Eve of 'Eid 1446

So Ramadhan 1446 has just ended a few hours and tomorrow we will be celebrating 'Eid-ul-Fithri. I hope there is real improvement in ourselves with the Ramadhan that had just past. Indeed, with some difficulties that we have gone through, this has been a humbling Ramadhan.

All my sons came back home yesterday with Ihsan coming back a few days earlier. Yesterday, we also took the opportunity to visit and clean my mum's grave.

Today was our journay to Segamat to meet with my in-laws, reaching before noon.

Unfortunately, I am not really in a Raya mood with the coming teaching duties in mind. I have also written a post over Ketchup Spills, which I will try to finish properly before the Eid prayers. It is entitled PT-Symmetric Quantum Theory: A Cursory Look. This is one topic that I wish that I had learned earlier and one of those topics that tend to surprise you but yet staying close to down-to-earth traditional quantum theory (another is the Berry phase and other geometric phases). This is unlike some of the speculative topics that has become popular, added with grandiose questions and even claims. It rests on good honest mathematics but I have not quite come to grips since it is very computational (and I prefer to the calculations myself or at least know how to proceed in making progress) and it involves complex analysis, topics I've covered in a small way over in Equatorial Frequencies. Perhaps, this is another humbling experience over this Ramadhan, not knowing enough on such topics. I have been reading materials on the topic all this while and I resisted rushing through them, since I can't really pin down the essential ideas and details needed. I also discovered my close colleague during my PhD days , Patrick Dorey has also contributed to this topic from the view of integrable models (his specialization).  He had also contributed to Bender's book on the topic. Below is a pic of me and him when we met in Seoul; he was in a conference in honour of A. Zamolodchikov and I was ina quantum information conference. He is now a professor in Durham where we did our PhD. Knowing this, somehow I felt small and somehow regretted how things went. I told my other half, if only I could be smarter and worked much harder, perhaps I would have achieved more in theoretical physics. So it was humbling going through all the materials (only able to touch the surface). I also intended to touch upon Bagarello's work in these topics, whom my younger colleague, Dr. Nurisya know and had the opportunity to visit him recently. But it was too much for me to take in and at some point, I had to leave this and moved on to prepare for my teaching next week. 

Last Ten Days of Ramadhan 1446 Varia

I wanted to do this post earlier but I delayed it in the hope of another post on Ketchup Spills first. I have already collected a large collection of reading materials for the intended post - they are on PT- Symmetry (something that I wanted to read for quite a long time). However, I have to prepare for my teaching this coming April. Hence, there is a problem of focus. With April being around the corner, I have to focus more on teaching preparation.

We are now in the last ten days of Ramadhan 1446. To many Muslims, this would be the period where Muslims should intensify efforts to do more ibadah (making it more difficult for me to focus). Not being in the best of health, I simply continue my normal pace. But I hope this meant something positive overall (which includes staying away as much as possible from social media). 

It seems that I will have a very short Eid holiday. I will begin teaching by the third day of 'Eid (depending on the official declaration this Sunday). In a way, this has upset the family's 'Eid plan. For this April semester, I will be teaching one same subject I have helped teach in the previous semester (Applied Calculus). But I will be teaching a new subject (in the same mould) which amalgamates Linear Algebra (mainly matrices) with Calculus. This will take more of my time on preparation. In addition to this, I will be handling tutorials as well (which is new). Given all of these, it will slow down my writing on the blogs (particularly the technical ones), despite I enjoy doing them. 

Just to prepare myself for going back to work, got myself a(n) (expensive) haircut, partly accompanying my son.

Let's see what happens the next few days.

Mid-Ramadhan 1446 Varia

We have now reached the second half of Ramadhan and fatigue may have set it for some. But this is no excuse for slacking in ibadah even when I have episodes of bad back.

I have also just found out that yesterday (15 March) was declared the International Day to Combat Islamophobia. It coincided with the day of Christchurch mass shooting at Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre where 51 people were killed and 89 others were injured. With all the many issues arising, I posted the wikipedia link on my FB mainly as a reminder to myself (not knowing that before). I guess some (including closet islamophobes) did not like it. I remember seeing this pic below sometime back, cautioning readers not to let this be widespread. Well, there is no compulsion in religion. Most of the 'revert' videos I saw, tend to be mostly self-realization (not by the sword as some would suggest), after studying the religion.

Today, I uploaded another post over my technical blog on complex numbers and complex analysis. I know that I first learned about complex numbers from Mr. Hilditch, when I was in Daws Road High School for matriculation (and not before that). The one that I can't really remember is when did I first learn about complex analysis. I do remember struggling a bit with complex integration in my third year BSc course Classical Field Theory, taught by Peter Szekeres.

