First Week of Ramadhan 1447

We have gone past the first week of Ramadhan. I decided not to write anything before this, to keep the sanctity of Ramadhan, However, my first week has been challenging due to my bad back to the extent that I had to take an injection last Tuesday to get some relief of the pain.

Now, I break my pause in writing just to document my youngest's birthday three days ago. Here are the pics.

During Ramadhan, it is the best time for us to reflect upon (many) things that we have done. Going down a self-pity lane, I was comparing myself with others. First as a theoretical physicist; when I came back to Malaysia from abroad, there were not many active local theorists. So what I did, was to compare myself with theorists abroad. With the greats, there was simply a huge gap and my concern has always been on how to reduce this gap. Despite that the internet gave us free flow of information, there is still a need for a sizable local community in which one can always have regular discussions, feedback on ideas, giving a fertile resesrch ecosystem in which one can grow. I took plenty of students to help build this community and at a time we had regular meets (like journal clubs). Many times, I tried to instill Gelfand spirit into this meets (see here and here), but sometimes the technical level is not enough when we limit the meets within our own circle and the next thing I did, was to invite experts from abroad to help us (e.g. our EQuaLS acquaintances). Indeed many of us know that PhD training is not enough and it takes years to build sufficient technical level and maturity that we see in experts abroad. Abroad, this would be realised with years of postdoctoral study. Just a side note: Dr. Tay did a year of postdoc with me and if I was not wrong, was probably the first postdoc in UPM since at the time, the research management centre seemed unsure of the procedures involved for the appointment.

I still remember the challenge posed by Prof. David Fairlie who said that if you want see how successful one's student is, observe his/her paper or research program independent of his/her supervisor. My PhD work was partly driven by my supervisor's paper on anomalies in conservation laws. The idea is to generalize this to field theories. Anomalies are essentially failure of classical symmetries when brought over to its quantum version. In order to investigate this, one needs a quantization scheme that uses symmetries as an underlying ingredient but yet sensitive to global features (to address domain problems). So, I was introduced to Isham's canonical group quantization programme (for a more pedagogical introduction, it is best to refer to his Les Houches lecture notes; the voluminous book is pretty hard to get now but it was in our UPM library). This paper was my attempt to frame his work within the canonical group quantization scheme. The generalization to field theory is nontrivial; one needs a field-theoretic version of the external magnetic field. This can be given by a topological term like the Wess-Zumino term. Thus, this led me to do this work, but in a way, the paper also shows something unexpected where generalization of loops in field configurations might not quite give the desired ingredient. 

Later, my supervisor gave me the paper of J.Stuart Dowker (the father of Fay Dowker) to study. The gist of the paper is that the usual homology group associated to the Wess-Zumino term used in sigma-models is only a subgroup (spherical homology) of the homology group. The review that I did of the paper was presented in a local (PERFIK) conference. At the time of my PhD study, I did not realise the significance of this paper to my own PhD work and was not included in my PhD thesis. It was only much later then I realised that the possible connection would be the domain problem mentioned earlier. Still, I thought it was too technical for me to look into (probably would require a mastery of functional analysis to even formulate the problem of field configurations with the domains concerned). I proceeded nevertheless, to formulate canonical group quantization of strings with an external field (realized by the Wess-Zumino term) with a surprising result of the winding number operators are no longer Abelian. This part of the work, I consider it as incomplete since I did not study the representation theoretical parts and was only published as a conference paper (in conjunction with the two-decade anniversary of UPM).

