Of Spaces and Images

Today, the department held a spring cleaning session for the rooms of retired staff along the corridor where I'm at. The others seem prepared for it; I was not - wore my favourite batik given to me by Prof. Zen. Did help out a little, carrying out books. I was a bit cautious since my back has yet to recover properly. Was told that these empty rooms will be taken over by the Chemistry Department since they have more academic staff than us in Physics. Indeed it is better to make use of the rooms rather than leaving them empty; all academics deserve a decent working space. This goes to students as well; one has to find a good enough working environment for them to do good work. Those who have labs tend to use the labs as workspaces for students. However, sometimes there may be not enough spaces for all students to be in the lab, then probably it is a good idea to make available some spaces for them. One also ought to be careful that there is no practice of expansionism regardless of needs. People always want more not less (being in admin, I have seen this happened). Then there was a question raised why do I have two offices along this corridor. Well, actually I have only one proper office, which is Room 221. However the air-conditioner in this room is no longer functioning. To this, my junior colleagues suggested that I should use Room 216 temporarily since its air-conditioning is still functioning. However if anyone is unhappy about this, I can always go back to my room 221 since I have already brought a fan there. 

One of the good things of doing spring cleaning is that sometimes we find treasures hidden away. In my case, I have found my lost books (shown below). The book by Arnold was really something that I have looked for all these years and I'm glad that I found them today. I almost bought another copy of this book since I wanted it badly. Another was Goldstein's Classical Mechanics - that stays missing.

I will be bringing these books back home. As well as my other books still left in Room 221. Most of my books are already at home as I have prepared for retirement for some time. But yet there are still plenty of things in Room 221. Will need time to clear them off. I overheard somebody making a remark that those who are retiring should make sure that the room left is really empty. Sure, God willing, will do that. Some of my things mainly my subscribed journals, I have already donated to the Theoretical Physics Laboratory - these include International Journal of Modern Physics A (was one of the early subscribers when it came out), Modern Physics Letter A, Reviews in Mathematical Physics (all these published by World Scientific) and also Journal of Geometry and Physics published by Elsevier. I hope that they will be put to good use by the group.

Talking about the Theory Lab, one of the students has put up a poster for our group. Since there is no 'launching' of the poster (I did ask Dr. Nurisya), I take the liberty of publicising them here first.

Initially they put my pic of me wearing the 'physics' orange shirt. This pic has been overused quite a lot. I jokingly said that any picture but that orange shirt; it looks like the shirt used for arrested people. One student suggested I should put up my present pic with my moustache and beard. Then I posted a Dr. Strange pic and hence this:

Well, no, I'm not that good looking. Here is what I looked like, my scruffy self. 

I can't help but remember how my picture was edited out from at least two pictures published in the university's media when I was over at INSPEM. I must have looked that bad. It's funny how some things like 'image' had so much influence in the academic world. Anyway, I'm not looking for popularity. People just need to accept what I am; I can't chameleonise into something else.