eine große Stüze!

had a crazy crazy day yesterday... so crazy that i can't even believe how 'calm' i really was... in spite of all the trauma... yes computer-induced trauma...

always is.

i've been working all week and weekend on my seminar presentation on one of the classic motor-papers of the century and stayed up all night till the early dawn of yesterday and before i left it, i hibernated my laptop, then napped a little... by the time to got to the lab to finish up the powerpoint... my laptop had decided that it couldn't detect the hard-drive at all... if it could just spin a wee bit i could retrieve the powerpoint and that would be it... but it won't wake up.

it's happened before... and came back alive again... but it was pointless fighting.

so i had to piece together a talk from scratch in 4 hours... had bits in my flash-stick (which i should never have removed... or to which i should have backed-up before i fell asleep! arrgh!!!)... i suppose it could have been worse... it was yet another boring talk i gave... boring for me... coz i could do with the sleep... but probably boring for others because the paper was so dense and full of words... but full of very fascinating ideas for the 1870s... ideas that we are still struggling with today... i mean, we haven't quite progressed in foresight but have somewhat been stalled by the very imaging-technology boom that ought to have given us more leaps into the future... oh well. i did okay despite the mishap... and was able to answer all the questions... even if in a round-about-way... afterall, i had only 3-4hrs of sleep!

anyways... after the wretched talk, i thought i'd give my laptop another try... and IT WOKE UP! ARRRRGGGGHHH... i could just whaaammm that cranky thing! i could... but i didn't. backed up everthing i could instead... computers ARE evil.

but then as much as i would like to, i couldn't sleep all night despite the ratty day being over... c'est la vie... sometimes, you just can't win at all.

oh well, thank goodness for blogs! i certainly think this is a great space for, well, catharsis... and a spring-board and space to bounce my silly thoughts here and there and maybe everywhere...

and so, as a wee 'tribute' to the day this silly blog came into being... i'd like to quote Anne Frank... just because. and also because i just bought a German copy of her diary, which appears to be a new edition, and having read it nearly 10 years ago in English, i'd like to try to brush up my pathetic grasp of the german language by doing some amateurish translation, once in a while... although to be fair, i really ought to do this excercise for my very rusty Mandarin too... it's amazing how much 'refinement' of my crude skills i still have to do... during this life time! ach! =CS

anyways...

12. Juni 1942

Ich werde, hoffe ich, dir alles anvertrauen können, wie ich es noch bei niemandem gekonnt habe, und ich hoffe, du wirst mir eine große Stüze sein.

[Anne Frank]

12. June 1942

I would like, I hope, to be able to confide everything in you, how I could yet with nobody do so, and I hope, you will be my great bearer.

[written shortly after her 13th birthday -- the diary was a birthday gift]

28. September 1942 (Nachtrag)

Ich habe bis jetze eine große Stüze an dir gehabt. Auch an Kitty, der ich jetzt regelmäßig schreibe. Diese Art, Tagebuch zu schreiben, finde ich viel schöner, und ich kann die Stunde fast nicht abwarten, wenn ich Zeit habe, in dich zu schreiben.
Ich bin, oh, so froh, dass ich dich mitgenommen habe!

[Anne Frank]

28. September 1942 (Addendum)

I have for all this while found a great bearer in you. Also in Kitty, to whom I have now regularly written. This form, of diary-writing, is to me more pleasurable, and i can hardly wait for the moment, when I have the opportunity, to log something down in you.
I am, oh, so glad, that I have brought you along!

[written as an after-thought to the above diary entry, while in hiding only 3 months later]

--- italic quotes from Anne Frank Tagebuch © 2004 Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Fischer Schatzinsel

posted by ~overacuppa~ on Tuesday, 1 August, 2006 at 11:53 hrs