And that's all folks!

It was all finally over at 1:30 pm on 10 April 2014. I am done. Phew! Now I can finally breathe!

The big morning was a little more eventful than I would have liked. I didn't sleep much the night before, trying to make sure I have everything in my head that I wanted to say during the defense. One of my best friends came to my place to stay over just so he could drive me to work that morning (since I would be dressed up) and the sweet but poor thing had also had to endure my presentation 3 times by the time I finished the actual thing since he was my select practice audience. The drive from home to work that would normally take 15 minutes on the highway, took more than an hour that fateful morning. Good thing we left home with a good margin but it still made both of us completely frantic in the car fearing I would be late.

And I would have liked to say now that I got up there and showed them (our PhD committee) what I have got!! :)
Rather, I think it is more appropriate to say that I gave it my best shot (I hate presentations and mostly suck at them!) and was happy with that. Especially since the projector decided not to cooperate with my laptop, the slides blinked off and on throughout my whole presentation and on top of that, the videos didn't start as they did when I did my practice sessions. I was inwardly screaming and panicking, and outwardly trying to put on as calm a front as I could manage.
It didn't help that my boss was making expressions of despair and disgust and whispering often to his wife (also one of his post-docs) sitting next to him. All kinds of horrible thoughts were running through my head, 'Shit, what did I do wrong??? Why is this not working properly??? He must be so mad with me!!! The committee is never going to pass me in this state!!!' I finished it anyhow, ignoring these thoughts as best as I can. I was told afterwards that I was visibly more relaxed during the questions. Thankfully, that went rather well. There were a few questions I had thought they would ask and have prepared my answers and they did ask them! aha! The nods I got from the committee when I answered the questions were very reassuring. Surprisingly, after the presentation, my friends, colleagues and boss said I handled the whole thing well with that terrible blinking glitch. My boss did add though that he almost had an epileptic seizure looking at the blinking slides.

It was amazing that a part of my family (my mum, sis, aunt, uncle and one of my little cousins) made it to my presentation. It meant a lot to me that they took time off and travelled all this way just to witness my defense (and do a little tour of Europe while they were at it of course). I took a week off after my defense (it was not easy, wrangling this week of holiday from my boss) and we had decided to visit Switzerland together since my mum and sis had enjoyed our Swiss trip when they were last here to visit me 2 years ago. Steffen very kindly offered to be our driver! I am also very grateful to him. Without him, we would not have been able to stay on those lovely farms and see the beautiful nature; the mountains and lakes, that are an integral part of the beautiful Swiss landscape.

It was a very very good trip, all in all. We learnt more about one another, and even went through a tough life lesson together. On the first day of our vacation, as we drove through Milan on our way to the Lake Como, our first stop, we were robbed. On the road, from the car, a planned evil scheme where the robbers slashed our rear tyre so that when we stopped, one guy distracted us by pretending to help while another (which we didn't see) opened the driver side door and grabbed 2 of our bags, one of which was my very treasured camera and the other, my uncle's with all his Swiss francs, camera and jacket. Along with the considerable monetary loss, was also the loss of precious memories stored in all the photos. We were shocked, speechless. I was devastated. The rest of the day was spent in the police station where I tried with my limited Italian to convey what happened to us.
We all tried not to let this affect the rest of our holiday and I think we succeeded but in the following days, whenever there was nothing else to occupy my mind, the whole event commenced to replay itself in my head with me thinking of all the things I should or should not have done.

Indeed a big and hard lesson in life. One I will not forget for the rest of my life and mistakes I will not repeat, ever. Those bastards should pray hard not to run into me ever (or else...) and God forbid that anyone try something like that on me again, I swear they will not get away easy.