The day I passed my PhD viva gracefully

Alhamdulillah.  I am surely a blessed servant of Allah SWT.

That morning of 8th July, god knows how many butterflies wander around in my stomach, I arrived safely at the viva place an hour before my viva. Greeted by a good friend, Kak Husna who came for the moral support.

One of the external was already there! I was not ready for a small talk with my examiner, but I ended up with one I'll forever treasure.

While setting up the slides, BFF Sumayyah surprised me with her little boys. Came all the way early in the morning for me!! At that point, I told myself.. I must do this. For everyone around me.

With the 2 Ms

15 minutes before viva started,  my friend Sajaa came. At this point, everything I read became just some blurry lines. She told me to recite Al Ala instead. I did and felt good afterwards.

I began my presentation with full confidence. One of my external fell sick on the day, he just sent his report and the chairman decided to proceed. At that point I know that for that external examiner, I already passed with minor correction. Otherwise they won't proceed with the viva.

And when I presented with my full of animations slides inspired by Love, I knew I had the second external examiner. You just knew the look of awe. Later when I was done, she said, "the slides were too beautiful that I immediately forgot what to ask you."

Right after presentation, the chairman opened the floor for general questions. The external gave me only 1 question and 2 from my internal examiner. The questions were very minor. Then, I know I had this.

Taken by my supervisor during viva when they went through the thesis page by page

Specific questions were very minor too. My viva was done in an hour; thats a new record.. the fastest so far. With very minor correction to be done in a week. Normally they gave 60 days. Just to show how minor it was.

5 minutes after viva taken by Kak Husna, was trying to call Love to tell him the good news

 

Right after my viva, a good friend, one of my mentor asked me to come to the pantry where he.. I repeat it's a he.. baked a cake for the first time in his life for my viva. It was perhaps one of the best carrot cake I had in life.

More lovely friends came..

And met some more for our pre celebration at Nando's.

So now I'm struggling with my correctionns. And I guess I'm the happiest person in  planet earth who was about to be awarded as a Dr before I even turned 28. Alhamdulillah.

My gratitude goes to my supervisors, my hubs for the continuous support, my daughter, my parents and family, my lovely friends and to everyone for the doa of which without it I myt not be here today. Alhamdulillah.

ITEX 2013 and Utusan Malaysia

Alhamdulillah, I won silver in ITEX 2013!! :)

 

Funny when we won gold twice previously, it was not in the news.

Was in Goldcoast during ITEX so thank you my Supervisor for presenting on behalf of me :)

Tangga at Homer!

Yay finally!! Alhamdulillah :)

RM1300, not bad huh?

Buying and selling shares

Found this Figure that summarizes the process of buying and selling shares!!

http://richsnail.com/blog/how-to-open-a-trading-account-in-malaysia

Hope it helps!!~

Tips for PhD Viva

So, my Viva has been postponed again to 8th July, I hope this time is for real. But yeah, Allah SWT knows best. So, I hope I will make full use of the plenty times given to me.

Anyhow.. I asked the 'Doctorate Support Group' I joined in facebook for the tips in Viva.

So let me just share with you some of the tips that they shared with me:

1) Know your research novelty
2) Bismillahi tawakkal tu a'lAllah wala haula wala quwwata illa billahil a'liyil a'zim
3) Confident and smile consistently
4) Remember all the famous authors with the year
5) Relate your work to prior research work
6) Solat hajat :)
7) Give charity before viva
8) Recite Rabbi yassir wala tuasir throughout
9) Viva day - Read yaasin after solat subuh
10) Think positive!!
11) Recite yassin the night before and pray so that the examiners will listen to our explanations and understand them
12) Zikir/Al fatihah all the way from home to viva place
13) Selawat to Rasulullah before starting the viva
14) Relate the findings and objectives clearly
15) Seek for the supervisor's blessings a day before the viva
16) Run test the slides before you start (meaning come early) and check all the equipments
17) Light meal for breakfast on the viva day
18)  http://www.academicjoy.net/phd-during.html
19) "Examiners role is too assist you" :) 
20) Solat tahajjud, solat hajat n solat dhuha, baca selawat tafrijiyah n zikir rabbi yassir
21) Ask for parents or husband to recite yassin and solat hajat during our viva
22) Virtual viva --> http://viva.3owl.com/

May we benefit from their sharings!! :)

Investment Part 2

It started with the frustation of working so hard to earn so much and ended up paying a lotttt for the loans. My student loans are a lot. Foundation + Degree + PhD, and yup I'm paying my PhD on my own.

I am not interested in business, not my strength. I just want some passive income.

So, the moment the company I'm working with offered me 6 lots (1 lot - 1000 units) of their share with the price of RM6.38 per unit, I quickly contacted a remisier from TA for a loan. Bought all 6 lots.

My rezeki, I signed the agreement just before the election and sell it once I got back from Goldcoast where the price went up because our previous government just won the election again.

Alas, my profit is RM2 per unit. Minus the remisier's fee, interest and etc, give me a clean RM11k. I dedicated all of the money for parents trip to umrah. I believed that is their rezeki because the moment I decided to bring them to umrah was the moment I received the share offer.

Along the way, I learned a little bit here and there on stocks. On some potential public listed companies; those that looks promising and those that offered superb dividends.

So, I opened up a CDS account of my own. Need just RM10 per account. And with the capital of RM5k, started to invest.

Bismillah.. The profit is for our (Love and I) turn to be the guest of Allah, in shaa Allah.

Never a day goes by without me thinking of this place :)

Investment?

I stayed with 6 girls in my lab for PhD. Girl power, y'all!

They were at least 7 years older than me. And ohh.. living their life so lavishly. Like a dream life for me.

So I wonder.. I mean if both Love's and my salaries were to be combined, we are in a category of high income (until you minus all the student loans, car loan and housing loans) and yet where do the money goes?

30% a month to ASB and Tabung Haji with around 7% dividend a year.

Am I happy with it? Oh yes at first. Not anymore when I met these girls.

One of them, the wife of a CFO.. inspired me a lot :)

So I started to study on other investments. I'm not interested in properties, too lazy to monitor. Not working for my dad, the tenant ran away, three months unpaid utility bills and the house was a wreck.

I started small, with gold investment. My choice..

Let me explain a little bit on gold. Bought it when the price was down; which was the lowest by far at that moment. And until today, the price is still going down :( If I sell mine now, I'd lose about 21% already.

Not mentioning how much hassle I went through for my gold purchasing to ensure it was syariah compliance, the worse thing for me is the spread.

Now what is spread?

Spread is the difference between the buying and selling price. And for public gold, around 7% ok. That's a lot. :(

I guess gold investment is not for me.

So I started with something else, which adds RM11k in my account last month. A total of 24% profit for me in less than a month! Rezeki Ibu and Ayah nak pergi umrah :) Alhamdulillah, thank you Allah.

How did I manage to do that? Will share it next entry, in shaa Allah.