Back in 221

On Monday, I received a message from the Head of Department saying that my temporary office has to be vacated for a new lecturer. I was in this temporary office (Room 216) since my old office (Room 221) had its air-conditioning unit not functioning. So ever since I'm back at the Faculty, I have moved into two different temporary offices. Now that they have replaced the air-conditioning unit, the expectation is for me to return back to the old office. I delayed this action, thinking I would like to do this after 'Eid and hopefully by then, I can get the help of others to move and help clean up my old office.

I had left this office for more than twenty years since I was in the management of two different institutes (I rather stay fixed to a single office so that students can easily find me). I had a brief stay in the office during 2009. At the time, Andreas Doering was around in INSPEM as a fellow consultant. The whiteboard in the old office had his handwriting all over it, explaining to me about topos theory (see picture below).

There was also this transparency pinned on the softboard in which I tried to explain the connections of the different research areas I was interested in then (see pic below). Those were the ambitious years.

I also found that my old server monitor and laser printer was broken. I guess this happened while they were installing the new air-conditioning unit. But this is fine, because they were not functioning anymore. The server I had in the room used to serve Qfizik, the website I used to host for my lectures and research materials and other resources (see this wayback machine capturing Qfizik). The room was terrible, dirty and dusty. This is essentially the reason why I wanted to postpone moving back to the old office. I certainly need help in moving and cleaning the room. With the MCO in place, there were no students to help, but my younger colleague Chan Kar Tim helped me out. So we cleaned up enough spots for me to work in the room (see pic below).

The temporary room has been vacated for the department to use and I have returned the key to Mr. Asrul, one of the Faculty support staff.

Thus, I will be using my old office until I retire. Still need cleaning up for me to be comfortable. Also I had this large white board that I hope to move to the Theoretical Lab whenever things returned a bit to normal. It has been declared that tomorrow the university will only retain only critical staff and everyone else has to be working from home.