  We investigate damping and growth times of the f-mode for rapidly rotating
stars and a variety of different polytropic equations of state in the Cowling
approximation. We discuss the differences in the eigenfunctions of co- and
counterrotating modes and compute the damping times of the f-mode for several
EoS and all rotation rates up to the Kepler-limit. This is the first study of
the damping/growth time of this type of oscillations for fast rotating neutron
stars in a general relativistic framework. We use these frequencies and
damping/growth times to create robust empirical formulae which can be used for
gravitational wave asteroseismology. The estimation of the damping/growth time
is based on the quadrupole formula and our results agree very well with
Newtonian ones in the appropriate limit.