Also, during Part III in the course of Quantum Many Body Physics taught by Peter Landshoff, where I really felt I was at a disadvantage not learning it properly before.

Learned complex analysis more properly when I was asked to teach Mathematical Physics I at XMUM two years ago. Even then, I have not quite mastered some of the advanced topics. At the time, I didn't think we had a comprehensive book that covers all the syllabus. So, I felt I could have done the teaching better if I had time preparing my own notes. This reminds me I should go back and read the book below properly. Never got to use it for the course.

Ramadhan 1446 Varia

We are now in the second week of Ramadhan 1446. Alhamdulillah, I am able to fast once more. I hope this Ramadhan will make me much a better person. My sons, Ihsan and Izhar came back home to spend some time fasting with us, but they sort of miss each other.

I have just updated my Malay blog with a post on the International Year of Quantum Science & Technology. I wanted to do a better post, but the progress made in quantum technology was too much for me to read and cover. In a way, I miss those days when we have group meetings and we sort of shared what we read almost weekly. You can read some of the development in quantum S&T here: Harnessing the power of the second quantum revolution. Preskill who coined the term Noisy and Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) has also recently come up with another visionary talk: Beyond NISQ: The Megaquop Machine. In many ways, I wish I could be part of the mainstream efforts in pursuing QST locally (as my friend from a neighbouring country said), but I think those days are over. I will stand on the sidelines and watch how things unfold.

Myself will be going back to basics. I will be joining back XMUM to do part-time teaching and tutoring in basic calculus, this coming April, God willing. In a way, it coincided well with what I have been posting in my technical blogs (see previous post): going back to analysis. This is a topic that I certainly have gaps and holes in understanding during my younger years of studying. At the current age, I may not delve too deeply in it but just wished that I had opportunities to learn it better. For those who wanted to know what was taught in XMUM, they can look at L.P. Teo's two volumes of notes here and here. 

I also remembered reading a quote of Dirac in his interaction with Salam on algebraic and analytic approaches as if the former is easier. It was mentioned in the book of Ideals and Realities, but I have lost my copy of the book to ascertain what was being said. Indeed, I do remember the part of canonical group quantization that I find the hardest to learn and do during my PhD work was Mackey's orbital analysis. I had to pick up the two-volume Warner's Harmonic Analysis (see here and here), to understand things better. Wished I had these two books with me just for those memories, but they are way too expensive. What I will be teaching though (God willing) is much more basic, even my three legged cat is learning them.

Do More, Talk Less

As Ramadhan 1446 approaches, I'm minimizing my interactions with FB, shying away from the public. So my apologies for not responding to any tags, friend requests or messages there. Need some time off to deal with my own worries.

In a previous post, I consider myself as an average scientist, trying to better myself, even after retirement. Indeed, I should do more and talk less. There is just too much noise in the social media and not much that really helps one there. So, one of the things I wanted to do now, is to write more on my blogs. As an average scientist, perhaps there would be some good values and experiences in my writing that others can learn from. Having said this, I'm weary about useless or unnecessary content that has appeared in social media and I would not want to be pressured unnecessarily to put out content (which easily can degrade to 'artificial content'. I will try to write when there is something really meaningful for me to say.

I have resurrected my Equatorial Frequencies blog with a post on Real Numbers and Continuum. Previously I use this blog to dump links of articles on the arXiv that I find interesting. At some point (see this post), the arXiv administrators limit the period of catch-up and later even restrict the amount of download (possibly triggering automated download prohibitive measures). Due to restriction, I froze this blog for some time until the said post. I have another wordpress blog that I have kept. They are both technical blogs due to their LaTeX rendering capabilities. So in a way, I could just keep one blog and close the other. But I decided to keep them both. Equatorial Frequencies will deal with topics that are related to my (current) research. Ketchup Spills will be on everything else (random topics) that is a distant away from my research. Obviously, such division will not be sharp and will be time-dependent. I have just posted Infinitesimals and Nonstandard Analysis over in Ketchup Spills, which I know very little about. The post was however related to the earlier Equatorial Frequencies post, coming from my extraneous readings.

Will I have enough materials to post in both blogs? Well, what I can say is that over the years, I have accumulated much reading materials that I thought I want to go through but I did not have the time. As a retiree, I suppose I can do these readings now, modulo my part-time duties (if I get the job). How frequent will these be updated? I do not know but I hope at least monthly, I can write something meaningful. Certainly going through technical materials is a tough thing to do. Even for the historical stuff for the two updates mentioned above, seems to be a difficult read. It was my mistake to start reading John Bell's 90-page article (150+ page here); I was terribly slow in reading this. Articles discussing history also is harder for me to make notes on since much of them dwells on textual analysis with plenty of quotes. For mathematical ones, it is probably easier to make notes but it will be harder to digest the technical materials. Another thing that I have noticed is that articles on history at times seem like bashing someone rather personally - I try to distant myself away from such articles, if I can. Perhaps more on these in a different post, together with problems of academia and ego.