Back to the Fairlie challenge earlier; what was the research I initiated after my PhD? It was a similar problem of what I did for my PhD but using a different configuration space, namely the two-sphere nstead of the two-torus. With an external transverse magnetic field, there is a similar change of canonical group, though it is more subtle for the case of the sphere (requires explicit construction of obstruction of the original canonical group without the magnetic field). Recently, there was interest in this work (see here and our work was cited - reference 21 with the note that unavailable conference proceeding/unpublished references in the cited work). Our interest went beyond the sphere, we started to investigate quantum systems on punctured surfaces realized by hyperbolic geometry on upper half plane. Realizing that the Lie-algebraic level of treating quantum systems on such hyperbolic surfaces will be insensitive to the presence of punctures (physically this means that a particle on such surfaces will almost always scatter to infinity), the next phase was to consider explicit numerical solutions to Schroedinger-like equations on punctured surfaces, representing bound states on such surfaces (given by Maass cusp forms) with an automorphy condition for the solutions. Since I have been computer-phobic since my undergraduate days (recalling the hours of work in the computer lab to program a scientific calculator using Pascal language), I had to have external help. Indeed during my PhD study, my supervisor asked whether I would like to work with mathematical structures or work with computer calculations (e.g. soliton solutions), I answered that I prefer the former (and my contemporary colleague Robert Leese work in the latter). Embarking on this numerical phase, I sought help from Holger Then and Fredrik Stromberg and invited them over to UPM. I actually even wrote to Dennis Hejhal but he replied saying that he was no longer interested in the topic. At the time, I had just opened Theoretical Studies Laboratory (TSL) at ITMA (Institute of Advanced Technology) and had purchased computers and softwares and the numerical research phase help partially justify the purchases (for the lab). In fact, I was trying to convince colleagues to start adopting Mathematica (now Wolfram Language) for research but since those with engineering-like research preferred Matlab and on the symbolic side, the mathematicians preferred Maple, I failed.

In research, I tend to follow (established) researchers of topics of interest. Having started with canonical group quantization, Chris Isham is certainly one I do follow closely.

He is described by Lee Smolin as the theorists' theorist (see Three Roads to Quantum Gravity).

Some of Isham's later work was on the use of topos for Kochen-Specker theorem. The KS theorem is a relatively lesser known theorem in comparison with Bell's theorem in quantum foundations, but it essentially arises from the mathematical structure of quantum theory itself, particularly the separation between the observables and states. Before one could even begin to understand the topos approach, one need to overcome two hurdles: i) the conventional proofs of the KS theorem; and ii) the sophisticated machineries within category theory. The latter is the larger hurdle as it is often not within the arsenal of mathematical tools of theoretical physics, but it has gained familiarity when one frames it as bird-eye's view of maps occuring in physics partcularly the modern coordinate independent view of doing geometry. Category theory is also being used to reframe quantum mechanics within this picture of maps as expounded by Bob Coecke and collaborators. We have followed this route to familiarize ourselves with ths new approach. This was done right before my official retirement with two of my MSc students. For KS theorem in conventional setting itself, I have managed to convince my philosophically inclined student to consider KS theorem as a research topic, who later worked out several different KS proofs (after the PhD work) including one proof with only using 17 rays. I was also considering the approach made by Michel Planat (connecting with our other reserach directions), but I have not made too much progress in finding a niche (the mathematics is quite sophisticated - see here for a brief introduction).

Quantum information research was also brewing over the years but again, our problem is to find a niche that we could contribute meaningfully. Given our attention on geometrical and topological approaches, the natural route would be to look at geometry of quantum states. We had invited Karol Zyczkwski over to UPM to help us identify open problems.

One particular direction that we are trying to pursue is to use tools of symplectic topology in elucidating geometry of quantum states. I mention this in a conference in Thailand and recently we had this write-up being published here. 

One initiated research direction while I was at the Maths Institute is complex networks because I thought the wide applicability of the subject matter. But the paper that got me started with this direction is the paper of Tomaso Aste entitled "Complex Networks on Hyperbolic Surfaces". Again, what I was trying to do is to tie up the different research strands that we were pursuing. I have also gotten very fascinated with hyperbolic geometry all the while, partly because there are  'more' hyperbolic spaces than other spaces (flat or positive curvature) and that they may capture the complexity of the real world with the hope of seeing applications - see this article. Finally, there ara other research topics that were suggested by (international) students, namely cosmology and thermal fied theory, but I insisted these were taken up with an external supervisor who is in the area.

As one can see, all these seem to be diverse though I would like to think that most of them have flavors of geometry and topology in them. I guess all these must have meant something (refering back to the Fairlie challenge). I am now out of academia though I wish I could do more. My other half was telling me that I have not accepted the reality that I am already retired. Perhaps.

