MALAYSIA

My dad spent quite a bit of time in the Pilippines when he was a young man, and he never stopped talking about it.  He was a soldier then attached to the old air wing of the Army, and lots of black and white pictures came home with him.  After his tour of duty there, he went to China and rambled around for a year.  I never heard him speak a critical word of either Philippinos or Chinese people.  Back then, Malaysia belong to the British, and I never thought to ask if he traveled there.  I know he went to other countries in that area of the world, but you know how it is with young people listening to elders talk about their adventures.  You don't hear a lot, and that's a shame.

My site here at Blogger tells me where views come from, and Malaysia is second to the U.S. in the number of hits I get.  That makes me curious as to why anyone in Malaysia would be interested in what I have to say.  I write about Texas some because that's where I live.  Maybe that's it, the Texas thing.  Several years back I had a presence on Moli, did a lot of blogging there.  I don't know what good is when it comes to views, but I'd get several hundred sometimes within just a few hours of posting a blog.  And I was amazed to find that most of my hits came from Europe.  I communicated with people from England and Ireland off and on, but Moli didn't last long, and that ended my great experience with blogging.  Only recently have I started again.  This site on Blogger is an old one, but I never used it until about 6 weeks ago.  I don't get lots of views, but it takes time to build a good site for blogging.  And I'm pleased that some of them are from foreign countries.

So, talk to me Malaysia!  We share some things in common, like oil.  Yeah, we know all about oil here in Texas.  We've even got a small area of the state that's almost tropical - the valley, down on the Mexican border along the Gulf of Mexico.  Mostly, we've got desert, but we've got trees too over in east Texas.  We've even got them here where I live, but a real tree person giggles when I call what we have here trees.  My sister lives in Mississippi, and to her what we have here amounts to little more than brush.  Oh, no, I tell her.  The brush country is down south of San Antonio. 

I've got over 80 trees in my yard here in Brady, Texas, and almost all of them are live oaks.  They're small trees except for a few, most of them standing no more than 20 feet tall . . . but they're growing.  Look me up on Googe Earth at 101 Parkview in Brady.  You might even see me standing in the yard. Or look up my guitar shop at 1106 N. Bridge.  It won't be marked as such, but that's what it is, just a little house with lots of stuff in it. 

As for the trees, I've read where Malaysia is finally seeing a need to preserve their forests.  Let's hope it's not too late because it takes centuries for a natural forest to grow back.  Forests are needed to preserve the wildlife, and I grieve a little when I see where another species has disappeared . . . and they won't grow back.  You've got tigers, I see.  I'm a cat lover, even the large ones.  We once had large cats in Texas, the jaguar for one.  We've still got a few mountion lions (cougars), and lots of bobcats.  And recently I've read of reports of ranchers occasionally spotting a jaguar down in south Texas.  But we've also got close to 25 million people living here, and wild critters don't like living around people. 

I'm old, and I'll never get to see Malaysia in person.  Too far in distance, and I'm too far gone to make the trip now.  My adventures are mostly in my head now, but if I was younger . . . . Yeah, the big IF, right?