Palatao Comments

Update: A day after, I left another WhatsApp group that had somebody commenting rather insensitively on the doctors' plight. This time, it was an alumni group; my other half even resented the remarks and was surprised such 'educated' group can have such remarks. I do not know personally those who made the insensitive comments in both groups and hence rather not get involved in arguing with them. Egos tend to get in the way usually unless we know each other and where we are coming from. The easiest option is to leave the group (though for the surau group, I felt a bit sad to leave it) and have my peace of mind.

Palatao is a word invented to refer to those who thinks they know everything and made comments in the social media that are often negative and false. It has now been included in the urban dictionary (just like the word koyak).

I normally tend to ignore posts made by such people in this category unless the matter is personally directed to me or in some cases on matters directly related to things I'm deeply concerned with. Some posts propagate stereotypes, divisiveness and some even caused gross injustice. The last one troubles me most, as any sane person should. Normally, when I come across such people, I will try to distance myself and let them drown in their own foolishness. I do pray that such people should not be given any critical responsible roles since they are incapable of thinking about others.

Yesterday happens to be one such instance and it happen right in my local surau community. The post can be seen below, conversation between two persons in the local whatsapp group. The comment made against doctors are really disappointing, insensitive and I'm pretty sure that the person is not aware of the current predicament that doctors are facing. The whatsapp group should only be concerned about matters pertaining to the surau. In the past, there are individuals who stir up heated discussions by posting political issues in the whatsapp group but they tend to get warned by the admin of the group. If they need to discuss on matters not pertaining to the surau, they can create a different group to do so. I do not know the persons who made these remarks but I certainly do not want to mix with such persons and thus I left the group. I hope the admin of the surau whatsapp group will take note of the displeasure of others when such comments are allowed.

I was told that another person left after I did. Later some doctors in the group tried to explain what is going on but I heard that the person did not apologise or retract his comments. I sincerely hope that he will eat his words one day.

One Million Mark

Yesterday, we have surpassed the one million mark for active Covid-19 cases and there is no signs of it easing down. 

The only comfort one has is that we have ramped up our vaccination rate. One should also remember that those who have been infected also will have natural antibodies. These will be the two sources in our race to attain herd immunity (thought to be achievable after 60-70% of the population vaccinated). On the other hand, one has the mutations of the virus to factor in, particularly if the infections are not contained globally. There is no guarantee of new surge of infections in the future. In fact, having vaccinated does not mean one will not get infected. In fact, there are cases I know personally who got vaccinated fully, got infected thereafter, though the symptoms are milder. According to MOH, they categorised the infections as in the table below.

The vaccinated cases I know above rarely goes beyond Stage 3. Thus, one should not be too comfortable, even after vaccination. I, for one, have not gone out for weeks now, relying on foodpanda and my sons for some groceries or banking matters. For more information about our current situation, the articles below should be helpful:

• Christine Aschwanden, "Five reasons why Covid herd immunity is probably impossible"
• Nicky Philips, "The coronavirus is here to stay - here's what that means"

As a Muslim, I see the current pandemic as a 'bala' (calamity). Now, to some this is probably a forgone conclusion, but I still see people's reactions and actions in the socmed sphere, as if it is not. The two articles above should give the signal that our problems are far from over and not to mention about the economic gloom that arises from the pandemic. I sincerely hope that some miracles will happen to get us out of the pandemic (called it divine intervention or human ingenuity or whatever). Let us do our part by staying home and limit our movement as much as we can. Let us not complain about boredom of being at home, when there are others who are working hard to ensure our health system not to collapse. When my son join the lab that helped do the Covid testing, he got the evening shift to work beginning from 3pm until 12 midnight, reaching home at about 1 a.m. with only one day leave (usually Sunday). Yesterday however, he was still working and has today as a replacement leave. The frontliner doctors and nurses will have probably much worse working hours. So when there is a viralled video, that some people are dancing joyfully at some official function, I find it to be really upsetting. Please do this at your personal time at home and not in public. We should be thinking and helping out how to get out from our current gloom, contributing in whatever capacities we have. My prayer is that we will always be guided in our actions.

