Words and More Words

Sometime in the week that has passed, someone I "know" posted something commenting on another person's post in a rather humiliating way. It was rather unbecoming of the person whom I thought was an "intellectual". It brought to my mind, a remark made by Mufti Menk, when one reads a posting that seems to affect oneelf, always remind oneelf that the posting made has nothing to do with oneself. These words don't really mean anything (as is sung by this talented singer in this video). Indeed the danger of the social media allowing anyone to write anything (rresponsibly) that eventually only lends harm to one own self. I do get it that sometimes people would like to vent off their anger, frustrations or whatever on social media but the social media has transformed itself to something 'ugly'. It is not a platform that connects "friends"; the so-called friends could be enemies in disguise or simply persons who would like to take advantage of persons on the platform. Lately, I have refrained myself from posting too much unless I'm sure that I am relaying useful information often to targeted community or individuals. I rather post here whose contents are not being pushed to someone' face unless they are looking for them.

Now for some trivialities of life (get ready to be bored):

The past two days, our house was without the cooking gas and we had to get meals from outside which are more expensive. Normally, we can called up the gas supplier and had them delivered to our house. Also we normally have two gas cylinders; one in use and the other as a spare. Apparently on Thursday night, we had used up our spare and the gas supplier normally don't do deliveries in late evening. We requested the supplier to send us two cylinders the next day but apparently they did not. In my mind I entertained the possibility of shortages due to the war but that is just being alarmist. It was only at noon today that they delivered the needed two cylinders.

More leakage. Lately my other half complained that our black Malibu was making noises whenever tha car is turning. So today we had it serviced at a local service station and complained about the problem. Immediately, the foreman recognised as an oil leakage in the tie rod for the power steering. So on top of the normal service, we had the oil for the power steering being topped up. As a result, my wallet has experienced more leaking,The foreman had (correctly) mentioned that this is normal that is older than 10 years. I remembered that we bought this in March 2015.

More learning: Watch this from Blogging Theology after doing the service. Yesterday, I watched this video of Emad Mostaque. More words ...

Weekend Varia: Wedding and Cikgu Ramli

While the social media is rife with political campaign with the forthcoming state elections, I tend to ignore them as much as the islamophobic postings that has invaded my wall over several weeks. I wonder how the algorithm decided that my wall is targetted and how much do they get paid for such postings. In any case, I will just read what I want.

It has been pretty uneventful week for me (another ontok-ontok period for me). I accompanied my other half to the fruit orchard in Mantin to buy more mangosteens for my eldest son to give away at his workplace. 

The weekend had one wedding we attended over in Senawang.

Early Monday morning, received the news that Cikgu Ramli passed away while he was readmitted to the hospital after having a surgery. May Allah forgive him and grant him jannah.

Cikgu Ramli was a teacher who took up my Quantum Mechanics for his undergraduate degree, earlier in my teaching carreer (was still figuring what was best for students and in particular the handful of teachers that we had at the time - may Allah forgive my shortcomings). The last time I me hm face-to-face was during my trip to Terengganu;it was brief but enough to chat about what we have been doing since he graduated.

Life is so fragile.

Already in the Second Half of the Year?

Time flies and time waits for no one. We are now in the second half of the year. What happenned to the first half? Not much has changed. There seem to be no end to the war and the fasadists went ahead with their evil schemings with no shame but many have woken up. Personal front, I felt I have been wasting too much time and right now, I'm feeling particularly useless. My other half will work more hours in some clinics and thus helping us with additional income. Few days ago, on the way back home, she managed to buy some local fruits from a fruit orchard in Mantin.

Yesterday, she brought us out for lunch at a new eatery in Ikon S2 called A Decade; we had never been to this place before as it looked a bit posh. The food was good though pricey.

On science, I have been looking up the many references mentioned in Fuchs' Notes On A Paulian Idea. Sad to say that most of the references that were in conference proceeding are just not accessible. Conferences are where new ideas tend to germinate and we tend to get the back story of how ideas evolved. It is sad that today's conferences tend to be more business-like with the conference output are being marketed as possible publications in journals. This also leads to predatory conferences. I supposed the good side of it is that conference materials are now made more accessible through the journals and conference proceedings, which are usually bought by libraries and not individual may become things of the past. During my early career year, I do buy conference proceedings published by World Scientific and I still have them with me. Below is one of the earliest proceedings that I bought from them. I bought it because it was one of my main references for my Honours thesis on Minimal SU(5) GUT, Modifications and Related Topics.