I have more in my mind that I wanted to write on (e.g. the E*stein-related matters that seem to fill my news and video feeds) but this has gotten too long. In the midst of this writing, a war has erupted in the middle east. May Allah help us.

Fast-Forwarding Birthday Celebration

In my last post, I mentioned about the whole family was back together again briefly, but I wasn't sure if we had anything planned while we were together. Apparently, the kids (yeah, I know they are grown-ups) apart from my eldest, had something planned. Early the next morning, they were not at home as they went hiking somewhere in Senawang (I did not get the name of the exact location).

After their hiking outing, they joined us for breakfast (my eldest's treat) at a nearby mamak restaurant. Thereafter, we went for our grocery shopping at Mydin (while they went home to rest). We (me and my other half) used up both of our Sara allocation, and topped it up from our own pockets for the extras. The groceries bought should last for at least two weeks plus. While shopping, I found myself in great pain due to my back and I was sweating almost profusely. Once we got back home, I had to rest and sleep the pain off. This happened quite frequently nowadays. 

In the evening, there was another suggestion that we should celebrate my youngest son's 'birthday' somewhere, while we were together. His birthday is actually at the end of the month and at the time Ihsan will not be around and it will be in Ramadhan. Finally we opted out for a fast food dinner with Ihsan giving us the treat.

So yesterday evening, Ihsan had to go back to JB, just in time for him to work his night shift. Before that, I also had prepared the documents for an IJN appointment and emailed them. To my surprise, they replied almost immediately. It seems to ensure for an appointment, I need a proper cardiologist letter from a public hospital, which I do not have. So for now, it will be an NFA for me. I will probably tell Dr. Sufi (my UPM doctor) this in my next appointment and asked for his advice.

On science and other developmental stuff, I will still carry on my work as far as I can, even when I am advised to just focus on my next life. I am also trying my best to avoid social media as much as I can and only do them when I post things up and when I am 'free' (stuck when I can't conveniently do anything else). The social media has become a battle ground for warring influencers and less as a platform for friends. Thus, I no longer make birthday wishes there (my apologies) apart from special instances like the KwekFest FB post yesterday. For world affairs, there is much speculation about a looming war with Iran and also the recent furore of the exposure of the E*stein files. On the latter, I can't help feeling there is a more sinister intention of the exposure. Certainly, the picture that we are getting is that (powerful) people can get away with anything rendering a plague of helplessness. This morning, I have just listened to S(h)neako's interview with Prof. Jiang, which I find interesting. All else, most of us are just living our insignificant lives but yet the intent is to make them as meaningful as we can for ourselves.

Pre-Ramadhan Gathering

Today, my son, Ihsan, came back home from JB. As he reached home, a representative from the surau (Azif?) came by to drop a box of dates from the surau.

Just two days ago, we fetched Izzuddin from UiTM Jasin for his semester holidays. Before leaving the college, he took a pic with his friends.

He also helped drive on our journey back home (Note: he rarely had the opportunity to drive Malibu and this time for a long distance).

So, with both Ihsan and Izzuddin home, we have now the whole family back together again. Unsure if we have any special plans while everyone is back. Ihsan, in particular, said that he might not be able to take leave during Ramadhan. Let's see how the day goes.

Just the day before our Jasin trip, I went to UPM to collect my stock of medications for Ramadhan & Shawwal. I also showed the medical report from Pantai Hospital of my angio CT scan to Dr. Sufi (the doctor at UPM). I requested another letter from him to IJN as advised by some others (in addition to the letter from Pantai Hospital). I was told that there may only be a partial coverage of the fees of whatever procedures done at IJN as a UPM retiree. If the fees are too high and not affordable for me, I will probably take the risk of not undergoing the procedure. In some way, I wished that I did not have taken the angio CT scan before. If I have to go, I will just go.