Surrounding Eidul-Adha

I took a few days off surrounding Eid-ul-Adha to rest and take my mind off work. The latter seemed impossible. I keep getting reminders for example of my editorial tasks of our journal, of which I had already made my intentions of leaving the position before. There are many other unsettled matters too. I really wish I have some time off to really pursue what I am really interested in before the new semester starts. To this too, I'm pushing all my postgraduate students to finish off their studies if possible within this year since I will be retiring next year. What happens after retirement, I am not sure. Situations seem to push me to look for another job then. Certainly my scientific ambitions have yet to be fulfilled. Some of the things I wish to pursue have been given to my present and past students but there are still open problems yet to be solved. I hope for some miracles to happen at this very late stage of life.

Things are not looking bright these days. The Covid-19 infections do not seem to show any signs of easing. Below is the current numbers given yesterday.

On the social media, things are rife with rants and divisive issues; the latest being the squabble between religious public figures, which is really embarrassing because it only displays our immaturity (no matter which side one is on). If not for some beneficial aspects of the social media, I would probably have turned it off. People tend to be very judgmental and easily siding with their own circles of influence, amplifying differences, rather than finding solutions. Perhaps they have not realised that we are facing a much bigger crisis at hand. Found the pic below that is suitable in describing the situation.

On the brighter side, my eldest son Khairuddin and my youngest Izzuddin just got their first shot of Covid-19 vaccination. Apart from the usual sore on the arm, they seem to be reacting ok. Hopefully all my sons will receive their second dose soon. This will put some worry off. Currently we are hearing reports of infections of the delta-variant of the virus in Rembau, which is really worrying.

I really hope there are happier news ahead but things are really looking gloomy.

Eidul-Adha 1442

Today is Eidul-Adha that signifies sacrifice. I once have tweeted that there are differences between sacrifices and struggles. This thought has always humbled me since most of the times, I feel that I'm just struggling, rather than making sacrifices. Few days before today's Eid, I have been watching videos of reverts of their journey to Islam. Do note that I am most grateful of being born Muslim but it also meant deprived of the search for truth. So by watching these videos, I hope to learn something what I have missed. All I can say I'm humbled and probably put in perspectives the struggles that I have been through.

Today is another Eid-ul Adha that we spend under Movement Control Order (MCO) and so it was pretty uneventful. I kept myself away from work as much as possible. I wanted to be there for the family and I wanted to rest. Unfortunately, my son, Ihsan had to go to work today because all the lab testings for Covid-19 are non-stop. Currently he is still under training and he is actually commuting to Shah Alam until the end of the month. Thereafter he will be stationed at KLIA. So, I thought I take the opportunity of taking a group photo while we are all here at home. Here they are.

The day is about to end. Tomorrow, I am still on leave but I will begin to look at work tomorrow, insyaAllah.

Lily Left Us For Good

In a previous post, I wrote about the declining health of Lily. She could barely walked just the night before and my other half tended to her, giving her glucose and laid sheets of flattened box and newspaper for her to lie down. Just yesterday morning, right after the Special Relativity & Classical Field Theory final exam, my son Izhar told us that Lily has left us. I immediately called my other half telling her about the news as she was at work. She came back home at noon in order to say a final goodbye to Lily and thereafter made a burial for Lily in our backyard.

Lily was my other half's favourite cat. She often slept in our room and would wait for my other half to come upstairs to be with her. It is only in the past few weeks that she tend to shy away from us. We knew much earlier that she had kidney failure. She lost a lot of weight and then we decided to get her checked up at a local vet. Knowing about her kidney problems, we bought her special cat food for the failing kidney and there was a slight improvement. Overall, however, one can see that her health declined considerably. Here is a video of Lily when we gave her wet food to help her regain strength: that was her last wetfood meal.

Here are some pics of the last moments with her.

My son Izhar made a video of Lily for my other half.

Goodbye Lily, you will surely be missed.

More Than 30 Years

Sometime on Wednesday, I saw an email on Majlis Gemilang Putra and was simply curious on the recipients of awards in this ceremony. The awards are given to staff showing excellence and its pretty difficult to get on this list (I was not expecting anything). Apparently my name was on the list for Anugerah Bakti Putra (see below). This is given to those who has been in UPM service for more than 30 years.

