Varia: Social Media and Nice Acronyms

Yesterday, it was my last lecture for Special Relativity class. I wasn't really satisfied how the class went and wished I have could prepare more but my mind was really elsewhere all this semester. Nevertheless, I was glad that I did something more than the last time I taught this course. Perhaps, if given a few more times teaching this course, I would come up with my own stable set of notes. After the class, we took some photos just for my keeping (see below).

I posted these on social media and seems to attract a lot of attention. I guess it was due to the young faces who are brave enough to take up such a technical subject.

My posts on the social media (FB) have been mainly on what I (or the group) do and what I think on some issues that I personally face. I would shy away from commenting unnecessarily particularly on controversial or viral issues. I don't intend to be a 'public intellectual' as some would like to be. However my postings are meant to be read by others especially close friends, students and staff. So is it attention seeking? Yes, in a restricted sense to a limited audience but I would be embarrassed to do anything more than that. I remembered a colleague of mine said to me that I should inform others of what I do so that people are informed but not for showing off. People are often repelled by the latter.  I have set up some private FB groups for students and staff if the postings are a bit sensitive or unsuitable for public display. I do open up public FB groups to announce some of our events and to show what we are interested in, say in Friends of QuEST.

QuEST is the acronym we made up for Quantum Explorations of Science and Technology. On FB, this is our private group and hence we set up Friends of QuEST for the public. It was originally named Qfizik, named after the website I hosted long ago between 1997 and 2015 before it went dead. One can go here to see some of the pages captured. Renaming it as QuEST is more eye-catching and perhaps symbolizes what we are trying to do. I was happy with this acronym but Quest has been used in other places (see here) like http://merlion-quests.neel.cnrs.fr/ (but we are earlier and theirs have an extra 's'). Before, QuEST itself we had EQuaLS, an acronym which I am pretty pleased with as well. The acronym is for Expository Quantum Lecture Series and as the name implies, it is meant for lecture events that we organized. Perhaps it also represents what we aspire to be, as equals to the many distinguished theorists out there. The event has unfortunately stopped due to lack of financial support and the loss of our mentor Prof. Syed Twareque Ali. In Goldin's memorial talk at Group 31 (available here), EQuaLS was mentioned. See also here for the obituary published in Journal of Geometry and Symmetry in Physics. So far, we never got the courage to do EQuaLS again and is very much a loss since our students and researchers had gained much from the presence of distinguished international speakers in EQuaLS.

Finally another acronym I'm pretty pleased to have made is MINDS for Mathematical Institute for Natural and Disruptive Sciences. It was one of the names suggested during our institute restructuring exercise but we never got to use it, but it would have been attractive for us. So far we are still retaining INSPEM. Perhaps MINDS can be realised elsewhere.

Putting up acronyms may sound trivial to some but to construct clever, memorable and meaningful ones are not easy. In some cases, the acronym may be undesirable e.g. PIG for Physics Interest Group. For the world of marketing, in fact, building up acronyms is indeed important - see "How to Build Acronyms That Spread Your Ideas Like Wildfire". In the end, what matters is what we actually do and the reputation that we build.

My Teacher, Szekeres

15 days to go. Today is Teacher's Day and I will post about teaching here. Trying as much to forget admin problems and worse, politics. I rather look elsewhere where the environment is more trust-building and genuine science development.

So the past week or so, been focusing on my course this semester which is on "Special Relativity and Classical Field Theory". This course has only been taught a few times; at best is three times but in recent period, only twice. It is an optional course and being theoretical, it is almost always not being offered since very seldom that students want to take the risk of taking the course. The course itself was designed years ago based on the courses that I took from Department of Mathematical Physics (now no longer exists) in University of Adelaide (see picture below) in 1983.

The courses was taught by Peter Szekeres, a disciple of relativist Felix Pirani. He is the son of a famous mathematician George Szekeres. Peter Szekeres is perhaps best known for his Szekeres solution for inhomogeneous cosmology.

On teaching the Special Relativity and Classical Field Theory course, I do not have a stable set of notes (like I do for Quantum Mechanics). Thus I experiment around with what should be taught but the core of the course is what I have learned from Szekeres himself. So I build some sketchy notes, updated with new materials from books, particularly from Faraoni's Special Relativty book. There are other books of course that I read because my habit when teaching is not to follow a single book but collect the best ideas from several books strung together with my own logic or understanding. Now some may criticise this approach and also for not getting the most current book. I tend to differ from many on this, while I understand the need for current progress, I value very much tradition. Particularly for the subject of special relativity (foundational), there are not many new developments to go through unless one goes into general relativity. By sticking to the core of Szekeres' notes, I, more or less, pay tribute to one of my teachers in Adelaide. I will do so until I have my own set of ideas for the special relativity course - I can see a few different paths now (not yet realised).

Szekeres also taught me General Relativity in the Honours year. But there is one valuable lesson that I got from Szekeres before finishing my study in Adelaide. I was already thinking of doing research and I was attracted to a fashionable topic at the time i.e. supersymmetry and supergravity (a natural extension from my Honours project on Grand Unified Theories). When I told him of this interest, he was telling me that my personality (timid) don't quite fit such a competitive field. I took this as a challenge and immediately started reading Wess & Bagger and Van Nieuwenhuizen. My interest in this continued for a while until I found Witten's "Topological Tools in 10-Dimensional Physics" which blew me away. Note I was one of the early subscribers to International Journal of Modern Physics A, until I could no longer afford them. My dream then was to establish such high-powered theoretical physics in Malaysia (and a dream still) and Szekeres' challenge contributed to this. Hence, my thanks on this Teacher's Day.

Physiotherapy in Ramadhan.

