I made it!

I received an email from the GRS saying that "the Graduate Research School has received all three examiners’ assessment reports". That was on Friday 27th November 2009. I immediately reply the email and requested the oral exams to be done before 8th December as I will be leaving NZ on that date. GRS admnistrators quickly responded to my email saying that they will try to organize the exams soonest possible. On the following Monday I received an official email informing me that my oral exams will be on Wednesday 2nd December 2009. In this email names of the Convernor and Examiners were revealed. Very excited but nervous. I got 4 versions of the MS Powerpoint slides ready, each carrying around 30pages of explainations. Late Monday afternoon I received an email from the Convernor telling me to prepare a 10minute verbal-only presentation. He even gave me his mobile number in case I need to contact him afterhours. So I did txt him just to confirm about the 10 minutes presentation. I was a bit worried cause if I were to downsize my 30minutes MSPowerpoint presentation to 10minutes, I will have to drop some of the slides. I received a reply txt soon after, he wrote that I had only to prepare 10 minutes verbal-only, no slides as a PC will not be made available to me on that day. Arggh, I have to talk for 10 minutes then. That few hundred pages of Thesis in 10 mere minutes. That is quite a challenge in itself. My lovely wife told me to put points on small pieces of paper and practice it out so that I wont go beyond my 10 minutes mark. And I did just that.

Come Wednesday ...very nervous. Nerve recking. It was drizzling. My wife and Sara accompanied me to the venue. It was in IIMS room 3.32. I am pretty familiar with the building as I used to have an office there when our department was under IIMS back in 2005. It was 30minutes to 11am, the door was locked. I told my 2 girls to wait for a minute while I go to the receptionist to get the door open. When I arrived at the reception counter I saw Prof. Merrick the convernor. He immediately recognized me as I took my hand out to shake his. Very jovial man he is. We went up to the room where my lovely girls were waiting.

The convernor briefed me a bit about hour the viva will be conducted. Soon after that I heard my supervisor's voice down the corridor followed by the 2 examiners. At that moment only Allah knows how i felt. I felt like my knees almost gave way. LOL. Here, I would say that I appreciated the kind motivating words by the converner. It helped me build my confidence and strength to see this true. After hugs and kisses from my lovely girls I went in the room to start my Viva Voce.

As expected, I barely looked at the pieces of paper I prepared for my 10 minutes verbal-only presentation. Words just went gushing out of my mouth keeping eye contact with the 2 examiners. They looked very focused with occassional glimpse of tiredness (or maybe boredom) on their faces.

"With that point .. I thank you". That was the last thing I said before I looked at the Convenor indicating I finished my speech. He said "Well done Suhaimi, 10 minutes exactly!".
He then gave full control of the exams to the examiners and the "shooting" began. They concentrated on the Mathematical that I have adopted from someone else. Pin-pointing the fact that I've only taken it and extended it a bit. One of the examiners even said that it is too little a contribution for a PhD award. At that moment I managed to make a 2 second glance at my Advisor, he was calmly writing something on the piece of paper in front of him. I remembered his and the convernor's advice to remain calm and professional in aswering the examiners' questions. The examiners are there to find "holes" in the research. They even tried to doubt the results obtained and models used. But I told myself that I had to stand my grounds. The convernor told me before the viva began "The viva is also called a defense for the obvious reasons .. ". So I did just that. Almost one hour was dedicated to that Mathematical model ... and what more ... the model is only one of the many (3 other) contributions I have in this research. I think I managed to get the message across and they agreed after making sure that I will make necessary changes and addition to explain the model a bit more. That was the only major point that we "argued" about. The rest are explainations of the results, traffic and application types, and typo/grammatical errors. The convernor concluded the examination and asked me and my advisor to leave the room so that the could discuss on the outcome of the exams.

I was pretty upset at that time, thinking that I might be asked to make major emendations and present my results and findings again. However, my advisor told me that the examiners are just doing their jobs to provoke and see if we confident enought to defend what we have presented in the thesis. He also said that Phd Award and the report (thesis) are 2 different things. They can pass you for the PhD but still ask you to make emendations for the thesis. And the fact that they only concentrated on one particular thing in thesis shows that they agree with all the other contributions I've made in my research. About 10 minutes after we were called back into the room.

The convernor started by saying, "Ok Suhaimi you have to make all the necessary emendations stated in the reports by the examiners ontop of all the suggestions made during the oral examination. Oh I forgot to say Congratulations you passed!" and he stood up and shook my hand. And so did the others. Its surreal... teringat pengorbanan isteri dan anak, airmata, keringat, masa .. senyum, tawa,... Ya Allah Tundukkan hati ini, Moga Aku menjadi Hamba yg merendah diri .. Ameen."

After the handshakes and congratulations the convernor took us to the Mossimo Cafe for lunch. I had cuppacino and went back to my 2 lovely girls who were waiting for me at Norazlina's office.

I made it .. Alhamdulillah.