We have reached the end of the year 2021. No, I'm not celebrating the new year but it is the cycle of social events (e.g economic activities and closing of accounts, holiday periods) that almost everyone will go through. For us, academics, we even have our academic year not even following the calendar year. How significant the new year is very much depends on the social context (please spare me the cynical remark about earthlings celebrating the full revolution of earth around the sun).
Let me however sum up what 2021 has been to me personally. I have lost two brothers (Ahmad Tajuddin & Aminuddin) and a nephew (Nasy) within this year. May Allah forgive them all and grant them Jannah. Here is an old photo of our family.
My three eldest brothers who have passed away are the ones standing at the back. Here is one relative recent photo with my third eldest brother Ahmad Tajuddin (standing on the leftmost).
His passing was just a few days after the unexpected passing of his son Nasy (standing in the middle with the red t-shirt).
Here is another relatively recent photo with my eldest brother Aminuddin (sitting besides me).
My other half also lost his eldest brother in the year before. But this year, she lost her favourite cat (normally will be with us in our room), Lily in July (see pic below).
Earlier in April, we lost our oldest cat Katie - she was close to my eldest son and stayed mostly in his room (see pic below).
Beyond our family, is the unexpected passing of a friend and former Head of Laboratory in the institute, Assoc. Prof. Mohd Bakri Adam. I remembered he had always asked me to apply for professorship and perhaps knowing my reluctance. Below is him, sitting on my right wearing a bluish shirt.
So in a way 2021 has been the year of losses. At the national scale, we also saw death due to Covid-19 peaked sometime in August-September 2021 (see https://covidnow.moh.gov.my/deaths/). Recently the flash flood tragedy in Selangor and now in east cost.
I certainly pray that 2022 will be a better year. I have less than a year left before I retire. I'm still attempting to reinventing myself to be a better person. I'm trying to be very conscious in what I do (not very successful but I'm trying) and avoid anything that brings any form of ill feelings.
On Monday, December 27, 2021, I had my booster shot at a private health clinic in Seremban 2. It is good that the MySejahtera system knows that I live in Seremban 2. I took leave that day and the day after. Initially I thought I will be conducting lectures just before and after the booster shot but early in the morning, my students told me all lectures are postponed after January 2, 2022 due to the flood disaster. It was a relief since I will get my breathing space. Nevertheless having so many unfinished matters just clouded the mind.
My other half and my youngest accompanied to Sehat Healthcare Centre where my booster shot will be administered. I saw a few others also waiting for the booster vaccine but it was certainly not crowded (like my previous shots). Just several minutes after registration, I was already called up to get my shot (on the first floor). Some amount of anxiety was there since my other half responded rather badly to her booster shot. Given that I'm on blood thinning prescription, I was advised to apply pressure to my arm (where I had the shot) for at least ten minute (and under observation). No immediate reactions then and finally left the centre at around noon after updating my vaccine certificate (see below).
Without lectures, had lunch together with my family. Later in the afternoon, my left arm was throbbing. I thought I should rest and watched The Unforgivable instead of working. It is a good emotional movie (I enjoyed this more than the satirical Don't Look Up) and I like the piano rendition of the Radiohead song (see below). It was the next day, that I felt my body is aching all over and felt feverish. I was unsure though whether it was just the side effect or the coupled back pain that I'm having. I tend to be feverish whenever I have a real bad back pain. Also earlier in the morning, my PhD student reminded to go through his draft of PhD thesis. Was trying to. I also realised when I print to pdf his individual chapters, the text is flattened as pics. So I had to use a different pdf annotation software to do the editing which is really a hassle. My mind then was all too tired bearing the pain and hence slept most of the day. Even as I got this up, still feeling lightheaded and tired but I had to go to work. Hope that with some energy input, everything falls into place, finishing all my work. With that note, here is the piano rendition of "Everything in its right place".
I thought I do another post today before getting my booster shot. I guess I want to explain some of my social media posts. I am going through some of my old stuff (still) in the house, trying to decide what to throw away during the current house renovation. If it was to my other half and sons, they would probably just throw most things away. But for me, some of these things are what made me as I am today. Particularly, the papers and books are valuable for me as an academic, though these are probably only useful to me and meant little for my other family members. Of course, my other half remarked, why not just keep electronic copies of them. I can't really answer this satisfactorily since it is just my reading habit to be able to bring them around (you could also do this electronically), read several related papers concurrently (one could open tabs electronically) and scribble notes of what I read (which could be done electronically on my tablet). To my defense, I have recycled some of these papers but perhaps not enough. Still have tons of papers around to my other half's horror and for this, my apologies to the whole family (that they need to deal with my mess).
It was in this situation of sieving through papers, I posted a few things on FB. One of these is on my favourite issue of PSI (Magazine of Physics, Science & Ideas), an IFM publication (supposedly replacing the earlier version of Majalah Fizik). In it, was an article of Frank Wilczek, for which I wrote to him (before he won the Nobel Prize), asking permission to reproduce his article and he replied positively (see pic below). In fact, I wrote to several other well-known physicists as well to get materials for this magazine, until it was decided that it was too expensive to continue publishing it (and I was having difficulties to get articles for it). In any case, I still value the experience of producing the magazine (do all the layout and typesetting myself - learned the fundamentals of what it takes to make a magazine interesting and pleasant (even to the point of understanding what blank spaces are meant for).
