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There's no good start to a week when you're at work and it doesn't get any better when you find out that one of your good friends died at the weekend. Casey was someone that worked at one of my clients that was a friend as well as someone I worked with. We worked very closely together on a large project that was fairly intense at times, but it ended up being successful.

After completing his role on the project where we worked together, he left to do a two year stint in Angola. He moved house to South Africa as a base for where to spend his time when he was not in Angola (the position is 28 days on, 28 days off). Tragically, he died in a boating accident in South Africa this weekend.

One of my best memories was when he left the San Francisco Bay Area. A bunch of us met up at the Exchange for drinks after work around 5:30 / 6:00. By and large it was one of those events where people stop by to say their goodbye's and then disappear. I was there from the start and, not surprisingly, was there at the end. The bar shut at 10:00, but the two of us decided that we wanted to get some more to drink so went up to the Holding Company. We weren't in the best of states when we got there and it didn't really get any better. The only thing is that we were in a slightly better state than the local nutters. We ended up getting into a conversation with these two guys who thought it was amazing that I was from England and Casey was heading off to Angola. So much so that one of them started writing poetry about it on the back of a napkin. I know it's San Francisco, but they weren't trying to chat us up, they were just genuinely weird. Anyway, probably hard to explain, but it was a great night and we ended up leaving the Holding Company at 2:00am when it closed. This was a Thursday night - Casey had finished, but I had to work on Friday and it was a killer. I've commented many times that I'm too old for this and it's probably true .... But a good laugh all the same.

Many more memories of similar good times and I hope that these continue for Casey in whatever the afterlife holds. I'll break my no alcohol stretch tonight to have a drink to him.

Cheers and RIP!

(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24095067/ [edit - link expired])