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.