The club floor lounge area has all this really cool furniture and decor. They serve breakfast in the morning and drinks in the evening. The view is amazing too (as you can tell)!

Hiltons in Asia are typically 100x nicer than most others for some reason. Why this is, I have no idea.

They were all over the place, at my feet, above me, jousting through nearby bars. All of these monkeys were utterly wild and in your face.

This bar is up on top of the roof and it is all open air. There is a pool down there that is always available for use, and it is surrounded by a ultra-chic bar. It was raining when I took this… I am up on the 2nd level of the bar, where there is a spa… you can see the little massage rooms down the lefthand side there.

On Saturday I am taking a side trip down to Java to visit the Buddhist temple of Borobudur, so I am really looking forward to that!

Ahira’s dream is to go to a university and be a computer scientist or doctor or whatever her parents want.

Ahira is currently at the Batu Caves in Malaysia, just outside of Kuala Lumpur, walking up the hundreds of steps. She and her family are making the traditional Hindu pilgrimage to the peak, where she will light incense to Lord Murugan and other Hindu deities whose shrines lay at the top inside the cave network. While she talks to me telling me about doing whatever her parents want, her parents look on and nod approvingly.

This comes from my Portraits Portfolio here that you can see here.

The 28+ hours spent in planes and airports was once again a wonderful experience full of crying babies and frantic mothers stepping on my toes while I tried to concentrate on my computer screen and Gotan Project blasting out of my earphones…

This is Sam, and she is another photographer I met when I went out with three other photographers one night in Kuala Lumpur. She is friends with Potatoe and Cris, and she is much more photogenic, I assure you, than some guy that goes by the name “Potatoe”.

In the interview, I was asked about some of my photos where I am surprised that they did not do better. I commented on my Chinese Cemetery set, which I think must be too macabre or too Chinese. Here is a link to the set on Flickr.

And here is one of the pictures from the interview that I forgot to mention. It’s one of my favorites, but again… one that is not nearly as popular as the others, in terms of relative comments/favorites. Oh well… you never know!

Amin’s dream is to drive a Ferrari. He jokes, and then becomes suddenly serious with a haunting, dark Persian stare before uttering his real dream: that one day our race is “human being”, our religion is “humanity” and our nationality is “citizen of the world.” Amin thinks deeply, and then laughs and says, “Well maybe if I was driving a Ferrari now I would be thinking of this crap!”

Amin is currently working at John Galt Games after being recommended by his fellow Iranian programmer, Ali, who shares the flowing locks of Sayid from Lost and the comic stylings of Cicak Man himself. Amin has recently passed the killer gauntlet programmer test of Hafiz (our lead tech brain) with a score of 85. Nobody has ever scored this high, except for Hafiz himself, who resides with the demigods of C++ in his own heavenly sphere of programming and peace.

This comes from my Portrait Series here.

Here is another shot I took from nearby, of a few Islamic schoolchildren:

I took a bunch of shots of these bridges and I could not decide which was the best, because they are all cool. But I decided to go with this symmetrical one first… probably meaning I am seeking some kind of structure in my recently chaotic life!

Putrajaya is the new capital area Kuala Lumpur. It is the most sterile and lifeless place I have ever visited. But there is very nice architecture for photography… so I guess it’s not all bad.

Since I get over 250,000 visits on my blog per month (and more than that direct to my Flickr pictures), I thought this would an interesting idea.

First, this may be the dumbest-looking photograph, but most hilarious from a pure silly point of view, that I have ever made.

Ali (left) and Amin (right) each work for me at John Galt Games here in Kuala Lumpur. They are two of the sharpest programmers in the world and incredibly funny and cool guys. Truth be told, Ali is a bit overpaid, but that is between you and me.

As a CEO, entrepreneur, and blogger, I think that little guys like me can do more to solve the world’s problems than so-called world leaders. Ali, Amin, and I all agree the that our world leaders are kind boneheads, except for that guy that runs SeaLand, who we think is pretty awesome.

Insofar as people like me making the world come together, this shot was taken at a restaurant in Kuala Lumpur where we took our Malaysian development team (about 40 people) to dinner for Chinese New Year, where I gave a speech in English before handing out the traditional “Hong Bao” or Red Envelope, the traditional “lucky money” gift to people from half a dozen countries.

The amount you put in the Red Envelope is very important and should always be an even number. If you give $4 dollars it is considered very rude because it means that death may be soon. $8 is generally a good number, but as long as it is even, the Feng Shui karma will end up going your way. I also have a theory about the billions of dollars that circle around the Chinese culture every year in these money-switching celebrations — I don’t think anyone actually makes any money, since you have to give Red Envelopes back to all your other friends. It ties up an enormous amount of money so that people can just switch around money and they are forced to keep a heavy cash-balance on hand during the Chinese New Year. However, tying up billions in cash has a net positive effect of a lot of happiness since everyone seems blissfully oblivious the the mathematical net-zero gain.

Anyway, I digressed there… This was supposed to be about Iran and stuff.

So we had a heck of a time taking this picture because Ali and Amin kept cracking up. These guys cannot keep a straight face. I said, “Okay guys act like you hate me and you hate Americans. Remember, we are Imperialists and all we care about is oil, right?” I think we had to take over a dozen pictures to get them to look half-way serious and not-thrilled. The worst thing was that Hafiz (yet another Muslim in the mix) was taking the pictures and constantly cracking jokes to mess up the mood.

Anyhoo, while the rest of the world is completely chaotic, our little international team of creative geniuses is having a blast designing and creating innovative online games for the world to play. We still have to deal with the world at times. For example, I’d love to bring Ali over to the US next week to the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, but there is no way that the US would let in an Iranian — especially one with long hair that looks like that Iraqi swarthy multi-cultural lover from Lost.

Coming up soon, I have another portrait coming up of Amin, which turned out really nice. He has that commanding Picard-like nose that is useful for balance and staying upright in strong winds.

In closing, bringing so-called democracy (my Libertarian spidey-sense thinks “mob-rule” when I hear democracy) to the world is not the answer. The real key is the free trade of goods, services, and ideas. Having little guys like me be able to hire smart, able, and cool guys like these, is the proven answer to the world taking the next step towards prosperity, peace, and really sweet online games.

I took that shot above at the Batu Caves just north of Kuala Lumpur. Below is another picture that I took nearby, with the dark black of the cave in the background.

Kuala Lumpur is a very interesting city and is quite unique in Asia. I’d love to get up on top of those Petronas Towers there to take some shots, but I look like a suspicious white guy with my huge backpack. They tell me all white people look alike. …and smell like wet puppies.