Acknowledgement...

It occured to me in September - in the midst and uncertainty of completing my studies - if there is any part of my thesis I would share in a blog, it must the part I enjoyed most in writing, and that is none other than the Acknowledgment. Writing the Acknowledgment is obviously less strenuous than the main body of a thesis - when you are scratching your head trying to figure out what to write, and what have you done to be able to humbly claim that you have contributed to knowledge, one of the academic requirement that shall be fulfilled - so they say - before the university can award you a research degree. When you start writing the Acknowledgment, it is a sign that you are almost finished with your writing... even though I start thinking of mine at the start of my studies!!! It must be the part in me that was trying to begin with end in mind. In one way or another, I thought I was inspired by Mr. Lee Kuan Yew's own tribute in his Singapore Story even though I am careful not to over do it considering that I am only writing for a year's worth of work compared to Mr. Lee's decades of dedicated work to build his country. Otherwise, I might have chosen to write with more style and sophistication!

It turned out that the part of research that is writing was more enjoyable especially after months of intensive laboratory work - working long hours on my own and repeating the same experiment over and over - and laborious data analysis.

While I was quite eager to share that "part" of my thesis, I was careful not to publish it until a condition has been met and now that the condition has been fulfilled, here it goes:

Acknowledgment

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Dr. AAA for supervising me in this project and providing valuable guidance throughout my research. I would also like to thank Prof. BBB for his insight on certain parts of the research and CCC, Dr. DDD and Dr. EEE for all their assistance in my laboratory experiments.

I am grateful to the ZZZ for providing the financial support through YYY Scholarship without which I would not have been able to pursue this research degree. I am also grateful to my manager for his support enabling me to take leave for the purpose of pursuing this degree without losing a job.

Finally I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my family members and friends for their strong support, especially my wife and my mother. This work is dedicated to them and to my first child which is expected to be born in the next few weeks.