I have also started back my random note taking from papers and books. In the past, I used to called them Rawangan (not knowing whether there is a word for this), which I thought was nice because it rhymes with Ruangan that referes to space or column (usually in a newspaper or magazine). But then Gemini gave me this:

Right now, I'm making notes from the following book by Denbigh & Denbigh as I wanted to know more the objective versus subjective debate. This coincides nicely with the reading materials from Chris Fuchs' Notes on A Paulian Idea. 

Hopefully I can convert some of these Rawangan notes into blog entries elsewhere. I pray that I have the stamina to do this.

Day of Ashura Varia

As stated in my last post, the month of Muharram marks the first month of the Hijri calendar and it is considered as a sacred month. Within this month, an important day is the day of Ashura. Muslima are encouraged to perform more prayers, dzikr, good deeds and in particular fasting is recommended (but not obligatory). Thus, I decided to fast today. It is also known that fasting on this day is also observed by the followers of the Jewish faith but the Prophet Muhammad pbuh mentioned that we are closer to the Prophet Moses (pbuh) and rightfully best to observe the fasting (see here). However, there is a general 'rule' that Muslims should not follow closely followers of other faiths (see here). To this, Muslims thus are also recommended to also fast on the day before, the Day of Tasu'a, or the day after. I did try to fast on the day before but I broke my fast due to an episode of heartburn. Let's see if I can fast also tomorrow.

Something that I have learned over the week (from a Muslim podcast) on how the Islamic faith is different from the other two Abrahamic faiths is that we refrain from deification of man (common knowledge) but also the other direction i.e. anthropomorphize God particularly in a belittling way (this was new to me). For instance, the act of 'debating' with God or even finding loopholes within the Laws of God (as if God is not Omniscient, not knowing one's intents). I'm putting this down as I like to note down things that I've learned anew. Again, I have no intention of going down the path of comparative religion at this very late age but learning enough for my mere understanding and comprehension of affairs of the world. For this reason too, I have followed less Jiang's speculations these days as I think I have understood his major ideas, unless his commentaries on current events or he puts forward a fresh new idea/direction. 

Today, I was surprised to find a 'new' video of Julian Dorey with Bassem Youssef. On watching it, I realized that it was a condensed version of a longer video that has appeared before. I do recommend people to watch it (the shorter one, if you like). I still can't place Bassem's face as a cadriologist since I first knew him as a comedian. When I first watched it (with the longer video), I could not really imagined the brave transition being made by him, from a cardiologist to a comedian. Would I be able to make such a huge transition?

Currently, I was fantasizing myself to be a content creator with the wish of making a side income. A transition from a (retired) academic to a content creator? Despite that I have a YouTube channel (dormant), I don't see myself too much of a person appearing on videos since I don't talk as well as I write (I think). I also have my own website domain (paid) and blogs but I have not put much content in it since it takes a lot of work. One other fear is that one begins to publish content that has less meaning, new content for content sake (unfortunately, I saw much of these) and only serves me negatively in the hereafter. So, still fantasizing ...

Varia: 1448 First Post

Let me begin this post about Father's Day which was celebrated yesterday. My personal observation is that it is less 'celebrated' than Mothers Day. Not sure what the reason is; perhaps a father is less detached to the family and more commonly have an outward role. Anyway,within the Prophetic tradition, we are expected to show love and honour to the mother more than the father (see here). But for yesterday, I was trying to recollect memories of my father. It is sad to think that  have not spent much time with him since much part of my life was not at home, studying at a boarding school and went abroad for tertiary studies. May Allah grant him blessings for all his sacrifices.

We had a brief period of having the whole family in the house for the last few days. Ihsan came back homr from JB on Wedneday. On Friday, we went to pick-up our youngest Izzuddin from UiTM Jassin to spend the weekend with us. Yesterday, they send Izzuddin back to the college; I stayed home since I was not feeling well. Below is a pic of Izzuddin and his brothers having lunch before sending him back.

On the scientific front, I'm happy to inform the publication of my former PhD student Mohammed. He told me that this is the final result (which is related to the previous result). I hope that he will continue to be active in reseach. As for me, I still continue to read on quantum stuff.

Just yesterday, I have finished reading Chris Fuchs' "Notes on a Paulian Idea" (the older version), which I had prnted out and stacked it on my reading pile. It was interesting to see all his (courageous) correspondences with luminaries and to put in peespective, he had only finished PhD (see here). The emails are informal but in some places, are very detailed - commenting even on commas, particular usage of words. It made me recall some memories I had when I was put in charge of publications for ITMA where I insisted on looking at the documents to be conformed with some standards. One staff even made the remark that I was pedantic to the point of insisting that there should be spaces after full stops, and commas inserted as pauses/breaks of long sentences. At the time I had already bought the Chicago Manual and the CBE Manual, to help me with my publishing committee tasks. I remembered in one instance of brainstorming workshop, I put forward the idea of our own manual style to which I was laughed at. One of the things that I had in mind was a standard for Asian names, some don't have surnames and some ordered the surname differently (like in Chinese names). I guess there was no real urgency in that.

