Flashback

In a good way, I had a bit of a flashback tonight.
While talking about university experiences, I recalled a friend who was very significant to me at the time but who also disappeared quite mysteriously.
On my first day at Uni I met a guy called Michael Peterson who was from Blayney, near Bathurst, and we really got on well from the start. He was one of those guys who was great to be around and who, despite having a cheeky streak, was very much a positive influence.
I distinctly remember several things about the year and a half or so (before he dropped out of Uni and kind of disappeared) of our friendship:
I recall a great weekend I spent at his place in Blayney (possibly the coldest place on Earth) where we drank at a pub then, miraculously, managed to walk home and I honestly don't know how we made it. In the middle of that night Michael had to get up and, well it wasn't pleasant. Another time he tapped, rather loudly, on my dorm window (I always seemed to get the bottom floor) at some ridiculous hour on Sunday morning, around 8am, and dragged me out of bed to spend the day in Cowra where we watched a football game and on the way home visited a relative in some small town between Cowra and Bathurst that I can't recall.
He always used to drive me to the shops when I was doing my food shopping to avoid me having to lug seveal heavy bags up the William Street hill.
I had a quick rifle through some of the correspondence I've kept from various people over the years (before email became prevalent) and I discovered a Christmas card from Mike which would have been from 1995. He told me in that card that he was ``jealous as hell'' that I was about to have a holiday in the USA and said he felt bad about relying on me at Uni (must have been work-wise) and that he wouldn't be so slack the next year.
It's amazing how someone like that can make such an impression and then just vanish. A few months after I left Uni I called his place in Blayney and spoke to his mother who, from memory, was very vague on details of what he was up to.
I really wish I knew what happened to him.
I hope it's all good because guys like him deserve it.