crunch time!

so i graduated last friday...technically, i'm not done, but i decided to walk since i'm close to finishing. i'm officially defending in three weeks (gasp!), after which i hope to file my dissertation and be fully, completely done, kinda sorta...i'll officially have my phd, but i still have to submit some papers for publication. at any rate, the real hurdle is my defense in three weeks, and i have so much to do that i have no idea how it's all going to get done. yup, it's going to be fun...

but back to my graduation...i did the whole walk and hooding (s.park made me take this pic with my fancy hood). i don't know what happened to the tons of other pics we took, but i'll post them soon.

so after the ceremony, we had dinner at ogamdo cafe...thanks so much to all the people who came out to help celebrate. it was truly appreciated. my only regret was that i had to take off to the airport right afterwards, so i didn't get to really talk to you guys...hopefully after all this craziness is over.
so yeah, i went to quebec for a conference and got back yesterday. back in april, i applied for a travel award, but when i got it, i realized that the timing was awful. so then i thought i'd just hang out in my hotel room most of the time, working on stuff...yeah, right. i ended up meeting a great bunch of people and having a really good, unproductive (in terms of my dissertation) time. i made some good friends with the other travel awardees...here's some of us at dinner:
there was a comedy festival that was going on around the same time we were there, and they were handing out clown noses...i didn't smile in this pic 'cuz whenever i did, the nose fell off (asian nose).
there are some really nice waterfalls near quebec...this one is apparently taller than the niagara falls. we decided to take the bus there, which ended up taking us about 2 hours. we took the taxi back...20 minutes. yeah...
these are the girls i got to know the best...dunno what i woulda done without them!