Kickin' it in Seremban

Scheduled to present to a Rotary club out in the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur, the Rotary Club of Senawang kindly invited me for an extended stay in their town.  I headed out to Seremban, about an hours train ride, and spent Sunday afternoon and Monday learning about the area with wonderful local Rotarians as my tour guides.  Seremban is in the state of Negeri Sembilan; whereas Kuala Lumpur is physically in the neighboring state of Selangor, but the city is its own federal territory.  Many people commute the 45 minute to 1 hour drive (if there's no traffic) from this area to work in Kuala Lumpur.  Its a pleasant suburban area, similar to the 'burbs in America, where most people live in bungalows (single family homes) and there are golf courses and much more green and open space than in the big city.  Its a place where you wouldn't expect there would be much to see, but they made sure my schedule was full of entertaining and engaging activities.  The tour included a pleasant drive through some of the agricultural areas to learn about the different fruits grown here, a visit to a Chinese cemetery, and something you wouldn't expect, a visit to an ostrich ranch where they conduct research and breed the animals.  I spent the night in the very nice home of one of the club members that is retired from the United Nations and worked all over the world on various peace keeping missions.  It was great to hear his stories.  Here's a photo journey of my time in and around Seremban:   

Feeding the fish at a local park with a Rotarian and his family.  It was great to see so many families enjoying the out of doors on a Sunday afternoon.



Some of the well fed coy and their turtle friend.

This photo may not seem interesting, but I like it because it shows children of many different races (Chinese, Indian, Malay, etc.) enjoying the same play ground.

A fellowship dinner with some Rotarians and their families at a chinese vegetarian restaurant.  They were very kind to arrange this get together and pick a special vegetarian restaurant just for me.  So many yummy choices and good conversation.

Chinese cemetary.

This, my friends, is a very rare and special coconut tree.  Usually cocount trees only grow straight up with one trunk, no branches or splits.  This tree not only has one fork, but two!  There are no others like it.

Dragon fruit plant, part of the cactus family.

A variety of orange coconuts.

Jack fruit.

This is where your coffee comes from!

Its so great to have such a variety of fresh. locally grown produce after living in Alaska.

Afternoon snack.



This ostrich had it out for me.  Good thing they don't have teeth!



The part of the ranch(?) where old ostriches get to hang out in retirement and watch the goats frolic around.  I learned you can't tell the gender of the animal until they are over a year old.  The feathers of the females turn brown, and the males stay black and their beak becomes very pink/red colored.  Baby ostriches are very sensitive to everything and if they are even around lound noises then can drop dead right then.

Ostrich eggs. They can weigh up to 2 pounds each.

And they were able to with stand my body weight, even with all the extra pounds I have put on since I got here due to the abundance of cheap, yummy food.

And the grand finale of the ostrich ranch tour, a chance to try my hand at ostrich wrangling.  What the photo doesn't depict is how ridiculously sweltering it was.  It was mid-afternoon, 90+ degrees, high humidity, and the bird itself was a huge heat generator with those black feathers.  I only survived long enough for a few photos, haha.

Presentation to the Rotary Club of Senawang, this time in an Indian food restuarant where we had a fantastic feast afterward.

No females in this Rotary club, but a very good bunch indeed.

Sorry for the multitude of photos, maybe the blog isn't the best place to post since you have to scroll through them all.  But I'm not posting them anywhere else (I don't want to be annoying and put them on Facebook all the time), so I'm just posting the best/most representative pics here.