Thereafter, there was a barrage of congratulatory messages on the Department's WhatsApp group initially for those who got their excellence awards and those who have retired. I guessed then, nobody cared that my name also appeared in the list of awardees, particularly I have been away from the department for so long, to be with the institutes (ITMA then INSPEM). If the absence of mention was prolonged, it will confirm my paranoia view that I was less liked or being ignored. (Un)Fortunately, Prof. Sidek (who was also a recipient for Jasa Putra award), broke the silence and congratulated me in the WhatsApp group. Thereafter, got further congratulatory messages from the rest.

Would it matter if no one noticed? Being a social being, certainly yes as I felt that I've struggled to be accepted for the work that I do on theoretical physics, be at the physics department or the institutes (being a minority). I would have carried on regardless (like I used to anyway) because to me it is a sense of duty to put theoretical physics in place in UPM. Also, I would not want anyone else to have that feeling, so it is important to make this known. The burden was heavy and difficult and any ounce of encouragement would actually help.

So what was there during this long duration? I joined UPM in March 1985 after a brief stint of Diploma of Education at Maktab Perguruan Temenggung Ibrahim (a teachers' college) in Johor. I was on a Ministry of Education scholarship for my B.Sc. (Hons.) degree and was meant to be a teacher. However, I had my eyes on research and thus applied for a position in USM, UKM and UPM. The former two was because I knew there were theoretical physics pursued there. I'm not sure why I missed out UM but perhaps I thought there would be more chances elsewhere. The first offer was made by UPM, which I immediately grabbed the opportunity (slightly later came UKM's offer). So I was at the college only for a few days or probably a week or two (can't remember). I joined UPM as a tutor and was already teaching diploma courses and doing tutorials. I remembered being assigned to design a course on biophysics since I was placed in the lab of Dr. Salleh Harun. Despite having done Mathematical Biology with Prof. J. Mazumdar, I almost know nothing about putting up a course for biophysics. Was also designing experiments for the diploma program. At the same time, I searched for places to do a postgraduate degree. I applied for Part III of Mathematical Tripos at University of Cambridge for which I got the offer. There was a slight complication then because Part III just gave me a Certificate of Advanced Diploma (it was later recognised as a Masters degree in 2011) and there is the expectation for me to do PhD in Cambridge University itself.

So I went to Cambridge in September or October of 1987. I was pretty confident in the beginning given the mathematical physics courses I took in University of Adelaide. However the level of competition here was something else. Spent most of my nights awake, trying to stay on top of all the courses. By the time the results were out in 1988, I got the certificate successfully (some of my friends did not) but was not successful to be considered as a graduate student at DAMTP. I did get an offer to continue with Mark Warner at Cavendish. However, my research interest was elsewhere. Finally took up the offer at Durham University to work under Richard Ward - the other offer was with Ray Streater in King's College. So I moved to Durham in 1988 and did my PhD until December 1990.

Upon returning to UPM, I was told to move to Bintulu campus to teach diploma courses. I was made a fellow of the Second College in Bintulu. So I spent only around three semesters there, since I appealed to go back to the main campus for various reasons. I was back in the main campus in 1992 and got confirmed for the position in 1994. Before getting married in 1993, I was a fellow of the Sixth College. After my other half finished her housemanship, she was stationed in Seremban and we moved there. There was a brief period during which we stayed in Port Dickson since she was later transferred there. Situations forced us to move back to Seremban and been here ever since.  I was asked to apply for Associate Professorship a few years after coming back to Serdang, and got the position in March 2000. I was also briefly the Faculty of Science webmaster in 1997-1998. Under the invitation of Prof. Makhdzir Mardan, I was made a fellow of the newly established Multimedia Institute in 1999 until 2002. In 2002, I joined ITMA as head of laboratory since I was asked to establish a new theoretical laboratory. I was also given the responsibility to head the Publications Committee there. The lab 'merged' with INSPEM in 2006 due to restructuring of the institutes. I took Head of Laboratory position again in INSPEM in 2007. In 2012, I was given the position of Deputy Director of INSPEM until my resignation in 2019. During that period, I was also the Editor-in-Chief of Malaysian Journal of Mathematical Sciences from 2015 to 2018. Now I'm back at the Department of Physics as a normal academic staff. My official retirement date will be in December 2022. All these years, I considered it as my mission to keep theoretical physics alive in UPM and I was hoping then to establish 'high-level mathematics' collaboration with mathematicians but this was harder than I thought. There were many things that I wished I could do but time (& space) is just not on my side.

