doof!!

last weekend, i set my aim to finish a draft of my thesis by this week....which was why i have been writing all week...(except Wednesday when inspiration didn't visit and i faffed about looking for seminal papers written by people in the lab etc. instead) and especially all day thursday...and i actually managed to finish the draft on friday morning...the abstract and references are still missing but they are not too important at the moment...it is the shortest thesis i am probably ever going to hand in! but i suppose if the course organiser does complain....i could heap it up with all the programming scripts i wrote for the analyses in an appendix. hahaha. anyways i was so delirious after i finished the last sentence in the discussion i sent it off almost immediately to my supervisor in an email before arriving at the lab on friday:

"HALLO Christoph!
did my draft...pretty short though and the abstract's missing.
but anyways.... :C) so happy!
i'll be in after i make a cake....heee (well i hope it will work)
hopefully anja w., mihaela and benjamin etc. will still be there later...
bis spaeter!
may "

happily...i was baking one of my favourite cakes....blueberry cake/tart...it's simply filled with blueberries!!! [my fingers were almost all blue at the end of the preparation! :C) ] but little did i know, Christoph, my supervisor, won't be in later in the day....i brought the cake, just out of the oven, on my bike and then in the bus up the hill to the MEG centre, in hope to share it with everyone, as it was officially my last day at the lab. on my way walking there, i bumped into Anja who was just about to go home....it didn't take long to convince her that she should at least have a bit of the cake before she leaves....so both of us walked back to the MEG centre.

but i was really disappointed to learn that Christoph's disappeared! Anja said he told her that she should stay and wait for me to come as he won't be in later...doof. i kept asking Anja if she knew whether he will be back later but she doubt it. NO!!!! i thought, he could at least have sent a note to let me know.... oh well, we arrived at the MEG centre and i checked my emails....sure enough there was one from him:

"Hi May,
it looks good. Congratulations. Unfortunately I am not here this afternoon. Please leave a piece of cake for me.
I will be in the Institute this evening. Sorry that I cannot be here this afternoon. Will you be here next week?
Christoph"

well well, life has it's interesting odds indeed.
so i shared the cake with whoever was still around on a friday afternoon; apart from Anja, there were still some people about: Susanne and Maike who helped me with the recruiting of subjects, Jurgen, the technician, who makes and creates all the clever gadgets we use and comes to our rescue when something doesn't seem to work, Katarine (sp?) the Chech girl, who's just beginning her PhD, Hans, the Romanian post-doc, who has a mild obsession with the Japanese culture, and Klaus, a medic and researcher, who's rather odd and somewhat snobbish, if i may say so?!. Regine (a medic and a PhD student) was also there but, she refused to join....i am not the only one who feels quite sorry for her. she is anorexic and is understandably not comfortable with eating amongst others if she eats at all...sigh. anyways....so the cake got eaten up...and a piece was saved for Christoph.

i went about trying to burn my files on a CD. amazingly, the burner worked that day or whatever i did enabled it to burn my files on the CD. (i have been trying all week to achieve this little task!!!! and poor Nikolaus had to tolerate my stupid questions re CD burning probs. while he tried to finish up preparing his talk....ooops). all i have to say is that computers do have their mood swings. before i left, i wrote a note to Christoph beginning with:

"Hi!
doof! (hahahaha)
cake's in the fridge.
.........."

he replied later with:
"ultra super doooooooooooooooooooooooooof!
As far as I have looked into your draft it looks OK. I will give you detailed feedback next week. ............................
.........I forgot. Thanks for the cake. It tasted wonderful. Hmmmh. Thank you very much
Christoph"

and attached this to the email:
doof it reads.
and doof it was.
...but i couldn't help laughing about it!

doof literally means stupid/tiresome/thick....but could also mean 'annoying' which is the meaning i attribute most to the word.....it has the same cognotation as when someone says 'bummer'.

posted by ~overacuppa~ on Saturday, 20 September, 2003 at 14:50 hrs