RIP Tor Norling: Pengeskap reiser, meg venn

Inside a broken clock
Splashing the wine
With all the Rain Dogs
Taxi, we'd rather walk.
Huddle a doorway with the Rain Dogs
For I am a Rain Dog, too
Oh, how we danced and we swallowed the night
For it was all ripe for dreaming
Oh, how we danced away
All of the lights
We've always been out of our minds.
The Rum pours strong and thin
Beat out the dustman
With the Rain Dogs
Aboard a shipwreck train
Give my umbrella to the Rain Dogs
For I am a Rain Dog, too.
Oh, how we danced with the
Rose of Tralee
Her long hair black as a raven
Oh, how we danced and you
Whispered to me
You'll never be going back home
You'll never be going back home
Rain Dogs
Tom Waits - from the Album Rain Dogs

Learned this morning of the tragic and untimely death of my old friend, Bangkok-based Norweigan freelancer, Torgeir Norling.
Tor, 37, was killed early Sunday morning when he was hit by a bus while walking with friends.
A droll, soft-spoken fellow with a taste for the brew, we'd pooled resources and contacts on several occasions over the years, including East Timor, Afghanistan and a couple of times in Aceh, including in 2001 when he was detained and harassed by Indonesian intell in Lhokseumawe. We always wondered if it was the same braindead guys who busted and interrograted my wife and I for several hours in 2004.
Though we'd fallen out of contact the past couple of years we managed to hook up for beers at the Bangkok Foreign Correspondent's Club a few months back, shaggy, wild-eyed and chain-smoking, to rehash old stories and mull the future. He'd become a dad in the interim & the way he described it, he seemed to relish the part.
I was surprised to learn he's part-owner (dunno exact role, actually) in Rain Dogs bar off Rama IV Road: a suitable name for a man whose cleareyed reportage rested heavily on the little guy, the monk, the activist, the refugee.
Suitable offerings to Ullr, Odin and Freya tonight, my friend.