Sour Eleven

Things have gone a little sour lately with things going haywire and I'm in a dark mood (be warned). Have moved into a budget hotel (Rivero Boutique Hotel) in Garden Homes to escape myself from the current renovations that we are doing to our house. The main reason I'm staying in the hotel is to ensure I can do online classes (or for that matter meetings) without noises from the renovation. Last week, for instance, I need to do my presentation at the QuEST group meeting, so I want this to be uninterrupted. I was a bit unsure about what I am going to speak on but I had the idea of just explaining the research program we are conducting or at least what I hoped to do (applying symplectic topology to quantum information). Scoured through numerous papers and that left me very little time to prepare the slides. I was disappointed with my own presentation, really but I did stumbled into something that I did not know before - the symmetric product of CP^1 can give you CP^n. The only problem here is the details and interpretation. Because of ill preparations, I did not record the talk (which I usually do) but I was at the hotel then during the presentation. 

There were a couple of other things that upset me last week particularly on work matters. However, what really brought my mood down was the complain made by a particular fussy neighbour on our renovations yesterday. Yes, the noise can be disturbing but we were hoping that they would understand. How can there be renovations without any noise; I will certainly wait for the day when they can invent a silent drill and a clever technique of wall knock-downs without noise. We have tried to be good neighbours but sometimes this is not reciprocated. Certainly in this instance, we can't do much to please the neighbour. We need to proceed with the renovations to make sure that each of our child has a room for their own before I vanish from this earth. We have instructed the workers to stop work during the weekend (though this would delay further the work). Worse come to worst, I'll be happy to give my hotel room to that neighbour; I have already rented the room for a month. Here are some pics of the renovations.

Here is a pic of the hotel room I'm renting. It's not big but cosy and convenient enough. Next to the hotel is a 24-hour convenient KK store, which is really helpful. The neighbour can stay there, if they want.

This last option seems plausible now, given that I am required to be in office for the whole five days a week and hence there is little reason I need the hotel room (apart from getting some moments away from the renovations). I only knew about the matter only around 9.05am this morning and I had to rush to work after having breakfast with my other half (she took leave to oversee the problems raised yesterday). Going to work everyday is no problem for me; I'm not lazy. My preference to work from home earlier was that I felt I can use the time for travel (one and a half hour to and fro) for better purposes. Also, I have a back condition that led to a weakening right leg and long drives tend to put a lot of stress on my back (yes, I know, the late Stephen Hawking went to work despite his conditions; this was a remark once made to me). As I said really, I have no problem with going to work and I have been in management before to know the problems of absenteeism. But I think the reasoning used to select people for the 5-day week is rather unwise; we were told that those who had little publications will need to come to office all five days. Felt like a pariah these days. Never mind, its their judgment call and I won't pose any problem to their decision. Once, during the management at the institute, I had to deal with absenteeism. My intent then was to help educate the person and indirectly showed to him that he was doing less tasks than the rest of his peers. Instead of taking this positively, he brought his problems to the registrar of the university and we had a little meeting on this. Never mind, I no longer want to associate myself with the person and the rest who seems to be hostile to me. I want to be left in peace until I retire December next year. Those in power, please grant me at least this.