On scientific front, I have been making many pauses in whatever I'm doing due to my back and my intake of pain killers. I would be lying if I have not thought of giving up on science altogether. The only thing that held me back is somehow my feeling of doing the science is like a religious obligation, given that I have been given the opportunity of pursuing it before. More so, when theoretical sciences and pure mathematics are less pursued locally. Thus, it is more critical to create enough critical mass in these science. The coming AI revolution (if it is not already here) will make it more urgent for such community building. Even if AI are going to replace many of the intellectual processes in the future, we as humans will still be part of the picture (hopefully not as slaves). The least, the role of meaning endower for the intellectual process executed, should be taken up by the human, but I think it should be more than that.

Mid Shaaban 1447

We are now in mid-Shaaban (see pic below snapped by my eldest son using his phone) and soon we will be in Ramadhan, insyaAllah. I sincerely hope there will be a significant positive change for me and the family this Ramadhan. In any case, ontok-ontok mode is still on. 

A lot of my work has been delayed much due to my health. Despite the acquired knowledge of the diseased heart recently, it is my bad back that affects me the most. Yesterday when we went to the laundrette to dry my clothes, I had probably strained my back a litte. Thereafter, I felt some pain while stepping my right foot down. Took a heavier dose of pain killers in the evening and hope this pain will slowly go away.

Not having a 'job' to help me with increasing expenses and being pretty limited with house chores (due to back pain), the feeling of being 'useless' can be depressing. Like always, one has to snap out from this self-pity and carry on with one's life. At this juncture, I remembered listening to Xiang Xueqin talks negatively about his own father, coming from the Baby Boomer generation (like I am). He spoke about such generation being driven by selfishness, becoming agents of decline for the Western civilization and economic growth was utilized at the expense of the younger generation (to this, he included his father). I was really surprised by this since Asians tend to have stronger family ties with respect to the elderly. I guess he was simply demonstrating the analysis. I examined myself on this idea and I would not include myself with such attributed Boomer characteristics. On the other hand, I see younger generation has lost their traditional Asian values and there is a tendency of being more transactional and selfish. Hope my children will hold more closely Islamic values than we were.

On a slightly more mysterious development, there have been many strange happenings in our house but most of the time we simply ignore them. This includes the teapot incident that I have reported earlier (which certainly fall as an extreme case of such events). For the Muslims, we do entertain the 'unseen world'. Recently, another event occurred. My other half, from time to time, prayed and recited Qur'an in my son's room at the far end, partly not to have the room being vacant for too long. Last Thursday, she told me that the Qur'an that she was reading and had left it on the bed in the room, was on the floor and the prayer mat was displaced from its usual position. I asked her if she had forgotten leaving it there or any of our cats had entered. To the latter, she replied in the negative and for the former, I certainly do not believe that she will leave the Qur'an lying on the floor since we don't normally do that out of respect for the scripture. Well, thereafter, we started reciting Surah Al-Baqarah, so that we felt spiritually safe. Below is the pic of the Qur'an and one can see that it is too heavy to be accidentally displaced.

Back to 'normal matters', our son from JB (whose room my other half is using) came back to visit us a few days earlier. On Tuesday that week, before going back to JB, he brought us for lunch and the PnC restaurant.

Tradition To Continue

I'm writing this post mainly to prevent certain thoughts from being kept replaying in my mind in the coming days. Throughout my career, I have received a lot of criticisms and labels (including 'liar' in one case, which I remember to this day). I take some of these criticisms to help me improve but some (perhaps grown out of envy or ignorance) I totally dismiss them. One should always remember that opportunities for criticisms are available to all (the critics and the recipients of critics) and one can see plenty of these in social media. So when both sides are criticising each other, one has to appeal to higher level of judgment and this level is not obvious and may not be available for everyone to consider.

I do take note of the current development of quantum research in the country with great interest. It is good that many have become interested in the subject and such (positive) development should be welcomed. There will be competition of course (hopefully healthy) and even personal agendas in play for which once again their resolution needs to appeal for a higher level of judgment. To properly pursue such quantum research, one has to be authentic about it and preferably not reduced to merely labels as others are watching us internationally. The thing I want to address here is simply the dismissive attitude of some for the efforts that we have made in building up quantum research in my former university. In response, I posted the image below on FB.

