Ramadhan Second Week Varia

This week has been a lot of ups and downs (mostly the latter). First, an update on my brother Ahmad Tajuddin: he is still in coma but he can now breath without the aid of a machine. I was informed, given the circumstances, the hospital may want him to be discharged but the family wished for the hospital to reconsider since he still has tubes on for his food and others. I pray to Allah that my brother can regain consciousness and given the strength to recover. 

My brother used to work in MARDI and in those early years, after he came back from Belgium and was stationed in Malacca, he was awarded Anugerah Saintis Muda (must be in late 70s or early 80s). I searched the web for any article about him but could not find any. Instead I found this link referring to his writings which I believed are papers for conferences.

Last two weeks, my housemate in Adelaide messaged me asking for my address. Was surprised by this - he said he wanted to send me some mangoes from his garden farm. The mangoes arrived three days ago and it was very sweet (see pic below). Thank you very much. He told me he somehow remembered about his housemates in Adelaide. I wished him well in his retirement.

For some reason I too, remembered about my course-mate, Anacleto Mernone in Adelaide and was wondering about his whereabouts. Searched on the web and found his google scholar page. It seemed that he did his PhD under Prof. J.N. Mazumdar, my mathematical biology lecturer. I could not find his current position; the last one seems to be in 2011 at Department of Nuclear Medicine at Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Maybe he has retired.

Today is my third son's birthday. Bought him a cake yesterday to celebrate during the breaking of fast. Below is a pic:

These days, I spent less time on social media, hoping to do real work. If it is not for some useful information on social media, I would have probably left it some time ago. My posts there have been mostly to put useful links for future references and occasionally personal posts to record some events. 

Ramadhan First Week Varia

We have gone past a week of fasting in Ramadhan. Update on my brother, Ahmad Tajuddin in UMMC: still no changes from the previous condition.

I spent my first day of fasting in the office in campus. Was having terrible back pain that day and I had to take pain killers after breaking my fast. My eldest son came back on the first day of Ramadhan, since he has resigned from the company he was working with, in the hope of getting a better job. I was glad he was able to spend Ramadhan (and God willing, Eid) with us. Have not seen him ever since the second MCO.

That week was a bit busy with me reading for my presentation at our QuEST weekly meeting. Initially I wanted to do something for Quantum Day that was declared to be on the 14th April. However the announcement does not seem to attract much attention locally and I have already my presentation on the 15th April. So it went past uncelebrated. It saddens me a little that quantum science is not receiving the attention as it should here (unlike our neighbouring countries). My talk at QuEST was prompted by the fact that we (our group) had not given much attention to functional-analytical aspects of quantum theory. So I thought of giving some ideas of it in the meeting. The talk is entitled "Under the Rug: Functional Analysis and Operator Theory in Quantum Physics"and it is available here.

That talk also had me pondering on what I have been doing all these years. Deep down, I knew I have not achieved what I wanted to do academically here and was looking for a breakthrough that I needed like everyone else in research. I was trying to make peace with myself on the matter. I have to stay happy with what I have and what I have done so far because I can't change the past and there is very little time left for me before retirement. Part of me has grown tired but I will try not to stop pursue my scientific interest. I figured I still need to find another job even after the retirement and to keep moving. Will certainly pray for the best this Ramadhan.

Perhaps I just need to do something different. In a previous post, I did mention I had started reading George Zarkadakis' book "In Our Image". My reading was a bit slow since I'm juggling with various different readings; it took me roughly two weeks to finish my first reading of the book. A couple more weeks was for writing notes of what interests me (took a second speedier reading). The notes I took was 30 pages long condensing over 350 pages of the book. Essentially the book is on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and problems and fears associating with progress on the subject. It gets philosophical in many places, some are known to philosophy readers but I may have not pay attention to them. The theme of dualism runs throughout the book; that of Plato with the world of forms and Aristotle with empiricism as well as Descartes' mind-body duality that has direct bearing on the notion of intelligence. What got me hooked initially to the book is how it begins with the big bang of brain development via the development of language from its social form to a general-purpose one. It also mentions art (first artform found was Hohlenstein Stadel lion-man) as signifying the progress of intelligence in the minds of early human. I recalled Snowden mentioning about arts developing before language and by that I think he meant the general-purpose language. For some twisted reasons, I had an interest in language much due to my difficulty in mastering my own mother-tongue language but also due to my reading of Bohm's popular book Wholeness and the Implicate Order where he mentioned about rheomode and Semitic language as one language that emphasizes verbs instead of nouns (to which Arabic belongs to). Another theme in the book surrounding language, was the use of metaphors - I recalled a debate I had trying to dismiss their use, only to be reminded how important they are in knowing the unknown. This brings me to foreseeing possible future research on natural language as pursued by Bob Coecke on pregroup grammar and Matilde Marcoli's geometric models of linguistics. At least I wish I could.

The book also discusses about the apocalyptic view of AI that has always captured Hollywood's attention. It is amusing to see how the book ends. The author had speculated the development of AI along the lines of evolutionary biology and the possibility of neuromorphic computing. Somewhere at the end of the book, the author mentions about how intelligent machine are modelled to be like us but instead it may end up transforming us to be like them (having Asperger syndrome is one of them). A particular interesting notion that arises at the end of the book is artificial consciousness as a practical (limited) means of understanding natural consciousness in the same way as AI did for intelligence. All these are speculative of course but they do make us wonder what the outcome would be.