So yesterday, I got my certificate for Bakti Putra award (see below). Alhamdulillah, I am most grateful for this award and thanking UPM for the trust and opportunity.

Worry for Our Children and Cats

Yesterday, my other half was worried about my sons. My second son, Ihsan, has started to undergo training with a testing laboratory for screening possible Covid-19 patients for more than a week now. My third son, Izhar, also began his industrial training in Bangi after getting the permit letter to travel to work. Both need to use cars to travel to their respective places. Luckily I'm still working at home and my other half used my Chevrolet Malibu to go to work while her car was used by Ihsan to travel to PJ for training. Izhar borrowed Ihsan's car (used to be my blue Chevrolet Aveo car) to go to Bangi. It will be his first time to drive a long distance. Hence the slight worry.

The other worry is that Ihsan had his first shot of vaccine on Saturday. On Sunday, he was feverish and on Monday he had to take medical leave to recover from the side effects. So he was probably weakened but  duty calls to help out at a testing centre. Izhar had his vaccine shot more than a week earlier at the Shah Alam vaccine centre and today we received the news that the vaccine centre had 200 worker-volunteers were Covid-19 positive. So far he did not show any symptoms and we asked to take precautions and follow the SOPs. Below is a picture of Ihsan in his PPE suit.

Yesterday was also the day that Malaysia hit the 10,000th mark for new infections (see figure below). The Health D-G also predicted that the worse is yet to come with the delta-variant of the virus and we can't imagine how that will turn out to be. The hospitals in Lembah Klang and Negeri Sembilan are already working at full capacity or more, pushing non-Covid-19 patients to private hospitals. Somehow, something is not right given that despite the enhanced movement control order, some factories are allowed to work at full capacity and generally there is confusion on the SOPs. Investors have already indicated that they might pull out from the country causing even further damage to the economy. I do hope that the government will hasten to drive all these issues. The only encouraging news we had so far is that our vaccination rate has been ramped up in recent weeks. A recent news that more vaccination supplies will come in for Lembah Klang and Negeri Sembilan that are severely affected. I hope my two other sons will get their vaccination appointment soon, as they are at risk with my other half and Ihsan working as frontliners.

Perhaps another worry of my other half is that her favourite cat, Lily has gone really weak due to kidney failure (known much earlier). Right now, Lily is oozing blood out of her mouth and can barely walk. She needs to be regularly cleaned. Below is my other half tending to her.

Lily is pretty old, we had her probably more than ten years (equivalent human age of 60+) and she's the oldest. We hope that she will not suffer too much. Our other cats that are not quite as old are Boboi (see video drinking water),

Yaya (the only existing cat that we bought)

and Melli, the cat we adopted from the wildlife park in Gambang; she has occasional problems of seizures.

The rest (not shown here) are Fifi (the younger sister of Lily), and Koko (the partially blind cat we rescued from a drain). Of course, the youngest, we have the playful Lofa.

Scarred Memories

Feeling slightly down at the moment. A few events triggered memories of how what one did (how small that may be) goes unappreciated and at its worst, ridiculed. I thought I put these down for those who wish to understand me. It is for these reasons, that I wish to stay away from people, particularly certain individuals, to prevent me recalling bad memories.

Let me take several years back down the road, when I was a young lecturer joining a workshop on university publications. It was a brainstorming session and it was supposed to welcome ideas. I took a shot at it. Despite my naivety, I did my homework and was already familiar with the Chicago Style Manual, and knew the importance of setting standards on problematic matters. At the time, I was already thinking about how to standardise the names of Asian authors that do not quite fit the given name-surname mold used mostly in the West. The idea was brushed off and I realised quickly that when you are 'nobody' in the eyes of others, one's contribution is not worth considering. So, in many ways, it made me becoming more cautious to contribute ideas, particularly with people who are not within my circle. Since 'it was unimportant', I simply adopt the Western mould and named myself as H. Zainuddin in publications. Years later, I was 'ridiculed' in a book of an emeritus professor for adopting this Western name style, making me as an Anglophile. I'm not trying to make issues out of this because I rather focus more on the larger picture, but one gets annoyed, right?

