Have not updated the blog for so long, as my mind was occupied with many matters.
I believe most of those who knew me, will know that I am essentially an introvert, being quiet most of the time. Whenever there are loud voices or there are many voicing out their ideas or opinions in a meeting or discussion, I tend to be quiet, observing and only interjecting when necessary. But being quiet, can sometimes be misinterpreted as sometimes being dumb, lazy and at other times being dismissive. Those who do, may want to read the following article on introverts. The best thing is to ask the person involved; I, myself would normally answer what is on my mind.
In most WhatsApp groups, I do tend to be quiet, apart from my own family group. In some cases, one finds the usual small talks, ceremonial or congratulatory messages. In my own frank opinion, some of these could be avoided (particularly those using videos, pictures or stickers) as they could be easy considered as wasted (polluting?) bits - of course, I don't voice out these (as I said I will often just be quiet) since small talks are often considered as good social skills and can have their social advantages. More importantly, one should not be annoying or be the one who cause any form of displeasures.
A funny thing happened recently when I posted a query in my school alumni group. I stumbled onto a webinar advertisement that had an old school-mate in the picture, namely Prof. Roszaini Haniffa. I recalled having seen her profile before some years ago, being a professor in Islamic finance in UK. However I've lost the link and I wasn't sure it was really her. So when I saw the advertisement, I immediately asked my school-mates whether it was really her and they confirmed it. Perhaps due to my rare postings in the WhatsApp group, some might felt that I may be choosing 'professor friends' over others. But it is nothing like that at all; I, myself, am not a professor and some consider I am just an average academic that has little future. However I do look up to friends who are more successful than I am, particularly in academic circles, and she was one of them. I also wanted to confirm whether she was in the same class as I was, but then I did not proceed for fear of more misunderstanding. Later, I was told that the late Prof. Mashitah (from UMP - see here) wanted to get Prof. Roszaini back to Malaysia but unfortunately she didn't get that opportunity. Here is a picture shared by Akmar showing the late Prof. Mashitah (left) together with Prof. Roszaini (right).
From this alumni WhatsApp group, I also knew that another friend, Marzuki Ismail, is now a professor in Universiti Malaysia Terengganu. I am happy for him. He was in UPM before as a radiation officer, assisting our own Prof. Yusof in the Physics Department. We rarely talk to each other at the time apart from usual corridor conversations and I think he left sometime during when I joined the institutes.
Thus, we had to dry the book with the aid of a table fan near the tv. Our cat (not sure which), being curious, decided to investigate the damp cover of the book and the result is shown below. Double tragedy.
Almost stayed up the whole night just to open carefully the wet pages one by one so that they don't stick together. It worked but the affected pages are all wrinkled.
Been listening to a lot of online lectures lately on both religion and science. Got hooked with the online live discussions of Stephen Wolfram with different guests. They are pretty intense and can go on for hours. Here is a useful one about managing life.
Last week, we received a shocking news of the passing of a friend and colleague at INSPEM, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mohd Bakri Adam. He was the former Head of Laboratory of Statistics and Computing Services before the institute restructures internally and the laboratory becomes a service division. He was one of the approachable heads of laboratory that I can discuss with. His passing was really sudden that it caught most of us off-guard. I was in my bed, woken up by messages in the mobile phone at around 1 a.m. The news that I got was that he collapsed while he was doing some gardening work. He will be missed and many of his former students went online, leaving saddening condolatory remarks.
The week before last also has seen flurry of activities surrounding International Fundamental Science Congress 2021 (IFSC 2021) organized by the Faculty. When this congress was first proposed years ago, I was rather sceptical because congress events that I knew at international level have thousands of participants and is usually organized by big associations or organizations related to the subject matter. For example, the International Congress of Mathematicians is held every four years by the International Mathematical Union, rotated between different countries. Once, INSPEM members (unfortunately I did not go) was invited to go to the one in Seoul in 2014. The director then had the grand idea of bringing the congress to Malaysia but it did not materialise and I am also of the opinion that our country has yet to contribute to mathematics significantly to be considered as a host. Locally, I had the opportunity of being part of the Advanced Technology Congress which is organized by ITMA every two years in the past. The congress itself consists of several conferences (usually associated to the themes of the laboratories in ITMA). Theoretical Studies Laboratory (TSL) in ITMA, for instance, was the organizer of Conference of Advances in Theoretical Sciences (CATS). Even this, I felt it was ambitious and our conference was the smallest due to our smaller number in researchers. Back to IFSC, the congress event itself was actually held this week and it ended yesterday. It ran better than I had expected particularly it had international partners (from Thailand and Indonesia) and as such it is moving in the right direction for the concept of a congress. Having said that, one must be cautious in not letting the number of conference or congress events proliferate too much particularly when the supporting community revolves around the same collection of people. These events are not meant for meeting the KPI of a particular department/laboratory or faculty/institute, making these units visible, but they are meant to serve a community of researchers/practitioners. Thus having too many will simply exhaust the community and spread the scientific contributions too thin. Anyway, IFSC had a good crowd and it went rather well. When the main committee asked me to find one invited speaker in theoretical physics, I invited Jesni. I was at his talk yesterday but I had to leave early because I was chairing another parallel session right after his talk. Below are some pics.
Yesterday, was also our 28th anniversary, though both of us were working. After work, we decided to celebrate a little. We bought an ice cream cake from the local Bakers Cottage outlet. Here is a pic for our small celebration, together with our kids.
In local politics, we had a 'change' in government last week when some withdrew the support for the 8th Prime Minister Tan Sri Dato' Mahiaddin Yassin. The King had stepped in and called for a PM nomination from both sides of political divide. It was then decided that Dato' Sri Ismail Yaacob has the bigger support and he was sworn in as the ninth prime minister last Saturday. Today he announced his 'new' cabinet line-up, which is pretty much the same as the previous one with some permutations. Let's hope this 'new' government will work better than the 'last one'. Meanwhile our Covid-19 new infection number is still raging above 20K modulo fluctuations during the weekend (when there were less testings). I actually am interested in the number of new deaths (indicating some failure of the health system). Yesterday was in fact the highest number of new infections and the highest number of new deaths (see pic below).
I still think that we need a change of strategy. While the increased rate of vaccination is very much desired, there is still a need to contain the spread of the disease for at least the mere need of ensuring the health system will not collapse. All the containment will ensure that unwanted mutations will be less probable. Let us pray that it will not get any worse.
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