BERLIN — The euro zone crisis seemed to vanish from the headlines for a brief moment as 2011 ticked over into 2012, but it is about to return with a vengeance.
Finally, the tour ended with a symbolic sculptural tree and the reappearance of the family in the fallout shelter and the sound of a ticking clock, a brief silence, an extract from President Kennedy's Inaugural Address, followed by a further "symphony of music and color".
The entire process hung on a brief interview in which she was scored, with tick boxes, according to her response to twelve brief questions.
And so, when the still air was pierced with a brief burst of chipping, at six or seven ticks a second, I looked up and around at once.
As the clock ticks, what was likely a $50 ticket and a brief conversation about driving safety evolves into a $150 dollar fine and an unfortunate encounter with the court system.
Instead, in a brief email, a spokeswoman sent a description of initiatives meant to help people avoid tick bites and Lyme disease.
In a brief response to the current complaint, Harvard noted that Asian-American admissions had recently ticked upward, and defended its right to "seek the educational benefits that come from a class that is diverse on multiple dimensions".
Do not forget to tick the appropriate box to indicate your marital status: a) single; b) married; c) divorced but having a brief fling with a married woman which will all go horribly wrong when we split up.
A pleasant enough greeting and a brief update, cheerful in its way: on her way back from another writers' conference, the odometer on the Mazda ticked past 100,000 miles.
(A brief staring contest).
