Enjoying my new job, putting the theory I've learned in to practice :)
Finally finished my thesis changes and sent the revised thesis to my
examiners. Crossed fingers that they are happy with the changes.

I am currently preparing for my PhD oral examination on the 5th March.
I hope to see those of you who can make it at the afternoon tea
afterwards :)

After a fantastic trip through parts of Asia and Europe, I'm happy to say that my thesis has been approved to progress to oral examination. However a number of changes (two of which are quite major) have been asked for, so I am currently working on these. Due to uni closing so early this year, my oral examination won't be until the new year. This is a little disappointing as I wanted to have it all wrapped up by Christmas but at least I will have some extra time to make the changes and refine the thesis.

Just a quick update. We are half-way through our trip, currently in
Belgium drinking lots of nice beers. Next destination is Amsterdam. No
word on my thesis yet which is a little disappointing but at least I
don't need to worry too much yet. Hope all is well and that the RWC
isn't driving everyone too mad!

Hey guys, hope you are all well. Brenda and I are currently in
Beijing, we are having an awesome time. If you want to keep up to date
with what we are up to, we are keeping a blog at
http://blogs.statravel.com/samo83/. Ciao for now :)

Presented my talk to the Waikato branch of the NZCS on Thursday. Went really well and people were really interested. In fact, they were so interested that they let me talk for an hour and a half! A big thanks to Brad who came along and was a very helpful technical assistant!

My practice presentation for NZCS at the Friday night WAND meeting attracted a full room of people and received rave reviews on Twitter, with 20+ tweets (sorry no screenshots). I also received some great feedback and was stoked to see that Angela and a few other non-WANDees accepted Tony's invitation of attending the talk.

Stoked to have finally submitted my doctoral thesis on Tuesday the 31st May. Very appreciative of the combined efforts of Tony, Bill and Sally Jo.

I have made Tony's suggested changes to my introduction. Tony, Bill, Sally Jo and I have been meeting regularly to revise my thesis and improve parts of it as much as we can before I submit on Tuesday 31st.

I finally have a complete draft for my thesis. My conclusion chapter
requires a second revision but otherwise I'm pretty happy with my
chapters. Tony is kindly reading my thesis from start to finish and I
have already had valuable comments back for my introduction. I intend
to submit at the end of this month (Tuesday 31st).