even my parents want to watch it!

I highly recommend this series to anyone who have previously enjoyed prison breaks along the lines of the movie The Shawshank Redemption. This series will leave you at the edge of your seats and wanting more! Breaking out of prison has never been so innovative, exciting and entertaining altogether!

9 out of 10 stars