Third Wave: First Day CMCO-WFH

Today is essentially the first day of the two-week CMCO (14-27 October 2020) during the third wave surge of Covid-19 infections. It was declared two days earlier for the states of Selangor and Sabah. I had then sent my son to IIUM Gombak campus on Sunday. While we have experienced CMCO before, I still worry about my son in campus particularly the accessibility of food - whether their canteen operators are (fully) operating as they will probably not be allowed to move outside the campus. I hope the university will take good care of them. To know what one is allowed to do during CMCO, one can look here.

Despite the Ministry's message of all education institutions are to be closed down, there was still a bit of uncertainty of what we are supposed to do specifically yesterday; whether we should come to office or apply for conditional work from home or work from home (WFH). I got the news about the work from home instruction after I got home from work and this is only for noncritical sectors of the university. As a theorist, it was not really much of a concern for me where do I do work (in comparison to experimentalists) and also I have brought most of my reading materials home in anticipation of retirement. While there was a sense of uncertainty surrounding the office yesterday, we still had our Faculty Briefing day for the new students this semester. There were some technical glitches during the departmental briefing but it was completed by around 4pm, after which we all (individually) had our online meetings with the new students under our academic advisorship. So the following are my new students under my advisory.

It is good to know that they were actually doing this meet from their homes.

Today, the first day of WFH seems to be a busy day. Suddenly my phone keeps dinging or buzzing as a flood of messages poured in WhatsApp. It was kind of amusing. Then I was told there was a curriculum review meeting for (Pure) Physics degree in the morning. There were some suggested changes which I hope could prepare (future) students better in their theoretical foundations. Below is a pic.

Another meeting is the EQuaLS 2020 meeting. Earlier I have expressed my desire to my junior colleagues that I wish to distance myself from EQuaLS 2020 admin and let them take over instead. I guess I need to explain a little bit more that may also explain some of my 'strange actions' recently. Ever since we decided to do this EQuaLS, several incidents happened that made me question on whom should I trust. Sincerely, I did not want to bring this up at this juncture but one of the incidents seems ill-intent (at least to me) with someone digging up my past involving me as a guarantor to somebody. This is part of the reason that I wish to distance myself away from EQuaLS, in the hope that the responsible party will just leave me (and the event) alone. As far as I'm concerned, I am just trying to do my job (earlier) without stepping on anyone's toes. I'm taking a backseat for now on how this is going to be played. I certainly do not want anymore complications as I am about to retire. Because of this too, I think I have to postpone my plan of early retirement. I pray to Allah that no harm (in any form) comes my way.

Anyway I did attend today's meeting to see how things are moving so far. Here's a pic.

I do hope that EQuaLS 2020 will be a success and the opening/launching will go somoothly as planned. Now I need to come up with some closing remarks for the event - will make it short, God willing.