I do have another blog Acu Frekuensi which is in Malay. This is to cater more on topics of probably more local interest. As for this blog, it will be main personal stuff. So, this is how I will write more. Hopefully out of them, will grow more serious pieces of writing.

PS. We will be fasting on Sunday, March 2nd 2025.

Hospital Visits and Youngest's Birthday

Rolling back a week ago, my youngest was applying for admission of BSc degree. He could not find his SPM certificate; he took his SPM examination during the pandemic. So we had to take a trip to Examinations Board in Putrajaya to collect a copy. We had to park at Alamanda since the parking near the building is always full. Both him and my other half walked to the building while I wait at Zus Coffee in Alamanda (I easily get tired due to my back pain). They were there at the Examinations Board for only about half an hour and then they walked back to Alamanda. Being at the shopping mall, we thought of buying our lunch there purposely to try something new. There was a restaurant called A'Decade and got our packed food there. The food was good.

Last Tuesday, we were at KPJ Hospital in Seremban as my other half has an MRI appointment in the afternoon. The week before, she was also here to take some blood tests. The MRI was done on her left ear and the brain. Alhamdulillah, there were no signs of tumor; only for some signs of bacterial infection. She wanted to do this early to eliminate any sinister cause for her rare loss of low frequency hearing. With this MRI result, she can return back to the specialist at HTJ for possible diagnosis and perhaps treatment (which includes surgery).

Yesterday (Wednesday) was the birthday of my youngest son. Instead of going out for a special meal, he requested just to order some food from Bask Bear and we did so for lunch. Later in the late afternoon, I decided to buy a cake for him. 

It's not much; perhaps I can do better when things get financially better.

Mid-February Varia

Been mainly indoors for the past week or so, partly to minimise expenses. Perhaps some might think that we are rich. We are definitely not and neither that we are poor (and I'm not complaining). We don't have a lavish lifestyle; our holiday in Thailand is perhaps an exception of a luxury outing. As I see it, I consider agreeing to a conference invitation as a duty (no matter how silly it sounds) and I also realised it might be the last conference that I will go to. Thus, I took the opportunity to make it as a working holiday (the holiday is mainly for the family).

We do what we can in order to pay all our bills. If we have extras, we certainly help others in need. When we don't have as such, we cut expenses (including helping others, sorry) and we certainly do not want to burden others to assist us instead. In any case, I will have a hierarchy of priorities of where to spend whatever income I have, with the immediate family comes first (over one own self).We do extra work for extra income. Even my youngest is working part time in a shopping mall and his last day is tomorrow (an extra day on the request of his employer). He will be preparing for his BSc degree (I hope he gets somewhere close). In the last post, I told that even my other half has started working. Last Saturday, she took up a duty at a clinic in Port Dickson as they needed a doctor during the afternoon and evening. Due to the longer hours she will be in the clinic, we decided to send her there and thereafter picked her up at night after the clinic closes. On sending and picking her up, we realised that there is less traffic going to Port Dickson in the weekend, unlike the weekends before the pandemic. I guess after the pandemic, people are still struggling to recover economically. In addition to this, my other half has also observed that many clinics she knew (even the new ones) have closed down as they struggled to survive with the soaring prices of medicine. Tomorrow, she will continue to work at the same clinic for the whole day. This is despite her hearing problem in the left ear, having echoing sounds. Today, when she met the specialist at HTJ, she was told to do an MRI examination to check if there is a tumor in the middle ear (acoustic neuroma). The public hospital MRI appointment is due to be in September this year, which is too long for her to wait. Thus, we decided to make an appointment with a specialist she knew in KPJ hospital this coming Tuesday, in order to have her MRI sooner.

As for myself, I don't have any teaching job now and I will just wait for any opportunity coming my way. However, these days I have begun to take a more realistic (pessimist?) view that people would rarely want to hire an old academic. I certainly do not want to work where I am not really needed/wanted. Being at home now, I spend most of my time reading and taking notes instead, for my own scientific understanding and enrichment (which is what I thought I should be doing on retirement).

I also think that I should write more now, sharing everything that I know and hopefully the things I write and share will pass as good deeds to bring to the hereafter. I have started to update my Malay blog Acu Frekuensi. I intend to update my other two technical blogs later, after I have read enough to form coherent thoughts on the subject matter - this will of course take more time. I will make the announcement of the posts through this blog. If the post has some further importance for others, I will make the announcement in FB but I'm trying to avoid as much social media at the moment. I prefer to write only when I have something 'real' to say; I do not want to fall into the trap of needing to create something 'artificial' just for the sake of making new content (like what some would do). I hope to stay true to this.