We are about to enter the second week of Ramadhan. Trying my best to keep my spirits up. My last post sounded emotional but as an ordinary human being, I can't simply shut out the emotions but certainly I will not let them overpower my thinking faculty. Whether anyone believes whatever problems I'm facing are real or not, it does not really matter anymore. Perhaps someday I'll reveal publicly what I know simply for us to take lessons from or maybe they will just get buried with me. For now, I need to make my conditions better.

Yesterday, my other half suggested for me to go for physiotherapy for my back problems. There was a physiotherapy clinic just opened several months earlier, nearby our home and we decided to try this out. My earlier hesitation has always been the cost but my conditions has worsened since coming back from Italy. So finally she made an appointment for me at 4.30pm yesterday.

Being the first time there, the clinic has no records of what my ailments are. I started explaining my back problems and mentioned about my scoliosis, lower lumbar degeneration and slight protusion of the discs and muscle spasms. As the therapist (Jovi) tried to investigate what my ailment really is, she explained about structural problems and muscle problems. On examining my back, she mentioned I had a slight C-scoliosis. It is only after some physio treatment and exercises, that my present ailment is mostly due to piriformis syndrome due to my excessive sitting and weak back muscles.

Later that night, experienced some pain probably due to the reaction of the treatment. Thus rested for the rest of the night. Thus, my earlier plan of doing more (overdue) work had to be postponed. Had purchased a package at the clinic and will continue the treatment at least for a few more sessions. During the exercise, Jovi jokingly said that I need 100 more sessions. I laughed even though I'm in pain.

First Few Days of Ramadhan 1440

In Malaysia, 1st Ramadhan of 1440 Hijri calendar, began on Sunday night on May 5th. As usual we look forward to the Tarawih prayers. This time round, I was not that fit healthwise as I hoped for. My other half and I simply prayed at home while my sons went to the mosque. It is normal that the first week or so, there will be larger congregation than usual. We continued to do so the next day. Perhaps thinking of all that had happened in the last several months or so, some sadness descended on me on the second night and broke into tears to the surprise of my other half. Felt that my life after this will be short and am not sure I have done anything useful.

The day thereafter, I just had to strengthen my will to go to work. Taught the Special Relativity class and helped prepare the students for their second test (held yesterday). Tried my best to stay positive but it seems to be a difficult week. There were matters happening that seems to test my patience and had me on the defensive. Can't explain the burden that I'm carrying. At present, I just wish that May 31st will come soon as I have grown very tired. I wanted a quieter and less stressful life.

I pray that the following few weeks of Ramadhan will be better for me and make me the better person I want to be.

The Weak Leader

Ramadhan is just around the corner and I'm not sure what I am feeling right now. It is already May and by end of the month, my term as Deputy Director will end. Part of me wants to carry on fighting and struggling but the aged part of me just felt tired after all the struggles. Felt that I have lost on the one hand and felt that I'm unwanted on another. Whatever it is, I will take this as a humility lesson that will help me to be better, wiser and stronger. Those who felt that they have 'won', I wish them all the best.

I am very much aware of all the criticisms leveled against me all these years: being volatile, being unprofessional, second-rate mathematician, weak leader, some of which can be dentrimental to my career. However, I will take all of these for me to learn though I may not necessarily agree with all these accusations. Most of the time, whatever role I'm taking, it is almost accidental. I did not campaign for them. As a Deputy, even when I hold different opinions with the director, I have always carried out the wishes of the leader of the institute as agreed in our meetings. During the double stint of me as acting director, it is always my belief to carry out the important traditions made by the previous directors. For instance, I have resisted the reduction of management meetings particularly during the transition period. Nevertheless, I have my own vision of what I wanted the institute to be. Most of the time I have to go for less due to practical constraints. If ever there is leadership in what I do, I tend to practice it differently. I consider research institute is where creativity thrives, always on the look out for something different but yet keeping the main traditions grounded. I do not consider rigidity in management gels well with the creative environment we would like to build, thus I may practice flexibility wherever possible. When it comes to 'managing' people, I believe in the institute as a learning organization whose members are mature and emphasise learning. Thus, I like to give trust to people to do what they think best but they must learn when the handled matter doesn't work out. Sometimes this is seen to be 'weak' by some. Note that I have 'scolded' staff before (not frequently though) but I quickly try to forget such incidents and cherish the trust being built and the teamwork developed. I may not agree with something and I would leave hints just for people to take up, think about it and understand. I try my best to lead by example wherever I can but as a human, I am limited and I'm not infallible.

I tried to understand the psyche of my staff wherever I can, so that I can give the best reaction to arising problems the way I know how. Certainly handling staff is difficult, and way more stressful than solving mathematical problems. This is why in management meeting, I joked about knowing the psychology profile of the staff and colleagues. In fact knowing human interactions is one of the identified important skills that the future worker should have. I even do evaluate my own personality. I have attended the Wisdom Leadership Workshop that the university had conducted for us in 2013. Most parts of the workshop, I enjoyed them because I was learning new things that I have not known before. I took the MBTI test and was classed as INTJ which means Introvert, iNtuitive,Thinking and Judging (I actually thought I was INTP with judging replaced by perceiving). The test was quite detailed but one can do an online test to see what type of personality that one has. Mine was given here.

So I guess that is weak leadership for you and I 'enjoyed' being the weak leader I am. Late this afternoon, my other half had told me, just leave after 31 May. Be the regular guy I was and need not take up any important roles in the future. My close colleagues are also telling me the same thing. But there is still one leadership role that I yearn for - scientific leadership. There is plenty more for me to do for theoretical physics in UPM and perhaps I will just focus on that.

Finally to the staff, keep learning and hope you will have a better leader to move forward.