.......WHAT?!! I had to think twice if what I heard was real...and it was
Christos, a colleague cum friend. We started to become close during our conference trip in Bordeaux last year. He's a very friendly person and a sweet guy. It was quite a shocked for me to hear his request, but I was honored.
To be a paranymph is a big job, especially if you are close to that person. Me and Cynara, the other paranymph, started coming up with ideas about a month before Christos's big day. We want to make it as cheesy and memorable as possible, because we know he likes it that way :P
We contacted few people in our department to help out, and we decided to make a parody movie about him.
Well you see...Christos is a very smart guy and he is born to be a scientist, but at the same time he is also funny in his own way - especially when it comes to food, alcohol and his honesty!
Manos, another Greek in the department, was chosen to act as Christos. We came out few stories based on real life incidents with Christos (with some exaggeration) and the recording was done when he was not in the office.
A night before his defense, I had two nightmares: I cannot read the propositions properly and somebody edited the movie that we made. I was soo nervous that I just had to tell to one or two (well maybe six) people. Peter help me with pronouncing the word correctly, and I spent quite some time rehearsing reading Christos's thesis propositions loudly and clearly. "Why in the hell do you have eight freaking propositions!" I told myself repeatedly.
Christos was really calm on the stage, and he can answer all the opponents questions calmly and articulately. I tried to put myself in his shoes, if it was me, how would I answer those questions. Just the thought and the fact I was waiting for the opponents to ask me reading one of the propositions made my palms sweaty......LIKE HELL!! You have no idea how many times I swept out the sweat onto my dress, which was very obvious btw if you keep looking at me up there.
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| Christos accompanied by the Lovely Paranymphs; Cynara and me. -Photo by Cynara- |
All the nerve wrecking moment (for me) ended smoothly. In the end none of the opponents ask me to read his propositions (hahaha WTH..) and Christos received very good grades for his performance. He was not nervous at all, and I wonder where he got that self confidence from..
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| After the defense! Finally I was able to laugh haha! -Photo by Cynara- |
Gerard, his supervisor, gave very heart warming and touching speech. I almost cried, but kept my composure.
I headed home early after the reception. We had to assemble his 'wedding', married to the university, cake at the restaurant. I made two-tier chocolate cake for him, and I put plenty of chocolates on the cake, and a handmade fondant Smurf figurine as the topper.
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| Christos with his 'wedding' cake :) -Photo by me- |
The dinner was something that I didn't really expect. There was plenty of Greek food with loud live performance throughout the LONG dinner. People were dancing in between the course, and at the latter part Christos's dad started doing a one man dance which was a surprised for me because he looked expressionless throughout the dinner.
The fact that he got up and dance was not really what I had in mind. I was told by another Greek that he's dancing a difficult traditional one man dance, which the dancer dance freely expressing himself. Suddenly I was shocked hearing the sound of crashing plates. He started breaking the plates...and the dance and the plate breaking continued from one Greek guy to another. "Oh boy...I feel like I'm in the 'My big fat Greek wedding' movie" I told myself.
Anyhow the defense, party, and the surprise that we prepared for him ended well. He liked the movie *wohoo* and I hope he likes the cheesy photo album containing pictures and messages that we prepared for him.
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