Mid-December Post

Yesterday I completed my editing of former PhD student's paper. Yes, it took me a long time to do it. Part of this is due to me relearning some of the technical contents of the paper particularly on Tsallis statistics (I may or may not do a blog entry on this; just watch this space). But I won't lie, I had my time spend mostly on the things I've been doing all this while; updating myself with papers on arXiv. When Jussi Kalkkinen asked me a long time ago, which 'counters' do I follow and when I gave my reply, he said that is a lot to follow (mainly because of my wide interest). Today I follow slightly less - removed cond-mat and physics from the list (the latter is mainly because I had interest in complex networks and its applications). Actually, I wanted to add cs counter due to my interest in logic and right nw AI but then I thought that the cross-listings should be enough for me. By next year, I hope to reduce this further. My other half is already 'complaining' why am I still 'working' given that it is very slim that I can get back to academia. I have no answer to that; perhaps, there will be a time when I will stop reading science altogether or maybe my departure comes earlier.

My son from JB came back home on Saturday evening to spend time with us. However he has gone back to JB around four hours ago as he has to work tonight at 11pm. Normally when any of my sons come back home (before this - now my eldest and third sons are living with us), we will have some special meals. Yesterday night, after my eldest came back from work, ordered some extra food to add to the existing food carried over from the day before. I can see the smiles of my sons' faces along with my other half's. For me, I simply do not want any of my family to go hungry in any way. That is why I kept looking for a job despite my retirement; not to enrich ourselves and live a lavish life, but to make our lives to be worry-free (enough savings for emergencies) and continuing support for the family. Anyway, with all my sons working (except the youngest), I hope things will get better. For the youngest, I hope there's enough for his semester fees and his pocket money.

So this morning, we had breakfast outside in a 'mamak' restaurant (my eldest however did not join since he often goes to work by 6.30am). Here's a pic.

Since my other half had her eyes closed, my son asked Gemini to modify the photo to have her eyes open.

Here is Ihsan before he leaves for JB.