Next Half Semester Begins June 2020

Few days ago (on May 27), the Ministry of Higher Education announced that all university classes should be conducted online until 31 December 2020 (see picture below). In some sense, this is to be expected; we have already made online classes just before the MCO in early March and also throughout MCO. The only problem is those classes involving laboratories and laboratory research activities. For these, the same announcement mentioned that it will be allowed in stages as follows:

• Postgraduate students are allowed to return to campus immediately enabling them to continue with their research without delay.
• Final year B.Sc. students whose projects involve laboratory research, will be allowed to return to campus on July 1, 2020. This is also extended to those final year students (irrespective whether they are involved with laboratory research or not) who are having difficulties with accessing the internet at home.
• For completeness, another category are students in polytechnical & community colleges; they are allowed to return to campus on August 1, 2020.

For my own students of theoretical physics, they are not quite included in the categories above since they do not have experiments to run. When asked, most of them have agreed to work from home. To ensure regular interactions, we have our regular QuEST meeting and I have already started supervisory committee meetings with students, hopefully once in a fortnight for each student. Here are pics from my presentation in the last QuEST meeting.

Here's one from supervisory committee meting for my PhD student Faudzi:

From the announcement made by the Ministry of Security and Defence, those commuters from say  Seremban, will be able to cross the state borders to get to their workplace in Selangor, beginning tomorrow. However, I will still continue to work from home tomorrow unless instructed otherwise. Note that the MCO period is until 9 June. Have been told that those who want to be in the campus tomorrow, need to register earlier, which I have not. Was informed that at the main gate, we need to do scan the QR code to register/check on our presence and even for the buildings, entrance is through the main doors. I will try to go to the campus on the week of 10 June just to return library books and get my books home from the office. Was told that the staff presence will be in groups by rotation. Not yet sure how this work yet, whether we will need to be there the full working hour. Virtual classes will resume next week. Even if we are in campus, no physical classes is allowed. We have been told that we need to punch in even if working from home by 15 June but we can start doing so by tomorrow.

Whatever it is, I hope this transition to the new norm will be smooth and not be troublesome. For me, I do prefer to work at home given that my home is a distant away (in Seremban) and thus I do not need to spend time travelling (around 40-45 minutes one way with regular traffic). I also like the flexibility of shifting my tasks around (which I can't do in normal circumstances) but yet maintaining the discipline to do usual work. The only thing that I see as disadvantages are the increase in electricity bill at home in this period and of course the absence of physical interactions. Also, I still worry what to do with EQuaLS 2020 that we postpone/cancel previously. Any ideas, how to proceed with this?