This list can be found here as proof. Note that this is only my PhD students under my main supervision (does not include co-supervision). To include my M.Sc. students (as main supervisor), one can refer to the following post. For proof, one has to access my former university's Graduate School records. So, this may count for something, I think and in addition, some of my students continue to serve in my former university and universities elsewhere. Firthermore I have helped examine thesis of students of others. It is embarrassing to bring these all up but it helps refute some of the dismissive criticques mentioned earlier. I am aware that it is a modest contribution and perhaps not within the 'star-player' expectations of some administrators. Besides handling students, we have also engaged in many activities promoting quantum science & technology, most notably EQuaLS (Expository Quantum Lecture Series), which I have written about countless times in the past. It is a tradition that I'm proud to see that my younger colleagues have continued in recent years. Tradition is something that I have always emphasized to my students (and probably to my other colleagues as well) and it is something that we need to build on tirelessly. So with me now out of the academia, I certainly hope that the tradition in quantum research that we have built, will not fizzle out but instead will serve as a platform for my younger colleagues to build stronger research on. That is how I think progress should be made (without rebooting too much).

Coming to the national quantum strategies that have been announced in many places recently, I hope they will be ones that are inclusive of what we have done in the past and of course, efforts of others too. We have to break out of the silos that we have been dwelling in the past. At this point, some may retort and say why I have not done this in the past while I was in service. Well, we have tried with very little success with all the workshops, conferences and lecture series that we have organized and participated in. Perhaps due to my limited circle of influence, the influence never really caught on beyond our own group. At the time, I was called an 'event manager' instead and the things we do are said to be unlikely to have any impact. Now, with my younger colleagues, things are looking better with MyQI formed.  It is a good initiative with multiple institutions on board, involving the many traditional quantum researchers that are already there in the local ecosystem, and hence this initiative should be given due recognition.

Yesterday after Friday prayers, I was listening to this forum in Davos through a YouTube video. I thought it is worth listening to by the 'decision makers' circle; the forum includes the Singapore Minister for Digital Development and Information, Josephine Teo. Now Singapore has been pursuing quantum science & technology, even way before CQT was formed (see here). With more than two decades of history (read: tradition) and generous funding, it is now one of the internationally renowned quantum research centres in the world. On our part, it is only recently that the numbers have swelled but the funding remains relatively small. So, I figured that we need at least another decade for us to have a proper impact (internationally) and only if we get our acts right. As I was watching the forum during which Josephine Teo was speaking, my other half came in and asked me, what is quantum. I tried to explain the difference between classical and quantum science as plainly as possible to her, but digressed later into the ecosystem that we have, with all of its shortcomings. She has been reminding me that I have retired all this while, and I should focus on what would be my next 'life'. She, however, now understood why I have been working even after retirement (keeping our room messy with books and papers) given the importance of this work. But at some future moment, I will have to stop.

Weekend With Our Youngest

Last Friday, we picked up our youngest son from UiTM Jasin to simply spend the weekend with us. Earlier in the week, I found out that we have forgotten to top up his pocket money and he almost ran out of cash. We immediately transferred some money to him. Felt guilty about it.

Our weekend was pretty uneventful though, but my other half brought my sons to a wedding near Paroi (I stayed home, ontok-ontok). On Saturday night (after more than an hour of blackout), my eldest son treat us for dinner at our usual eatery place Sanee Hijrah. The food is quite good and it is relatively cheaper there. Other cheaper eateries are simply the 'mamak' restaurants. There is a rise in the number of hipster cafes and we only go there for special occasions. Eating at home remains the cheapest and eating out is just to break the monotonicity. Also, with my sons working (they tend to come back late during Maghrib or after Maghrib), and then we are simply tired to go out. My eldest often goes to work around 6.30am n the morning (during day shifts) and my other half often prepares breakfast around 5am in the morning. It is only on Sunday that she gets a break. At some point, I should revive my cooking skills though I have to say I tend to be slower in preparing meals (just like st everything else, I guess).

