I Have Been Very Busy

It is a long time since I have written anything about my activities. I have been very busy!

Well, first of all I passed my PhD transfer viva, which lasted for more than two hours, and during the viva, I literally felt as if I had nothing in one and half years. When the examiner told me “You passed the viva,” and that he had wanted to give me quite a tough time, I felt very relaxed; however it gave me a glimpse of the final PhD viva – how tough it could be! What I have learnt is that the PhD is all about how you write your thesis, present your work, and convince your examiner that your work is novel and original. Furthermore, your examiner will want to make sure that “what you have learnt” from your thesis will help you survive in the research industry. One final and important thing is: always go into the viva fully preparated. In my case, I only got to know about the viva one day before the actual day and even worse I didn’t bother to read what I had written…:)…possibly called overconfidence!

During this period, I helped organize the annual ISIS postgraduate conference (https://secure.ecs.soton.ac.uk/notices/publicnotices.php?notice=3128), held on Monday *29th March 2010*. The key guest was Dr Paul Lewin, the ECS Graduate School Director. The main goal of the conference was to give everyone a flavour of what is going on in the group: we all do related things and so the more interaction we have as a group the better will be the quality of the research. The conference gave everyone valuable experience in presentation as well as providing a chance to have a chat and interact in a non-office environment.

Apart from that, I have published a couple of conference papers, and visited some countries. I have applied for a US visa, and If I am lucky enough to get it, I could be in Las Vegas in July…wicked ya… I would love to visit New York as well as Las Vegas. Here, I should mention an important point, which is, getting a conference paper is not hugely difficult and it does not count much in your thesis preparation. However you can visit your desired places by keeping track of the conferences (www.wikicfp.com ). A good journal could save your ass by helping you get out of the burning questions posed by the examiner!

My mood was a bit low this weekend, as Pakistan (my homeland) lost T20 cricket world cup semi-final against Australia, though Pakistan was leading. However, I am happy England won the cricket world cup this time. Find me on Facebook (http://en-gb.facebook.com/people/Musi-Ali/783838404)

See u soon ..)