Its hard for me to describe my state during the session. I would in parts listen to the speakers and in other parts remember the opening lines of my presentation. Finally my turn came at about 11.50 am and I took the stage facing an audience of nearly hundred. Usually I tend to settle down after the first few minutes whenever I make an oral presentation. But somehow it didn't happen this time. The thought that was worrying me was that I was speaking fast as a result of which I might end up finishing too soon. So then I played some tricks by changing the slides slowly or by dwelling more on a particular one. I guess I eventually finished right at the 25th minute with 5 min to spare for the Q&A session.
I was glad to find that there were questions from the audience confirming that they had been listening to me after all. Unlike college days I did not have to plant questions.
I would have gone on sulking to myself thinking that I could have done better but then I got compliments later during lunch and even the next day which obviously delighted me. The best one coming from Prof. P. Jena from Virginia Commonwealth Univeristy, the Plenary Speaker for our symposium. I may be blowing my own trumpet here when I recount that he thought I had spoken very confidently and clearly and that my Boss must be very proud of me (!!).
Highly pleased with the comments I treated myself to a bumboat ride on the Singapore river. The boat from the Merlion went all the way to Clarke Quay and then returned to its starting point. It was a short 20 min ride though very pleasing. We passed under several bridges which were brightly lit. In the night all the sights that I had previously seen the day before looked different. The Clifford Pier, Fullerton Hotel and the Esplanade appeared really grand.
DAY THREE: 6 November was the last day of the conference and it somehow went very quickly. Some of the lectures took longer than the time alloted to them as a consequence of which duration of the poster session was reduced from 45 min to just 30 min. Furthermore the turn out was very thin because a lot of people had left early not wanting to return for the closing session. So I was really glad that I had got the opportunity to make an oral presentation.
The day ended on a very relaxing note. My ex-(senior) labmate Sophy who is now settled in Singapore and had also attended the symposium invited us three Madras Hotelites for dinner at her place. She cooked for us not wanting to order food and did an excellent job of it. I ofcourse had no doubt about her culinary skills having tasted her delicious vegetarian biryani that she had cooked at my place some years back when she was still in Pune. Sophy's husband Shyam regaled us with stories about Singapore and the joke (which I have repeated a few times since returning) on how Singapore is called a Fine City as there is always a fine for breaking one rule or another.
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