Friday, June 25, 2021

Yesterday was a busy day for me. Beginning early at 8am, a meeting was set up for me to evaluate an industrial training student, Muhammad Nabil who was stationed at the Medical Radiation Monitoring Section (Bahagian Kawalselia Radiasi Perubatan - BKRP) of the Ministry of Health, Malaysia. Not sure when was the last time I did this, but I remembered going to USIM for a similar thing. So, I wasn't sure how the meeting should go and I will just improvise as it goes along. Introduce myself to the officers at BKRP, Syarul Iman and Mohd Reduan and they too introduced themselves. I asked the student to go ahead with his presentation since time is limited. This was followed by Q&A and I also invited the officers to give their thoughts. Finally I thanked the officers for letting our students have the learning opportunity there. Below is a pic.

The reason there was a rush for the above morning meeting is that I am scheduled to get my second dose of Covid-19 vaccination later that morning. So right after that session, my son drove me to the teaching hospital of UPM. The place for vaccination was different from the first one. This time one does not need to queue in a line but rather we simply register ourselves at a counter to get our number, later to be called in the designated ward (different from the first).

After the second dose is administered, our MySejahtera app was updated and we were given the electronic certification of the vaccination (see pic below).

Back home, had my lunch and rested a little before beginning the next task of the day i.e. hosting the Physics Departmental Seminar. This time, I invited  a guest from Universiti Malaya, Dr. Norhasliza Yusof to give the talk.

It was on an intriguing subject of nuclear astrophysics, particularly on stellar evolution, which I know very little about. Met virtually her local supervisor, Prof. Hasan Abu Kassim, a long-time friend whom I have not seen for quite some time. We discuss a bit before the seminar, the frustrations of our local theoretical physicists and his soon-to-be retirement.

The talk with the Q&A went on for more an hour and a half. The recording of the talk can be found below.

Immediately after the seminar, I rested since my arm where the shot was administered, hurt a little bit. This morning was a bit feverish and so I just slept the whole way through. Right now, I'm struggling to be alert with the hope to do some work.

I posted about my vaccination on social media with my pics below.

Apparently, somebody got offended by this post (I knew the person was referring to my post since unlike the post of others, I simply said "Alhamdulillah, done" - not exaggerating about the vaccination). I was upset on reading it but after awhile I have a sense of pity for the person. The person is probably frustrated of not yet being vaccinated but so was I before I got my appointment and so too of many others. My immediate thoughts, thereafter, is that one should not allow social media to dictate too much our life. Just simply scroll past most of the posts on social media and just take note what one is interested in. If there is a need, just unfollow or worse, unfriend. Most social media posts are rants that are not worth to ponder on too much. These days, I use social media merely to record significant events of my life and to put some interesting items that I hope to refer to later. In particular, would like to post only on nice and useful things. And I suggest others do the same; flood the social media with better posts than just rants.

Imperfect (Like Everyone)

Have been going through ups and downs lately. I wanted to do so much but my ageing body and mind do not seem to be cooperating. A great part of me wants to stop pushing for things and wishes to be left alone. I have already had my good share of humiliation and negativities in the past and these contribute a lot to my pessimism. Like everyone else, I'm not perfect and there is no real need for anyone to raise this. Imperfect but not dumb. The desires of progress and self-improvement are still burning within but perhaps the fuel is about to diminish.

When it comes to theoretical physics, I still wish that it is firmly established in UPM and I do believe that both physics and mathematics will stand to benefit from having a good theoretical physics group. As such, there is a need to grow the theoretical physics group larger for sustainability (in my humble opinion). Despite what people think, doing research in theoretical physics is difficult and in these days, one is faced with great difficulty in complying with the publication rate set by administrators without regard to the field and even to the subfields one is in. One remark that I had heard from the past is just change fields, which is not really helpful. Theoretical physics tradition needs to be strengthened and not destroyed at the mercy of individuals who do not like it.

To aspiring young theoretical physicists, do not get easily fooled by the glamour of having to understand the technically difficult subject matter. We may 'glow' locally but the real test is how well established are us in the international arena. I recalled how Prof. Lamberto Rondoni was saying how difficult it is to be truly recognised at the international level even in a single technical subfield. Realise this and one is immediately humbled. To get international recognition, either one has a long tradition of (consistently) producing research output at an international level or once in a blue moon, bright ideas may come and are acceptable by majority of theorists. Having said this, ideas don't grow on trees; they require a significant amount of experience and technical prowess to realise them. Don't dismiss unconventional ideas too quickly but on the cautious side, do look at consistency of crackpot signals produced (see Baez's index). Usually, real crackpots tend to be easily detected upon examination of their understanding of recent technical knowledge.

Finally, above everything, ego does not go well in the pursuit of theoretical knowledge. Some amount of humility and self-doubt will serve as counter-check to the growing ego. In the end, what matters are the good deeds that we produce during such pursuit. These, we will bring to the next life.

