Out of the blue came an email from my friend from the UK, Pak Ken, I was wondering where has he gone this time, have not been in contact with him for some time, sent a couple of mail but did not get a respond.....well sometime old folks like us are so busy that we forget to write or just keep procrastinating .....any way it indeed great to get news from him, well this British guy was at one time serving with the British Army and served in the then occupied Malaya, a British colony. well the British say they came here to civilized us.....I do not understand.....Why do they have to civilized an already civilized people, surely everyone know that Asian was civilized long before the west.....we already had good governments and were contented with life, and then they came and say they want to civilized us.....well we all know too well that....the real reason being economic, like Iraq now, so they came and soon colonized us and take all the wealth of ours to their home and became richer. Since we had no way of fighting them and had since being colonized from fifteen eleven, first from Portuguese, the Dutch, the Portuguese again and then the British follow by the Japanese and then later on by the British again and all through they plunder our national asset and did no development of any good, except that the British did set up a good administration to govern the country from the district to the federal level, other then that there was no real development for the benefit of the people especially for those that live in rural area... back to my friend Pak Ken.... In his youth he join the British army and was sent to Malaya to fight the militant communist, according to him it was hell for those young British soldiers to fight in the tropical jungle, full of mosquito and humid, well as an obedient soldiers he had to do his part, getting bitten by mosquito, leeches, got rashes all over his body and some of his friend even got malaria and of course like any other soldiers, some got killed, well that was his youth......Despite all that he still love this country and keep coming here for holiday especially when it is winter in his homeland....he love the sun and the humidity and for that most winter he would be flying to this part of the world and spend most of his time in this country once call Malaya, now Malaysia and independent and prosperous country. This year according to his email he would be here sometime in early December and as usual he would come over to our home and meet my family, well after all those years, we have become close friend with this 'mat salleh'....in Malaysia we refer to the white as 'mat salleh', so the next time you hear Malaysian speak among themselves and mentioned 'mat salleh' then most probably they are referring it to a 'white man'. I do not know why this term 'mat salleh' is use to refer to all those white man......of course there are many theories as to how this terms came about....let me tell you one of it...it is said that long long ago the white man's sailors use to frequent our harbour and loiter around those small shipping port towns and in one incident in a port at Penang, as usual these young white sailors would get drunk and wonder in unruly manner and misbehave themselves. Well obviously the local do not like it and sometime they would be a fight and this scene of unruly and drunken sailor soon became a frequent happening at small town at the sea ports....as the stories goes the Malay like to refer to those that they do not know their names as just only simple... Mat...so whenever these Mat got drunk and disturb the peace of the town, the local would just say that the Mat is on it again...and eventually they added the word 'sailor' to the Mat and since they did not know how to pronounce the word sailor they just say it 'saler' and eventually it soon sound as saaleh, so the story goes that this 'Mat Sailor' became Mat Salleh, which refer to the white man..and now when Malaysian speak among themselves they would use this word 'Mat Salleh' to mean the white man..... it is just a reference and it does not mean anything bad, so to the Mat Salleh do not felt offended when you hear this word uttered by Malaysian. It is just the way Malaysian refer to the white man and nothing else......actually I am not that sure whether this is the true version of the Mat Salleh's story, anyway let takes it at that this time until you hear another version.....well my friend Pak Ken would be here soon and we would go out roaming the streets of Kuala Lumpur and end off having the usual Teh Tarik and Roti Canai which he has learn to love to eat when he is here....so goes the story of the Mat salleh's friend of mine......Spending his winter in the tropic, smart eh!!!........