Yesterday after breakfast and Mydin shopping for our necessities and for our youngest son's needs, we send him back to UiTM Jasin. Luckily there was no traffic jam on our way there and back. We stopped at Ayer Keroh's RnR to get our son some lunch as a change. Normally, we will actually go to Merlimau for lunch but this time we wanted to save time. Note added: I met Dr. Wan Daud while we were filling up petrol for our car. We used to commute together to UPM from Seremban. He told me that he is now 79 but he looks steady though slimmer. I hope all is well with him.

On one's development side, lately I have been listening to talks by Prof. Jiang Xueqin. He is getting very popular especially when he has successfully predicted certain world events with him being able to extract core ideas and using game theory to look at possible outcomes. For a sampler of his talks, one can go to this link. I wanted to pass some of his talks to my family but some of his talks can get controversial, particularly when he touched upon secret societies. I can understand that he s only using these narratives as tools for his analysis. In the Muslim psyche however, no one is omniscient and omnipotent and one should not hold too tightly on opinions and thoughts from whatever analysis.

Hijri Birthday and The Trip to Melaka

Yesterday was my Hijri birthday and I'm 65 according to the Hijri calendar, two years older than my 'Gregorian' age. So what did I do yesterday?

Well, my kids have chipped in part of their income to realise the idea that I go through some check-up for my heart conditions. The idea started with my other half arranged for her sister to take the advantage of a package at Pantai Hospital for a heart echo test costing around four hundred ringgit. Then why not I do the same? Thus, our trip happened and we arrived around 9am in the morning. 

I was fasting then thinking there would be a blood test. As we discussed with the doctor (Dr. Baqlish), he enquired about my medical history and my family medical history and he suggested that I do angiogram CT scan instead. I looked at my other half then, she immediately agreed. Such test would cost a few thousand ringgit instead of few hundred ringgit. I was still fasting despite there will be no blood test and waited at the imaging diagnostic section. The first trial was unsuccessful because my heart was beating too fast. This is in part due to the slight pain sensation and the internal heating senssation when they injected in the dye. I have forgotten how it felt like and the sensation send my heart racing. Since the first imaging failed, they send me out to rest first and they gave me some medication to make my heart calm down. They did it twice, first, the medication taken orally when I was resting, and second, just before the second imaging takes place by injection. The imaging, I guess, went through.

We had to wait until after lunch before we get the results. Finally, the doctor call us to go to the imaging diagnostic unit again and see him there. He showed us the images and told us it was not aas clear as he wanted but it was enough to conclude some results. The one most concerning is that there is one blockage right at the main vein, in addition to many minor ones in the smaller veins. So there I was, not knowing how to react, but I was already thinking about stents. But the doctor immediately cancelled that thought as he pointed out that the blockage was at a junction of veins and if a procedure is carried out, it will be a complicated one. The cost to do such procedure at a prvate hospital would probably be almost twice that of my other half's procedure for CSF leak. Thus, the doctor was already having in mind, a referral letter to Institut Jantung Negara (IJN - National Heart Institute).

Well, that was my birthday present, knowing about my heart more than I used to before. I certainly hope my heart is in a 'better' place. The immediate action needed to be done, as the doctor remarked, is to continue with my plavix medication to ensure ease of blood flow. I will need to show this letter to the doctor in the university and get the doctor's support letter as I was told that a letter from a public hospital is needed for treatment in IJN. The rest? My thoughts are already clouded with many things in mind. 

As we made our way home, I joked with my son is maybe I should now start a podcast called Tengking Muslim (with reference to the famous podcast The Thinking Muslim). It is perhaps my cynical response to the Islamophobe sphere. The world does not seem to be evolving into a better place with talks of land-grabbing expansionism in place, treating people of not their colour or creed as vermins. I have seen how many posts that try to demonise Muslims to an extent that I would like to abandon the social media. The small part of me with whatever little time I have left, need to make small moves  Sometimes we joke about this (see this post), but on a serious note, one should not lose hope and have faith in the wisdom of Allah; the one piece of advice that I hope my children will learn.