Not to sound sermonious, these are things that I try to observe and practice myself. Tried my best and the rest is for Allah to decide. 

In the end, it is our family that will miss us most when we are gone, while working organizations will move on with or without us. Alhamdulillah, yesterday my family put up a nice surprise for me to celebrate father's day. Below is a pic (excuse the sarong and the informality). We simply gathered late yesterday afternoon in front of the TV and had an ice-cream cake for evening tea.

The Talk for ICAAMM 2021

All last week, my mind was occupied with the preparation of the talk I need to give at ICAAMM 2021 hosted Biruni University. Before that, I was still figuring out what to talk on - I had a few ideas in mind. However, I wanted to talk on something new and kept searching for ideas. When the organizers asked for my abstract, I settled with something I was comfortable with, namely, quantization. I had given a similar talk way back in 2012 in IIUM's conference ICAST. I thought I will just update the talk with more materials and recent developments. In this way, I already had some basic slides that I could use. During the preparation all last week, I changed a few times on how I should organize the talk but the main core is still to highlight the different philosophy of two main schools of quantization i.e. geometric quantization and deformation quantization. The initial idea was ambitious but with only 40 minutes given, I have to settle with a simpler talk.

The bulk of contributions to the conference seems to be coming from the community of researchers in fractional calculus, a topic I knew very little about. So in a way, my talk is slightly at odds with the rest. Another invited speaker who was supposed to talk on quantum stuff even change his topic to a different one, I guess, to fit the different audience. I carried with my own quantization talk, regardless. My talk was on Saturday (10.40 Istanbul time and 3.40 pm locally). Below are pics at the beginning of my talk (courtesy of Prof. Aydin Secer). They did a recording of the talk (not sure where it will be published) and there was also FB live (possibly still available on FB).

The talk went OK, I guess, but there were several things on my mind that I did not get quite to say in the talk (as usual). Below is a pic of the closing ceremony with all the invited speakers.

I attended most of the invited talks apart from the late evening ones on the first day, which includes Prof. Maslina Darus and Prof. Adem Kilicman (the other Malaysian representatives). Sorry guys, I was just too tired. I guess it is the age factor. I get tired easily these days and will easily fall asleep (in spite of me wishing to do more work).

It is certainly an honour to be invited to give talks and the invitation has always come from outside. Perhaps, within my work place, not much interest goes into what I do. I hope that will change after say another decade because I don't think one can ignore theoretical physics or quantum sciences for a physics department. The more we ignore, the more difficult for us to catch up in these very technical areas. Anyway, I have put in quite a bit of work to make my talks of some international and respectable level (I think). 

Received First Dose

As reported in this post, got my appointment for my first dose of vaccination earlier this week. In a way, it was unexpected, mainly because I'm living in a different state from my workplace. I registered at MySejahtera using my home address but somehow the place where I will get my vaccination is at the Teaching Hospital of the university (see pic below). So I guess the university must have somehow did a different registration and cross-referenced my details with my own registration in MySejahtera, for which I thank you.

On Tuesday, I received a call from the hospital to confirm on my appointment. There were some forms, sent through e-mail, for which I need to fill on the day of the vaccination. Fearing to drive alone (thinking of side-effects) all the way from Seremban to the hospital (situated near the campus), I applied for interstate travel for me and my second son from the local police station.

On the day itself, we began our journey earlier fearing traffic jam due to police blockades or congestion at the hospital. However, the journey was smooth and we reached the hospital slightly before 10.20am. There were plenty of parking spaces then, perhaps due to the vaccination was meant only for the staff. I was asked to take the lift to the sixth floor and go to the EnT clinic. Inside there was already a short queue lined up for the vaccination.

With SOPs in place, the queue and all the necessary registration, it took almost an-hour wait before I got my first dose of vaccine. The vaccine we had was from Pfizer. After we had the shot, we were asked to record this in MySejahtera to show that we have completed our first dose (see pic).

The second dose will be administered about three weeks later; mine will be on 25th June. For colleagues who have yet to get their first dose, you need to bring your smart phones for all the records needed for MySejahtera; the forms printed (one on the declaration, needs two copies); and a pen to fill up details.

Side effects so far? The ones that are obvious are the soreness of the arm where the shots were made, and a headache (which I already have one slightly before coming). During the late evening, there was a sense of feeling feverish but this could be psychological. My other half gave me two paracetamol tablets to help relief the headache and she advised me not to take pain killers (not sure why). Until now, still having that arm soreness and slight prolonged headache. No fever so far.

Despite the headache, that afternoon I attended briefly a meeting and later joined a seminar in the institute given by a Malaysian data scientist working in Shell UK.

Picked up some useful resources from the talk (see below).