All last week and perhaps the week before, the focus was on final exam questions moderation. I saw some of my thoughts of good practices of writing exam questions have been adopted, but today it went beyond what I did by including standardization of fonts, margins and detailed categorization of questions. My thoughts of the good practice was not really targeted for standardization - the educational intent is far more creative outstripping the standards that caged them. I have no issues in following all these standardizations though I do feel the emphasis might be misplaced. For instance, I know that these exam questions will not be published in a way that they'll need uniformity as one finds in a published book. But, hey this is just a small opinion of mine.

Another concern when I was at the institute is how little attention was given to our activities but I brushed these feelings aside, thinking that mathematics tend to be abstract and it is usually difficult for a layperson to appreciate the things that (pure/theoretical) mathematicians do. However there was this thing that happened to me involving university publicity of institute's events, that got me curious until today. There were two major articles that appeared in the university newspaper that had my pics cropped off. I was really wondering why; I'm not good looking or I'm an embarrassment or what? Sometime last week, I saw the photographer had got her promotion, which is good for her. But the news had awakened up my earlier mentioned curiosity and I really wished I know what the answer is.

Once my junior colleagues mentioned that they know that I was not taken seriously by some. Again, I do not intend to create a fuss out of this because my focus is on progress, rather than who should take credit for whatever happened. Yesterday, received some messages about our university's journals Pertanika are listed under ESCI, which is good and should be applauded. Our Malaysian Journal of Mathematical Sciences had already been inside the ESCI list since at least 2015 or possibly earlier. There was not much fanfare of the matter then. In fact, when MJMS received the CREAM award in 2017, very few took notice about it. In fact one senior staff brushed it off saying that the award was given to encourage our newbie journal. For me, that is fine, as long it was not meant to be discriminatory. As I said, I was aware about how little attention was given to our institute then.

There are many other events I could recall as scarred memories. For me, now, it does not really matter. All I want was progress and if I had helped contribute to this in any small way, my only wish is that it will help me in the hereafter. Once again, I wished to be left alone, so that my intentions are left pure.

July 2021 Second Week

Continuing from my previous post, on matters of decreased quality of livelihood due to Covid-19 pandemic. Unlike when we first encountered the Covid-19 March last year (not much was known about the virus and how to prevent its spread), we have now gained more than a year of experience to cope with this pandemic. Scientificwise, some of this experiential knowledge is perhaps summarized in this article by Nature, "COVID research: a year of scientific milestones". But yet, our problems are from over - the pandemic still rages on with new strains of the virus appearing (the latest being the lambda-variant - see also here). It is good that Malaysia has beefed up the vaccination rate (ignoring all the political and economic setbacks) as it seems there is a race against mutation rate of the virus if people kept getting infected at large (see Nature's article: "The coronavirus is mutating - does it matter?"). Even with vaccination, Covid-19 infection is still possible (the symptoms being milder) - near personal experience of my other half when one of her (vaccinated) staff was Covid-19 positive (infected from elsewhere). Due to this, the clinic was closed all last week and my other half had her two swab tests at closed intervals; the second one was due to the infected staff. All returned test results are thankfully negative and my other half had his pink wrist-band (signalling the need for self-quarantine) removed end of last week. Having to inspect patients, the risks will still be there for my other half and hence the family. At home, my concerns are with the kids previously all unvaccinated. Luckily, two of them got their appointments late last week due to work and were given their first dose. My eldest and youngest have yet to get their appointments.