Back to Fuchs' notes; the interesting correspondences that I find interesting is with his collaborators Caves, Peres, Schack, and also Mermin. It took me a longer read to understand what are they discussing. One provocative title forwarded in the notes is that 'Quantum States Do Not Exist'. Indeed the idea of a state is purely our construction to describe the systems under study and that it is almost always fashioned by the adopted dynamical equation. The other idea is the disturbance introduced in measurments/observations. The other thing I observe in his notes is the creativity and freedom of discussing ideas but yet grounded in mathematics. These are things that I wish to inculcate more in our local group (doing a Gelfand for a critical mindset), less gossipy and annoying politics. Another is the inhibitions that we have (inferiority complex? superiority complex on the other side? arrogance?), in contrast with their cavalier (but yet respectful) correspondences. Anyway, I do recommend people to look at the (serious) discussion in these notes.

Goodbye 1447

By dusk, we will be welcoming the new Hijri year 1448. Presently, I'm recollecting memories of the family of my siblings (including my own). I have essentially observed that over the years that most of us are very quiet in nature, less vocal in many circumstances and that we tend to favour the side of our spouses as a result. Is this a weakness or strength? The ideal is always to be fair but being human there will always be weakness. Why do I bring this up when all of us are in the twillight years? The least is that our children may pick lessons from what we have gone through.

So before I leave planet earth, I may want to reveal some guilt I had kept with me all these years. I was due to travel to Lexington, Kentucky for a conference in mid July 2009. Sometime before that, I had my musician brother and my late mum staying with us. Mum has been in and out of the hospital during that period. But since I was about to be absent for a week for the conference, my other half told me that she was uncomfortable having my brother when I'm away (despite that my mum is around). So I asked my brother to leave temporarily just before my trip to the States and he did. Little did I know, that mum passed away on 13 July 2009 and my brother could not be around in her final hours. There was certainly a guilty feeling within me and I'm not sure if he will ever forgive me. I can sense a strained relation thereafter. May Allah forgive us and pray that we will be united with mum (and dad) in jannah.

I do not know what will our future be like. Just last week, I was notified by the university hospital that they cancel my request for an appointment (after a doctor in PKU recommended me to go there) since they can't produce a referral letter to IJN as they do not have a cardiologist (they need such letter from a public hospital; I already have a referral letter from a cardiologist in a private hospital). So for now, I will not take further action for the IJN visit and may Allah keep me healthy. So, it is in this view that I pray to Allah that I will make the best decision regarding my brother, acceptable to both my other half and sons, and my brothers and sister.

Searing Words

I need to get something off my chest. In the past, Sometimes people say very unkind words that seared deeply into my brain and heart. One can't just un'remember' it. Searing words indeed.

For instance, once I was confronted by a maths professor who knew my late brother and said unkind words about my brother. To this day, I can't see why he had to say that to me. I hardly know the professor and was puzzled why he did that. A probable reason is that I was rising in rank in the maths institute and some may have bad-mouthed me and then did some ill-campaign regarding this. The professor is no longer with us and may Allah forgive him. As much as I want to forgive him, the memory had stayed with me, seared rather deeply.

There are many instances of people saying unkind words to me and at times looked at me with disgust. But I want to get straight to a matter that was heavy in my heart and mind namely regarding my musician brother. He performed with Geng Waklong at our SEAMS School dinner. When the event ended and people were going back home, I introduced my brother to my superior to which he uttered 'Are you sure he is your brother?' since at the time he had taken off the stage clothings and was wearing his usual thin t-shirt. I was upset about it, thinking it was an inappropriate thing to say since it might hurt my brother's feelings. Perhaps the person was saying it in jest and I would say that it was a poor judgment on his part to do so since he did not know my family. But sometimes even people who do know us (the family) can say awful things. Likening any of us with a disabled person was really an awfully bad thing to say and I remember my late brother who organised the meet, was very angry about what had been said. In my thoughts, if one doesn't want to help then don't but guard one's tongue from saying awful things.

Some might ask why I'm bringing up the past; it is mainly because it serves as a lesson for all of us. In my limited capacity, I will try to help, God willing, and defend my family including my brothers and sisters from bad mouthing. If people still do bad mouthing, I will probably smile and walk away and maybe the person won't see much of me thereafter. Perhaps all that had happened is simply we had not done our duties and repay in kind to our parents. May Allah forgive us and that we will be able to meet our parents in jannah.

Note added: I was looking forward to the new Hijri year to be a better Muslim but arising things compelled me to make this post.