Old and New Norms

There are old norms and new norms but some norms are just equivalent, I posted somewhere. The new norms are mostly about social distancing (more accurately physical distancing) to prevent spread of Covid-19, which includes avoiding crowded places. At some stage this involves working from home when Movement Control Order (MCO) was in place. Presently, we are still in the Recovery Movement Control Order (RMCO) phase when certain economic sectors have been reopened. The educational sector (schools) has only reopened in phases very recently. My youngest has gone to school for about a month now waiting for his major public exam. For higher educational institutions, the last thing I've heard is that our teaching will still be conducted online until the end of year. There was an announcement that the universities might be reopened in October but no specific details yet.

For us 'workers', we have been asked to return to work in campus since 15 June. However, flexibility of working from home was given to the following:

• Those who have children below the age of 12 and disabled children that need to be looked after until all schools and childcare centres are reopened.
• Those who have health problems or chronic diseases that are considered to have high risk for Covid-19 infection certified by doctors.
• Specific cases as allowed by the head of department taking into account of job importance and safety.

I did apply for working from home (WFH) and have informed the Head of Department. There were verbal agreements that I can WFH provided I produce teaching modules. These teaching modules are extraneous matters on top of our existing duties and they actually take some time to do. I did give the teaching modules together with a weekly report in the beginning. As I had more tasks to do, I thought I should focus more on the urgent matters (particularly those involving students) and delayed my work on the teaching modules. Perhaps that was a mistake. Anyway, I was hoping that such new norms like working from home could be a new culture that organizations in Malaysia can start to adopt (requiring trust) as it makes more economic and environmental sense. For instance, once I invited Jiro Soda from Kobe University for EQuaLS4 and he mentioned that his university prefers their academics to work from home whenever possible as part of energy-savings strategy of the university. So I was putting high hopes for such flexibility in our workplace but I am mistaken. I will begin working in campus fully next week, which is no problem for me (will save on electricity bill too). My only worry is Friday since our mosques are not operating at full capacity due to social distancing measures. With the large pool of workers in the university and the surrounding community, I suspect that there will be difficulty in getting a place for Friday prayers (I remembered enquiring others where do we apply for this but there was slow response). This coming Friday is still okay since it is a public holiday but what about those Fridays after the Eid Friday. I hope some decision makers will put some thoughts into this. 

Anyway, I'm posting this because I wanted to point out that last Friday I was working from home and my visit to the workshop in Malacca was made known to the Head of Department. In fact, I did ask whether I should ask for leave to do this. So, it's not like I'm playing truancy and avoiding work (just in case some wondered why I was not 'working'). In fact that morning, I had a PhD student online appointment to discuss research progress (see pics below) and also was reading a MSc thesis draft.

I prayed Friday prayers last Friday at Masjid Hussain in Seremban 2 (see pic - during which I received a bunch of messages regarding work) and due to the SOP, we had to be early there.

Before that, I discussed with my other half on the worsening brake problems of my Malibu car. The local workshop can't fix it due to the sensors on the brakes and finally we made the appointment with an authorised workshop in Malacca to which we went to after the Friday prayers. We had to leave the car there as fixing the brakes require a longer time. It was only the next day that we could pick up the car. It costs me quite a bit and probably put some tight constraint on this month's budget. 

So back to old norm next week. I hope those in the management don't get the impression I'm the type of person that avoids work (of course I do however prefer certain types of work which relate directly to  my expertise). I'm very passionate of making theoretical physics a respectable discipline to action in our university (and no, I'm not looking for recognition - have been pursuing this since I came back from my PhD). My work from home request is much due to travelling to and fro to work from Seremban has indeed caused physical stress on my body and would prefer to use the travel time (which is roughly two hours) for something more useful and if I decided to work long hours during the night, it won't put me to unnecessary risk during my travel. In addition, I have brought all my books and papers home and by working from home, I will avoid bringing a lot of stuff to and fro. Well working I guess should not be to my own convenience and henceforth should not be for anyone's convenience. We all must suffer, right?