As for me who is working at home, my work problems are only mere deadlines. Thank God, I've completed all the final exam questions now and have submitted the marks for continuous assessment of the two courses I'm teaching last weekend. This only provides only a small breathing space, as I have many other duties to finish off - reports, paper editing, thesis reading. One meeting last week reminded us of our duties and also of assets under our name. In some way, several years back, I have stopped buying things under research grants, apart from one instance, to get a computer fro students to work on (sharing among a few). These days, we are not allowed to buy computers or even printer toners. For theorists, these are mainly our equipment and consumables - but now we can only use the grant for students and travel (which is now absent). I hope those decision makers will consider all these constraints before blames are put on us (yet again). All these are now under our own personal expenses (no, I'm not complaining but merely trying to paint the real picture). Recently, my Mathematica subscription has ended and I had to forego renewing since I have just too many commitments. Due to all the online teaching I had to subscribe some services to aid my teaching. Earlier in the year, had to disappoint my sons wishing for new computers but instead they had their old computers repaired. Felt bad. My son who was registered for a MSc degree in UPM, also has decided not to continue his studies given the current MCOs and the inability to get lab work done. He is now working in a private lab, doing the lab testings for Covid-19.

What will be our (near) future looks like? Like everyone else, one is frustrated with the current politics and handling of the economy. I certainly think we need to think out of the box. Even in education, this is a good time for a rethink.

Working From Home in the Pandemic Last Week

All last week, it was really hectic. It was the last week of the semester and I was struggling to finish my Advanced Quantum Mechanics course. We were also asked to prepare our final exam questions that week for moderation and for each course, we were asked to prepare for two sets. Of course, with all the struggles I had, I was nowhere near the needed target. Kept pushing though. I was not sleeping right and my sleep patterns were pretty messed up; partly because I work better during the early morning hours. So during normal working hours, I was experiencing some sort of sleep deprivation.

During some of these early morning hours, I had time to reflect on my own achievements thus far. I felt I had not done much despite all my push. I was overly sensitive on what people say, some of which triggered unpleasant memories. Let me say this outright; I have always tried to focus my thoughts to be future oriented since thinking about the past tend to make me more depress. But some events triggered memories. Here, I want to explain some of these. On my resignation as Deputy Director, it was not out of protest but my concern for my own health. I remembered somebody up in the higher management making the remark as if implying me 'fighting the university' or in the protest route. Sincerely that's not it. Some then might say my resignation may be considered selfish. I would rather say it's the opposite; I'm letting go because there were signals I was not wanted at the institute, top and bottom, left and right. So with me out of the way, it solves simultaneously the problems of me not being wanted and my own health concerns. Anyway, I'm revealing all these because I do not want myself to be misunderstood by friends. Like I have once remarked, I accept this all as fate and was trying my best to leave my past behind and move on. By doing so, I do tend to do things differently to cut off my past (which is again open to misinterpretation).

Another factor that was hitting me rather badly is this ongoing movement control order. Even though there are others whose lives are hit harder by the pandemic and the MCO, I think the deterioration of livelihood cuts across all spectrum of the society. I realised my monthly spending is actually higher (despite of  the no-travel to work situation) during these times. Electricity and water bills will at least go up by 200%. If one truly stayed at home, one also finds that all the online food ordering costs are huge. Of course, one can save by cooking but since my other half is literally working (and only at home during late evenings) and me trying to save time, online food ordering was the best option. Note that all my kids are at home and I wanted to make sure that they are well-fed. For myself, I tend to eat just to make my hunger disappear. Another 'minor' thing: given my supply of medication has run out (earlier supplied by the university's health centre), now I have to get these on my own expenses.

The current swell of infection impacted a lot on all our lives. In the early days, I was following up the daily new cases but I knew this depends on how much testing was made (way back in the first MCO). Right now, I tend to follow the number of new deaths and the hospital capacity and my last check, it was not that good. On the livelihood part, the travel restriction impacted all businesses and clinics are not spared from this. My other half recently had to take a swab test because one of the patients coming to the clinic was Covid-19 positive. Luckily her test results was negative (known just last Friday). However yesterday evening, one of her staff was found to be positive, not because of exposure within the clinic, but due to a family member working in the factories where there was an outbreak. Now, the positive result is despite that all staff of the clinic were vaccinated much earlier on (Phase I). Due to this, my other half will go for another swab test today and the clinic has to close for at least ten days. I do hope that the factory where the source of the infection is, will also get the same treatment of temporary closure. Life may not seem fair but God willing, we will get by.

Also last week, I participated (virtually) in this conference on Logic, Quantum Computing and Artificial Intelligence. I was surprised to know that Xiamen University, Malaysia was one of the co-organizer. There were many familiar names in the conference that I have followed. Learned many new things there.