Moving On

At present, we have settled with one proposal of restructuring of the institutes and hope that we will no longer need to look again too much on the matter. We need to move beyond these uncertainties and do the real work on the ground, the research activities. Our past experience has told us that one can have the most beautiful thing on paper but pragmatically on the ground, all these plans have to be worked out and these are usually much harder. So it is a relief (again) to have this proposal out. To my own staff, they probably know me that I love to do scientific work more than all these managerial and administrative tasks. On the other hand, I do feel compelled to be part of decision-making process to ensure that our past efforts on building our research ecosystems will not go to waste and that whatever changes there will be, these should make us progress better and not the reverse. In a way, all these years in the management make me realise that complaining is easy but to help find (optimal) solutions is the one that is hard and the one that matters.

For now an immediate matter that should be of concern is the new call for proposals for FRGS, TRGS and LRGS research grants by the ministry. I hope our institute members will start writing proposals. I wish to write one too but past experiences have made me to be more cautious about doing one. Certainly some rules of the game have changed and there are now more demands tied up with one's research grant. Having only about four years of service left has also made me to be more careful on what research to be considered for the proposal. Given that I have started several different directions, all of which have open problems that I wish to tackle, I am still uncertain on what to do. Whatever it is, I hope it will be something really good that I can end my university career on. Perhaps even a ground breaking one (I can dream, can I?)

I also entertained an idea of applying for LRGS or TRGS (L stands for long term and T stands for transdisciplinary). The former will need a few other institutions outside one's own, while the latter involves several faculties or institutes within one's institution). Have tried one before but it was shot down at the ministerial committee for being too ambitious (had this comment quite a few times for my other proposals). Well, perhaps now one can entertain it to be one which is less technical. Partly because the themes to be considered are now leaning more towards social issues. They are:

• developing affordable and clean energy system
• health and wellbeing of B40
• health and weelbeing of ageing society
• future education
• quality education provision for vulnerable communities
• sustainable and smart manufacturing in agricultural sector
• migrants and refugees in Malaysian society
• drug abuse
• ethnic harmony

The one area that I'm toying with and considering is future education. While most future education issues tend to centre around how technology has changed the environment for education, I do not think that is the critical issue to focus. Technologies change and they change very frequently; it is the part of human in adapting to these changes that often becomes an issue. As Simon Sinek puts it, if one focuses on what and how of such issue, often the why gets forgotten. In particular my interest is in the spectrum of thinking of a human or an organisation organism with their product in the form of technologies. The finiteness of the human or organisation seem to set some form of inherent limitations in the way thinking is done (this theme is also alluded here in this post) and how to overcome this. Understanding this complex issue may help liberate us into better thinking (and hence better future education). This is also related to some things I have said to my own students: as science progress with exponentially growing body of knowledge, how can the future science student cope as they need to solve more difficult and complex problems. Partial solutions are known but they tend to refer to finite properties of the individual/organisation and prioritisation or contextualisation. 

Honing closer to home are our own cultural inhibitions to technical subjects like mathematics and related subjects like quantum theory. There are many studies (e.g. here) showing that the country's performance in TIMSS has dropped considerably the last few years and my gut feeling is that this is just the tip of the iceberg. So whatever future education issues that one wants to tackle for the country, answering why this is happening will be great.

One may ask why I am getting myself involved with these educational issues, far from my own research interest. Well, it actually began with the idea of getting the country ready for quantum technologies of the future. Letting my imagination runs wild has led me to write the above. Perhaps it is just me entertaining my personal frustration of driving quantum research here. Have been told many times that what I do is typified as 'syok sendiri'. At other times, plenty of discouragement and what bothers me the most is discouraging others as well. Just let them decide for themselves. In the end, one can't be bothered with what people say and just focus on what we can do.

Having mentioned Simon Sinek above, I knew about him much earlier and but recently his newer videos got to be recommended on my YouTube listing. Do listen to these when you have time.