Back to real life. We had sent our cat Lily (my other half's favourite) to the clinic after she showed inactivity and not taking her food as frequent as she used to. The clinic told us that she was indeed having kidney problem and she was on drips there. When she was back from the clinic, she was really weak (see pics below).

We changed her food to the one for cats with kidney problem (see below). She seems to be slightly better after a few days, to the relief of my other half.

My youngest son Izzuddin has finally finished his last SPM paper on History paper III on Monday. This was a paper he was supposed to sit for, during the quarantine period he had earlier, after somebody in the class caught Covid-19. Fortunately he was negative as reported earlier. A day after, he began to work in a nearby McDonalds eatery and he seems happy about it. Signing off for another 8am lecture.

Pre-Ramadhan Birthday and Katie Post

Once again I have sort of paused my blogging much due to many events happening, busy with the thoughts of what I wanted to do but ending up doing something else, which I would have preferred not doing. My brother, Ahmad Tajuddin is still unconscious in UMMC with no sign of changes and possible future surgery, as far as I am told. I pray that his condition gets better and not get complicated and that he will return to normal in this coming Ramadhan. Prayers are all we have at this moment.

My third son, Izharuddin has gone back to his college in IIUM last Tuesday as he needs to start his final year project. He told me it is very possible that he will not come home for the coming 'Eid (rather sadly). He will also be quarantined for ten days first at IIUM before moving back to his original college. The day he went back to his college was his birthday. Knowing full well, we would be very busy that day, we celebrated his birthday just the night before. We went for dinner at Foodie Republic with the whole family and later bought him a cake at Baker's Cottage. Below are some of the pics.

Now, in the house, there are just four of us. My second son Ihsanuddin has already made plans to return to UPM campus as he begins his MSc study in Biotechnology, doing research with a Japanese company as I am told. If he does so, there will only be three of us in the house during Ramadhan and possibly Eid.

Yesterday, our first cat (Katie) (we had her when we stayed at the current place), left us. Before, she had a minor surgery to remove a small lump near her stomach. Later, another lump appeared and the suspicion is that it was cancerous. We sent her to the clinic for another surgery and thereafter, everything went down hill. In the last week, she can barely walk and hid from us under the bed and wardrobe. It was only in the morning yesterday, that my son realised that she was not moving. Here are some pics just before she had her final surgery

This was taken by my eldest son in his room. Katie had to be separated from the rest of the cats since she tends to get fierce. Hence, she has been a companion to my eldest in the room for quite a while before he took up a job in Shah Alam. When I informed him (in our family WhatsApp group) that Katie had died, he got really sad. 

The pic below was taken by my other son after the second surgery. At the time she was really weak and can hardly walk properly.

It is kind of sad that nobody was tending to her in the final hours. After shedding some tears, my other half put her on this cushion before we wrapped her up in some old clothes for burying. See pics below.

Like the other cats in the past, we simply buried her in our backyard that afternoon. Presently another cat (Lily - the oldest surviving cat after Katie) seems to show some illness, being inactive. Lily is closest to my other half and often sleeps in our room. Hope to bring her to the clinic soon.

I end this post with my Ramadhan wish that we will be stronger and remained grateful with what we have in life. May there be more good deeds that we can bring to the hereafter.

Hospital Visit

Today was the funeral for my nephew Nashruddin Ahmad Tajuddin. The janazah prayers was performed at Masjid Al-Muhsinin. With deep regrets, I did not go due to the scheduled early time, the distance, the limit in number (20 attendees) and the complications that come with inter-state travel. My brother Nordin (within the same state) went for the funeral prayers.

I took leave today because my intent is to visit my brother Ahmad Tajuddin who suffered a stroke and is in University of Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC). Despite my leave, I gave my Special Relativity two-hour lecture in the morning and my other half went to work in her clinic for half-day. As I prepared the documents for requesting permission for interstate travel, I received the message that my brother was unconscious and in a critical state. I went to the police station and showed all the necessary documents and hoping that we are given the permission to do the travel. Alhamdulillah, we were given that permission. As soon as my other half reached home, we begin our travel to UMMC. We also contacted my sister-in-law to assist us when we get there (much indebted to her).

Due to Covid-19 pandemic, the hospital impose strict regulations and in normal circumstances, no visitors are allowed at all. For critical patients, only the closest relatives are given special permission. All visitors need to go for proper scanning and obtain an 'entry visa' online. Initially, I thought we just need MySejahtera to scan the QR code, but this won't work. Luckily I still have my ordinary QR code scanner still installed in my mobile phone. Note that scanning the QR code only gets you into the hospital buildings and not the wards. For entrance into the wards are only for exceptional cases of critical cases as I was informed.

As I went in, I saw my brother lying there on the bed unconscious with a machine ventilator to help with his breathing. Recited Qur'anic verses for him and my eyes just swelled with tears. I can't imagine the grief my brother had felt when he lost his son that led him to be in this condition. I pray that he will be given the strength to regain consciousness and be healthy again. Later, my other half and son who was with us, went in one by one as we are not allowed to be there for long and in groups.