[Soutpiel]

I'd been away from this site for a while, and coincidentally I had just returned from a get-together to mourn the losses of my 32Bn bothers during the Angolan war, and got a bit of a jolt when logging in and seeing that SOTB had succumbed. So much so that it's taken me two days to mull it over before posting my condolences.

It's remarkable the impact SOTB made on members here. Many characters on this site but he stood out.

When I first arrived here I soon felt his wrath and thought "well every forum has one" and put him down as the resident big mouth.
Next to dawn on me was his apparent dislike of anything South African.

I obviously don't know him from a bar of soap, like most people here, but after a while it occurred to me that he spoke a lot of sense. And he didn't take prisoners.
It also sunk in that we had remarkably similar backgrounds, both military and civilian albeit it in opposite ends of the world, similar ages, similar curmudgeonly outlook, similar atheism, similar dislike of a lot of things South African, and a similar cancer issue for that matter. My brother from another mother so to speak. If this forum was my home turf I'd be mouthing off exactly like him. How could I possibly hold a grudge?

So I sat in my corner and began increasingly to enjoy the chirps and confrontations, as well as his technical knowledge, and I always made a point of reading his posts. In fact I harboured a secret fantasy of possibly meeting up with him in a professional environment one day. Seems that day will have to wait till I also kick the bucket.

If we consider the vacuum he leaves here on SOCNET then we can just imagine the vacuum he leaves among his family and colleagues. It's those left behind that suffer. So my positive thoughts and energies go out to them.