Acceptance

It has been ages since I've met my sons working/studying in Selangor. When the restrictions were lifted earlier, we did ask our sons whether they will come back home to visit us. Our third son who is in IIUM, said that he could not as no student is allowed to leave the campus at the time. The eldest and second eldest did come back and had took necessary precautions on coming back. The eldest Khair had took a swab test since he was working in a hot red zone but the result is negative. He arrived home last night, looking pretty exhausted as some of his workmates have left the company and he had took up some of their duties, making it difficult to take leave. As long as he is happy and  don't get too much overworked, it's ok. It is now difficult to find jobs these days. My second eldest, Ihsan came back home earlier on Thursday. He was happy to be able to pray Friday prayers yesterday at our local surau since in Selangor, there were severe restrictions on conducting Friday prayers. (Note: the Friday prayers conducted here follow all the standard preventive measures namely, scanning the MySejahtera QR code, checking temperature, social distancing during the congregation and masks on all the time even during prayers). Just early this morning, he has gone back to work for his weekend shifts. Later in the month, he will return home again since he has tendered his resignation for him to do his postgraduate studies in UPM.

Nothing makes me happier than being able to see the family together again. I guess I am now feeling how our parents felt when they were alive, always hoping to see their sons and daughters. Once my colleague who were at the institute (now in a private university) told me that the university will not really miss us when we go since we can be replaced but our families are the ones who will really miss us when we are not around. At this late stage, I rather wished that I had spent more time with the family. The family will always accept who we are.

In many ways, I have always struggled to be accepted whether at the institute or the department. Like Penrose said, to the mathematicians, we are physicists and to the physicists, we are mathematicians. Perhaps this recognise the fact that we are indeed interdisciplinary (despite what other people think). I do take note sometimes how our contributions are treated or accepted by others. But it doesn't really matter, because sometimes what we do goes beyond the interest of whatever (smaller) organization we are affiliated with.

Whatever it is, I will continue to contribute my expertise wherever I can, appreciated or not. Hopefully it meant something for the nation, and more importantly I can bring these as good deeds to the hereafter.

To Be Continued

Just finished my marking after a few grueling days for each subject. As a result, had another bad episode of back pain. I ended up not using my Samsung Galaxy tablet for the marking but used my Huion tablet attached to my laptop instead. Perhaps I will find other uses for the Samsung tablet later (still paying through installments).

Few pieces of news. First, we were told that despite the CSM-INSPEM collaboration did not get funding in the recent budget, efforts to get the funding will be continued in the following years. I believe the research group is also trying to get funding by other means. I guess we just have to keep trying and realise that nothing comes easy. Quantum technology will be here to stay even if we decide to ignore it and such a decision will only make the technology gap wider for future generation of science here. Some may decide to call it fad but let us see what happens in the future. Often the case, our crystal ball is neither big enough nor of higher resolution by choice.

Next, the CMCO has been continued in operation for most districts in Selangor and for Negeri Sembilan, Seremban and Port Dickson, until 20 December 2020. The travelling restrictions have been relaxed a little. The number of new infections each day is still in four digits. Seremban saw a big spike two days ago due to new cases in the local prison. Hope the recent news of available vaccine will help make the situation better in the near future. Fatigue.

EQuaLS2020 has been over for more than a month. Things have now returned to (new) normal of visible inactivity. The event did not quite receive the publicity that I thought it should have. Perhaps it is a blessing in disguise, given the setback in the quantum project. In any case, I decided to post up Kwek's public talk in my YouTube channel, so that more people can have access to it (see below). For future EQuaLS, I will leave this to the younger colleagues; I will probably be retiring from UPM then. Let me however say that it is not as easy as some people think, to bring experts here. It is not the lure of travel or honorarium one is willing to pay, but it is their willingness to share, the kind of intellectual environment of an event that we can put up is more of the thing that they looked into. They won't come simply for the sake of an event with no real follow-ups (given now it is worsened by predator events) of what we will be doing, the tradition that we will build. I had invited many well-known scientists who said no and some did not even bother to answer, particularly if we are 'nobody'. I can only imagine that with the Covid-19 pandemic and the travel restrictions, it is only going to get worse (the difficulty to organise events) in the future. So do create traditions and perhaps we have to be a bit more specialised and we are known to at least some circles. So here is Kwek's public talk:

Another video that I have uploaded there is the recent talk by Microsoft Malaysia National Technology Officer, Dr. Dzaharudin Mansor on "The Fourth Industrial Revolution: The Central Role of Mathematics". This is probably one of the few local talks that I have attended with considerable interest. Some of the things he highlighted in the talk reconfirms what I have seen over the years: the lack of learning culture perhaps leading to lesser adaptability which would be problematic in the fast-changing times we are facing now. He alluded to two references, which I will look them up: (i) Digital Economy Report 2019; (ii) Platform Revolution. Even when he mentioned about adaptability and the fast changes we see now, I quite liked the fact that he stressed that one should be grounded good in the (abstract, as opposed to practiced) fundamentals. Below is his talk:

I am now counting months to my official retirement (if it is not earlier). I hope some of the things that I do so far, will be continued by my younger colleagues and students. One has to promote our theoretical work because no one else will do this for us. We either rise or sink (be absorbed into other areas). There is a call for me to write something for the public. I'm hesitating partly because I'm not a high flyer or star-studded researcher and some even see me as deadwood (from what I've heard). There is a worry of backfire in a sense. But what do you think? Should I continue or just let me rest?

