And here we are, with less than 1 hour left of 2015! I should have updated this sooner, but I have been busy enjoying my holidays 🙂

So yes, my last update was on the beginning of November! Since then, well, I’ve been busying myself with my routine of work+rowing+sleep+repeat, with the occasional odd event.

I’ve also changed up some gears with regards to the always-present thesis: the deadline is looming ahead, I’ve already submitted the relevant bureaucracy and everything, so the thing needs to be ready for submission before the end of April! But, until then, I still have a paper to submit, a conference to attend (with a presentation to prepare… 😛 ) and hopefully some last results which may still find their way into one of the experimental chapters 🙂 .

With regards to Photonics West, I had some fantastic news back in November! As I was getting ready to head to the boathouse for a nice early sculling session I checked my e-mail and found that SPIE has awarded me a travel scholarship to attend Photonics West! (and the sculling session that followed was also brilliant, great conditions!) Pretty chuffed with all of this, it is, after all, the “holy grail” of Optics conferences! 😀

Just before I headed back to Portugal I participated on a running race at the University, which followed part of the Canterbury parkrun course, the particularity of which was that the runners were encouraged to dress as Santa. They had prizes for the first male and female finishers but also to the best dressed Santa – and, guess what? I won the “best Santa” category! 🙂 (apparently I was considered a “sporty Santa” with my red running shorts… 😛 )

Right, so I returned to Porto thinking I was heading to my second Summer, and I wasn’t too mistaken – some of the days here have been quite similar, weather-wise, to those I had in Kent throughout August! If it wasn’t for the shorter days one could even be mistaken…

And my time in Porto has been spent between catching-up dinners with my mates, training for the 10k Sao Silvestre (the performance in it wasn’t that stellar, well away from my PB, but this year I decided to take it easy and enjoy myself…) and working a bit on my thesis (almost finished a chapter already! 🙂 ) .

Right, and because this is the last post of the year and I want to use all the clichés available, I will look back a bit on what 2015 brought to me: I met some fantastic people in many different places, heard some very inspiring stories, had fun, worked, sculled, rowed, ran, pedalled, photographed, read, etc, etc! (these items are not listed in any particular order!)  I have to thank everyone that made this year special, and I look forward to having more memorable moments in the years to come. (I am already practising the “Acknowledgments” section in my thesis – good thing that does not count towards my thesis page limit, otherwise I’d be in trouble! 🙂 )

OK, over and out! See you in 2016! 🙂