All in the Past

Today is my late mum's 92nd birthday. I thought that it is a nice occasion for me to start back my blog and for me to remember mum whose birthday is November 28. This is my favourite picture of my mum together with my other half.

Had stopped blogging earlier mainly because I want to avoid controversies and possibility of being hurt by many different parties. By doing so, I lost the opportunity of recording important events of my life. My attitude has always been looking forward and would prefer not to dwell too much in the past because I can't change it. I often regard that these are fate and tests for me to overcome and rise to a better self. Only use the past to take lessons from.

On social media, I have used it less and less. The social media has this ugliness of making life like a horrible reality TV show; all rants, mockeries and open criticisms that one would not do in normal circumstances. I still remember that I began using Facebook frequently after becoming friends with Bob Coecke in late 2008. When I met him in Tianjin, China for Group-29 in 2012, he made the remark "You complain a lot" and this made me realise how foolish I was in many of my posts then. Indeed even today, I saw many posts from others are of complaining nature, amplifying negative feelings than positive ones. Over the years, I have grown 'wiser' and limit my posts to useful things and in particular I try to avoid as much as I can, commenting on others. Today, I tend to use it to share links to news and events that I find interesting. Occasionally, I put up reflective posts mainly to jot points that I myself could use later.

Let me now turn to what has happened since I last post here. First, regarding the third wave Covid-19 infections. On November 7, the CMCO originally imposed on Sabah, Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya are now widened to almost all states except Kelantan, Perlis and Pahang and the period extended to 6 December (the Selangor CMCO was supposed to end on 9 November). During the CMCO period, we were instructed to work from home, which to me is a good thing since we need to conduct classes online and that my internet access at home is much better than the one in campus. We are also asked to submit weekly report of the tasks that we have done (luckily not detailed one). With the current CMCO period is nearing its end, there is the question whether it will be continued thereafter. The current number of new Covid-19 infections have reached four-digit figures many times now and it does not seem to dwindle down so far. The possibility of CMCO being extended is quite high. Rather uncomfortably, there is a new Covid-19 cluster appearing very close to home i.e. Combi factory in Oakland. Just this morning, before we had our breakfast at 22 Food Junction, we saw many foreign workers queuing up at the nearby BP lab, most probably for the swab test.

Breakfast at 22 Food Junction, Seremban 2

On my classes, I had to teach Mathematical Methods in Physics (which I had taught in some recent semesters) and Statistical Mechanics. The latter I had left it for some time and had no proper notes for the subject. I considered several different textbooks for the course but I settled down with a new book: Carlo Di Castro and Roberto Raimondi's "Statistical Mechanics and Applications in Condensed Matter" published in 2015 by Cambridge University Press. The hope was then to give the students a fresh approach to statistical mechanics. Later, I found it might have been quite difficult for the students but there is no turning back now. I have recorded all my lectures which I uploaded in YouTube (unlisted) but it is also available here (warning: the lectures are raw).

Another significant event that has passed is EQuaLS2020. This was earlier planned in mid-March but it got cancelled due to the Covid-19 and the implementation of the first MCO. After some stagnated attempts to redo the event, we decided this to be held on 2-6 November 2020. We almost had all the original intended line-up of speakers apart from SpeQtral's representative James Grieve is replaced by Aitor Villar. We also had a new speaker, Andrew Childs. The whole event is conducted online on Zoom platform. The students had helped a lot in running the event and made it livelier than the earlier EQuaLS partly because the present one is less research-oriented but perhaps is also due to it is the first one done online and the wish to make it successful. The event was opened by CyberSecurity Malaysia CEO, Dato Ts Dr Haji Amiruddin Abdul Wahab and there was a launch of MyQuantum Waves initiative (a project planned for 12th Malaysia Plan - however on November 23, we were told that we did not get the needed funding). Here are the EQuaLS2020 opening videos: 

Finally one last significant event was the email I received from the President of European Mathematical Society (EMS). Roughly two years ago, when I was still the Deputy Director of INSPEM, we reapplied for INSPEM to have the status of EMS- Emerging Regional Centre of Excellence (EMS-ERCE). Due to the two-year lapse, one was not really expecting any encouraging news about it. But then it came (see picture below). So congratulations to INSPEM and I hope the reacquiring of this status will help strengthen the institute. All the best.