Jay Ismail Photography


Last Tuesday, I had the great opportunity to meet and shoot with the very talented fashion photographer Jay Ismail in his new studio. Marl, Selena and I had fun spending the whole afternoon with him. I brought 3 sets of outfits and we just had fun shooting. Marl learned so much from him as Jay unselfishly shared what he knows when it comes to photography.

Marl was simply inspired by him. His works are mostly seen on magazines, shops, and billboards - which are mostly bought by the big companies. Just take a look at his website to see some of his works - and boy, am I glad to be included in his portfolio!

Here are some of my shots that he posted on Facebook:























Busy as a bee

Aaaaargh! My schedule is so hectic that not only did I lose time
to blog, but read this - no time to tweet at all! That's how hectic my schedule is. Anyway, I will make it up to all of you as soon as I'm free, ok?

Posted by ShoZu

ManU wins, Sars wins

I'm so used to entering my workplace (The Pub) with heads turning and hearing the guests say "oh, that's the singer". But tonight, nobody noticed me when I made an entrance to The Pub because everyone was soooo intensely watching the football game that's on the big screen onstage between Manchester United and Manchester City. I'm not a football enthusiast so I don't really know what the fuss was all about and which team has the ball.

So I invited Aretha to play some pool with me. If you don't know about it, there's a pool table at the mezzanine floor of The Pub (where the VIPs usually have their private time). So anyway, for the past 2 and a half months that we've been here in KL, it's our first time to OWN the pool table - just because everyone else was busy watching the game - and also because, we couldn't start our 1st set on time because of the football game.

I missed playing pool. I used to play pool when I was a teenager. So anyway, I managed to show Aretha how I used to play pool back in the days - and I haven't lost my touch actually. I beat her twice during the 2 rounds of pool game. LOL! But it was a good bonding time with Aretha. We kept on laughing until I lost my voice! What we didn't know hat our voices were pretty much disturbing the intense game that the people were watching downstairs. The looks on the faces of the guests when we went down after the games - football and pool - were priceless. Until Marl told us, "your voices were really loud, you know!". LOL.

Tonight was a great Saturday night even though we started later than usual at almost 10PM. The crowd picked up around 11PM and by midnight the place was fully packed again. But I was feeling a little discomfort on stage because... I had an indigestion. LOL. I had spicy Penne Pasta for dinner but I think I ate too fast - hence, indigestion. I couldn't burp at all. But after a couple of wine and a few fun songs and a very long and loud burp (no one heard it anyway LOL), I was in my element again. :)

Lots of my friends were in their element tonight, too, because Manchester United won the football match... WEEEEEEEE! I'm happy for them! :) As for Aretha, she said she would practise more on her pool moves to beat me next time. Let's see...

Passion to Blog is Back!

Although my followers on Twitter have heard (or read) most of the funny stories and actual comedies - on and off stage - in my daily life, 140 characters is never enough to properly tell a story. That's why I've decided to go back to blogging.

*crowd applause*

But let's not be too much excited about it because since I'm planning to blog before bedtime, I will try my very best not to fall asleep as I do that.

All I needed is the passion in blogging to come back... and therefore, NOW is the right time. Best of luck to me. :-)

Follow me on twitter @saritaonline

Posted by ShoZu

Forcedly Squeezed

We never expect Fridays to be fully packed since our weekend crowd nowadays is usually divided to two party nights of the weekend - Friday and Saturday. As from our observation, when it's full on Friday, it's not that busy on Saturday, and vice versa. But sometimes, both nights get busy. But still it's very unpredictable.

Tonight was a busy night and lots of regular guests plus some new faces, too. I guess, after URB is back in town for more tan 2 months now, news is spreading like wild fire which only proves that the best marketing tool that's inexpensive is 'word of mouth'.

But we got bothered all night by the sound system. Music has become so noisy and very unpleasant to the ears and our vocals are not doing much justice to some songs. Why is it that when we are comfortable with the sound system, something would happen and have it changed? Errrr... not pointing finger at anyone here. It's just that, when everything is running smoothly, something unexpected would happen. But that's life - expect the unexpected.

There's this one 'makulit' guy who kept on shouting after each and every song - to show his appreciation. Flattering, yes. But he's just toooooo loud lah! I never talked to him in the past because I see that he always drinks jugs of beer. My tolerance in talking to drunkards and cigar smoker has lessen in the past years and I'm easily ticked off when my 'space' is disturbed by such individuals. Anyway, he would always pull Aretha to dance with him - except tonight. He decided to pull me and before I knew it - I was already locked in his arms squeezing every vein in my chest and torso. Imagine, I was flat-chested for a couple of minutes. That tight! But did I have any other choice? Nah. *rolls eyes*.

Looking on the brighter side... what's great about tonight was having our friends at The Pub and making new ones. Hope they continue their 'word-of-mouth'. Me love.

Follow me on twitter @saritaonline

Modeling portfolio updated!

It took quite a while to dig in my growing archive of photos from the shoots that I did - aside from BadeeDadee's shots. Last year, I've been photographed by a handful of photographers and I don't even remember the names of some of them so it's really hard to trace them from our growing number of Facebook contacts.

This year, I was photographed by few of the photographers in Manila during Marl's workshops and during a Lensmate Session test shoot (by Ruel Tafalla) which were easier to trace. And in KL, there were only two other photographers who shot me, SoonCM and the great Aliaskhal.

You can find these photos in MY MODELING PORTFOLIO. Enjoy!

New videos added on URB Band's site

LOTSA BRAND NEW VIDEOS!!!

I'd like to thank my documentarians - yes, they're two now - for their support for the URB Band by taking time to take videos of our crazy performances and uploading them on YouTube. To my sister Melfay86 who was the original URB documentarian, thank you for everything. And to the band's new found friend Reen, thank you for helping the URB band document our performances.

Check out their channels and subscribe to be updated with our band's performance, but the videos are usually added to the Videos page of the band's website right away.