It’s baby popping season! Within this week alone, three hot mommas gave birth to their first borns! I’d like to congratulate Karen & Barry, Jocelyn & Jinh and Joyce & Kenny! And as the new proud parents welcome their new editions in their lives, I’m sure they all have panda eyes and perhaps, are also missing out on some good nights’ sleep! Am sure they will get the hang of parenthood soon enough! Congrats guys! Can’t wait to meet your little ones!

Here are the pregnancy portraits we took a couple of weeks back! What can I say? These mommas are just HOT!

October 6, 2009, Karen & Barry welcome Isaac Kyeson Kluner!

OOps! I forgot.. their first baby is Claudia!

Oct 11, 2009, after only 1.5hrs of labor, Jocelyn & Jinh meet their “little angry Korean”, Jacob Lim!

Bam-Bam insisted to be in all the shots! (We had to keep her in the meeting room after that!)

Oct 12, 2009, Joyce & Kenny meet their little girl, Sarah Yong!

We were aiming for “Blue Steel”… see the resemblance?

At the risk of sounding like a total groupie (which I really am not!)… it’s a very special and happy day for me  and I’m feeling like a million bucks with this photo taken with Will.I.am of Black Eyed Peas and having the honor of his and Apl.de.ap’s signature on my back!!!! Many thanks to Jeff and Zul who made it possible!!! Tonight was a GOOD night!!!!Excuse me, a GREATTTTTTTTTT night! I’m still in AWE having met the two of them at the pre-party @ Blanc Le Club!!! Will.I.Am is definitely as great a DJ as he is a rapper! He was on the roll for almost 2 hours and his tracks included Gypsy Woman, Jump, When Love Takes Over (I think the David Guetta remix!), Satisfaction (a classic and all-time favorite! Yang, I thought of you!), World Hold On and of course, BOOM BOOM POW and I GOTTA A FEELING!

Will.I.Am ROCKS!!!!

Jeff: THANK YOU for this shot!

Will.I.Am signing off!

Apl.de.ap on the west side! Too bad no photo with him (his bodyguard was pretty tight!!!)

I don’t usually post things like this up on my blog but I believe that this is on-going and that most of us have been or ARE being conned.

This year, I transferred my phone line from a company line to my personal line and ever since Jan, 2009, I’ve been receiving the billing statements. I’ve noticed that every month, I get these “MacroK SMS” charges which I wasn’t sure what they were for. When I asked Maxis, they mentioned that it was an external provider that I had subscribed to and they couldn’t check it for me. Every month, my charges from MacroK Sms would amount to RM27.50. I wasn’t sure how to find out who this “external” provider was until this month’s bill - I noticed that there was a land-line number. So I called.

They said that I’ve been subscribing to Ringtones… RINGTONES? I don’t even use them? I clarified to see if they were Caller Ringtones (I subscribe to those via Maxis and I pay for them every month) and they verified that they were not caller ringtones. They were just ringtones. Very quickly, the lady asked if I wanted to terminate the service. I said, yes, but I would also like to know where these charges came about, what were the “subscribed” ringtones . I wanted a list of the ringtones I “had ordered”. She responded very quickly and said, “Oh, we can give you a refund… just fax us your billing statements and we will send you a check”. I will fax my bills over to them tomorrow but I’m furious that these charges were slipped in there and we’ve been paying for them for these past few years, unknowingly!

I did a search online and found out that I wasn’t the only one who they had conned. Apparently there have been quite a number of cases out there already. So pls.. I urge you to check your phone bill today! Look out for MacroSMS or any charges under “External Content Provider”.

Pls click on this link to Jeff Ooi’s post on this scam as well (dating back to 2007!.. He has included a lot more detail on this white collar crime.

http://www.jeffooi.com/2007/05/post_53.php
Please forward this to your friends and let’s try and stop this from happening in future!

Here’s a screen shot of my billing statement where the charges appeared….. If you DO have these charges, call 03-2164-3273 (the MacroSMS company who has been scheming from you. Of course, only IF you hadn’t subscribed to it. DEMAND for a refund). I’m still uncertain if I’m going to manage to get my money back but I will try! I will keep you posted on the progress.

Wet. Cloudy. Gloomy. Those were the images that stuck to my head as I left Hong Kong. It was the third consecutive day in a row it had rained and drizzled non-stop. Worst still, it was over the weekend. It had been forecasted - “Terrential Rain”, all weekend long. But knowing me, I refused to believe that my supernatural weather powers didn’t work in Hong Kong… I was optimistic as I woke up bright and early Saturday morning (this was a couple weeks back) except that “bright” wasn’t exactly quite the word to describe the day. it was wet. cloudy. gloomy. Still, persistent as I am, I remained positive and imagined the raint would stop for our shoot at 8:30. It didn’t. In fact, by the time we got down the elevators, it was pouring so we had to go back up to the apartment and get our umbrellas!

So, we decided to wait it out. We had a good breakfast with John & Ai Wee while I positively waited for the rain to stop. It DID simmer down….. so we were on our way, with our umbrellas, we headed down SOHO.

It was very cumbersome, shooting in the rain - Allen was “umbrella boy”, at times juggling 3 umbrellas while trying to take behind-the-scenes shots which meant I often got wet or my camera did..! About 30 mins into the shoot, it started to POUR! We took shelter at a quaint cafe and decided to take a break and had coffee.

The rain turned out to be a blessing in disguise… I absolutely love the way the photos turned out with the umbrellas! Certainly a first for me! (Shooting in the rain!)

Congrats to John & Ai Wee for their upcoming 1-year anniversary!

My favorite photo of the day…

Don’t you just love her sexy thi… ermm.. I mean boots?

This is a complete fluke shot… but I love it! Makes me look quite arty!

They were both born to be in front of the camera!

Managed to get a few more shots at Classified, a deli on Hollywood Road.

And here’s a pic of “Umbrella Boy” who tried his best to keep me dry…