Aiea Orchid Festival

Hello orchid lovers. I went to the Aiea Orchid Festival on June 16th and took some beautiful pictures to share with you. These are only half of the pictures. I will be uploading more later. Please check back next week!

I passed!!!

I officially passed my oral examination on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 12:10PM. Hooray! From Saturday to the very start of my defense, I was super nervous. I kept on practicing my presentation, looking at previous studies, and thinking of possible questions that may come up. I reviewed my slides probably 100 times, checking for errors and making them colorful and easy to understand. On the day of the defense, I woke up at 7:30AM to practice my speech again. Then I spend 30 frakin' minutes dressing myself. For some odd reason, I looked like a dork in every single outfit I tried on. Then my hair was stupid-looking. Grrrr!!!!!!!! During the defense, I was not paying attention to what I was presenting. The entire time I was thinking, "Oh no, these people are looking at me. Great, I am not going to pass. Can they hear me? Some people are sleeping!"

After my defense, the lab had a mini celebration with me and we had lovely cheesecake. Then I went to lunch with HappyOblivion at Asahi Grill (my favorite fast food place) to pig out more. Now I have to work on revising my written thesis so I can finally relax and not have this big fat weight over my shoulders wherever I go.

Orchid in bloom

My baby Nalo orchid finally bloomed! I have been waiting so long for this. I bought her when she was a baby seedling so I didn't know the color of the flowers. Over the past year, a few flower buds appeared but they all died. I guess the plant was still too young to push out any flowers. Look at her now! She has matured and her flowers are beautiful! There are more pictures of this orchid and my other plants in the "Color me life" blog. Check it out :)

Fireworks in the rain

Such a pretty sight. We went up to our top floor to see the beautiful fireworks. I have no idea what the celebration was but the fireworks were more grand than the ones on July 4th!