First Half-Semester Gone

I ended my teaching for the first half-semester today though it was not on a good note. I fumbled in my last class for both subjects much due to I'm falling behind in my note-making (typed and uploaded) now in both subjects. For Statistical Mechanics, it was pretty obvious that my note-making will usually be behind time because I do not have any notes before for the subject. I must say, I spend a lot of time to get a feel for the subject and to do this, needs a lot of reading beyond the suggested textbook. For Mathematical Methods, I do have some amount of my own notes but now I have used it all up and for future topics, I will start the note-making from scratch. In doing these notes, I prefer not just parroting what is already in the book but I tend to give details and sometimes even different perspectives that I had. Yes, that is why giving more weightage for first-time teaching is indeed the right thing to do (for assessment) but I would rather have this heavier weightage be gradually reduced beyond the first-time teaching since usually one's set of notes will not be stabilised until after a few cycles of teaching. So next week being a semester break will indeed give me some breathing space to catch up on the notes. Now, I still have the SCL modules to do because I have promised my students to give them before the break. This usually involves selecting suitable papers for them to review related to the topics of the course. Hope I can finish this before the weekend.

Happening today was also my turn to give a talk in our group meeting. Some weeks before, I was contemplating to review some materials for some unsolved research problems given to my students. Alas, weeks gone by without me preparing too much for the talk (which was on symplectic topology). In fact, I stumbled into Alisa Keating's Part III notes just yesterday. With Statistical Mechanics 9am lecture today to prepare, I did not get to say much and did not even get to the point of introducing J-holomorphic curves. So I did feel bad about the talk. In any case, I did upload the talk on YouTube (unlisted) just for the record.

So Monday next week is the beginning of the semester break and it is also the end of the almost nation-wide CMCO. Will the CMCO continue? Well the number of new Covid-19 infections today is back to four figures (1075 cases) and there are 11 new deaths. In the state of Negeri Sembilan (where I'm staying), there are 52 new cases adding to the few thousands of confirmed cases before (some have been discharged).

The worry is still there that the infections go out of control; the balance between people's livelihood and this worry is wholly nontrivial. Going back to lives within my sphere, chatted with my own students on how they are coping with all the online learning. Some of them yearn to be back in campus and wish to have face-to-face interactions to study better. I feel sorry for them. That is why I recorded all my lectures and made them available for the students to revisit. I made extra efforts to make sure my notes are properly typed for them to download and learn. I hope they manage.

For me, being an introvert, I tend to work better in isolation, away from most people. In this sense, I prefer the current work from home situation simply because it is more flexible and I do not waste time travelling. If I decide to do long hours in late nigh for work, I do not have to worry much since I do not have to drive (about 50 km to campus) the following day. I prefer to shy away from limelight particularly when it tends to lead to controversies. For instance, my recent blogpost was posted on the social media and there were ensuing discussions about the matter. On social media, people often get to be opinionated and left unchecked, strengthened later on by their respective cheerleaders. This is why I rather have a face-to-face discussion on serious matters without any audience. But that is just me I guess. 

I Dream of Quantum (Jeannie)

 Today, the following news article was brought to my attention.

The article calls for our country to consider exploring quantum computing. The writer is Yap Yung Szen, a researcher from UTM who has some experience in conducting experiments in Japan and Singapore. I don't think I have met the person before but it is certainly encouraging to know a local Malaysian to be working in quantum information experiments. So far, I think the experiments he was involved in are all abroad and I'm not sure what experimental set-ups does he have locally in UTM (if any). Nevertheless, I hope his call in the article will get to be noticed by decision-makers.

For us here, we have made attempts to delve into quantum technologies in the past. The most recent is the initiative we had in collaboration with CyberSecurity Malaysia (CSM). The technology we hoped to explore was that in quantum communications, for which I think the technology gap is quite close given that there are many local researchers in photonics. All that is needed is to go to the next level of manipulating single photons. In fact, at one point, Malaysia already had a quantum key distribution (QKD) in open space experiment conducted by MIMOS around 2009. However this project was discontinued as their management opted for more commercially viable technologies in other areas. The main experimentalist involved in the mentioned experiment has now gone back to Indonesia, leaving some sort of vacuum for Malaysia to venture into experimental QKD. With CyberSecurity Malaysia showing keen interest in developing QKD together with post-quantum cryptography in the next Malaysia plan, we saw this as a golden opportunity for us to grab to bring quantum technologies to Malaysia. Some considerable efforts were made in this initiative including the contact with a Singapore quantum start-up. However, the news that we were given recently is that no funding is made available for this initiative under the recent Malaysian budget. So currently, we are back to just doing theoretical work. With only less than two years left before I retire, I will probably continue whatever mathematical physics research that we already have in the group.

Do we discontinue to dream to have quantum technologies here? That very well depends on my younger colleagues and the experimentalists who had shown interest in the initiative with CSM. I certainly hope that the interest will still be maintained so that we are ready to grab the opportunity when it is made available. Our best bet is still to work closely with a major player (e.g. Singapore) as planned in the CSM initiative. Thus, we need to maintain the international network we have communicated with. Surely we do not want Malaysia to be left behind in quantum technologies. Beyond what was planned, I can only suggest that one should get familiar with technologies surrounding Josephson junctions, quantum Hall effect and the likes. Perhaps, closer to materials science is perhaps areas like topological materials are worth considering.

Below, I give the links to developments made in Thailand and Indonesia. Please read them and thereafter, question oneself if we still want to ignore quantum technologies.

The development in Thailand can be read here: https://medium.com/qtft/the-future-of-thailand-and-the-second-quantum-revolution-7f8be39e6ad8 

The development in Indonesia can be read here: https://medium.com/qtft/the-future-of-thailand-and-the-second-quantum-revolution-7f8be39e6ad8

The development in Malaysia: we can still dream. All the best.