I also found a letter of invitation to a seminar (series) on the attempts of producing Nobel Laureates in Malaysia due to a challenge made by the then Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir (see pic below). The letter was with several other documents that eventually led to a proposal paper of having a National Physics Laboratory (I remember making the joke, better not take NPL as the acronym since it coincides with acronym for non-performing loan). Again, I value the experience of going through all this even with the non-realization of the idea. So when somebody whom I did not know made the comment that there is no historical value in the document, I was a bit slighted. This is where contexts play an important role in social media and this is often ignored. This is also why I try not to comment anything on somebody's wall or even wish a happy birthday, when the individual is not someone I know personally in the real world. To this, I remembered the joke about how ridiculous it would look like if people do what they do online to real people in the real world.
Sometimes what we do on social media, have unintended consequences. Recently I shared a post of a physicist whom I have great respect for, where he had commented on the recent paper of entanglement with the tardigrade. I was hoping that by sharing this, I can revisit his thoughts at some later convenient times. However, when I shared it, his own comments did not appear but the link of a blogpost to which he was commenting appeared without the context that I want. So when he commented on the post, I had to remove the post. Tried to reshare the post with his comments present but apparently this seems to be complicated. This is due to the fact that FB no longer had the option of sharing the original post - read https://www.technicallyproduct.co.uk/social-media/new-facebook-does-not-let-you-include-original-post-when-you-share-to-a-page/. Felt a little embarrassed by this incident.
Do we have to care on what we post on social media: yes and no. The complication lies in this is that our social media friends are not real friends in real lives. What we post, can be taken totally out of context. On the other hand, we would like to share with our true friends on what we do and what we think. There is no definite solution this; one just needs to be wise in our 'social media actions'. Social media is great since we as social beings have the need to socialize. Here's a great YouTube podcast by Huberman on
There are many other podcasts of Huberman Labs, What started me following Huberman is this interview by Lewis Howes:
No, I'm not referring to Matrix Resurrection release date but today is my 59th birthday. I was about to rush to work this morning and for this I need to fill up the university's Covid-19 declaration form online. I normally do this after Fajr prayers or the latest just before going to work. This morning, however, I could not access the website - tried a few times but I could not. Tried various other websites of the university and none of them accessible. I had to make a quick decision whether I should go to the office or not, fearing the whole university network is down and I have an online class at 9am. I tried to check with my colleagues and even students to see if they can access the university websites. I did not get any reply within the time frame I want. So I told my other half that I will do my work at home and will apply for emergency leave once the university's website is ok. Note that I have no intention of skipping work that day despite today is my 'birthday'.
It was 7.58 am that some websites seems to be up but there was no ability to do the authentication. It was about half an hour later that this seems possible rather sluggishly. By then, I had to prepare for my class. Even after class, there seems to be problems with authentication as I was trying to apply for emergency leave. It was about noon that I got to do it. In any case, I did my work as scheduled. I had a 3pm appointment with my MSc student and we discussed rather lengthily. We finished just before 5pm. Was it really a leave? Not in the sense that I wanted.
It was only after Maghrib that my family celebrated my birthday by buying some special meals and ice-cream cake. Usually I will post this on the social media but given the flood situation, I decided not to. People are suffering due to the flood and some even lost their loved ones. Some might perceived that one is being insensitive about the matter. I remembered posting about the 50 year celebration on Saturday (we were at a wedding) and was already receiving veiled criticisms (usually from those whom I do not know personally). I would usually ignore such criticisms from those I do not know well. Many of the times are just trivial things e.g. bought my Chevrolet Malibu car (some commented about the car is actually bought on loan); got my vaccine shot (some commented that I was being insensitive to those who has not received their vaccination); and even my postings on cats got criticised. Normally I do these posts just simply to record some personal events in my life and they are not meant for showing off. I even use the social media to post things that I find interesting, so that I can read or refer to them later. I guess it is always the case that there will always be people who dislike whatever posts one makes.
So for this birthday, I will just simply post it here, which is less intrusive (only those who follows my blog will read it). So here are some pics.
Being 59, a year away from official retirement, I just want my life to be peaceful, not to worry about unnecessary matters. I hope to clear my heart from any form of ill feelings. Will continue to strive to be better.
Right after my eldest brother's departure, I gave a talk at TMP 2021 on "Entanglement Frontier: Exploring its Geometry". The talk was a natural continuation of another talk I gave at Comdata 2021 on "Understanding Quantum Computing and Quantum Algorithms: Progress Update" (a review requested by the organizer). In that new talk, I simply focus on the research topic that we did ourselves, which was mentioned only briefly in the previous talk. The preparation for both talks had me brewing ideas for several weeks, glancing through many papers.
Next, I had to run our joint seminar with JBNU university (organized by our department and Division of Science Education and supported by Institute of Fusion, Jeonbuk National University). Managed to pull it off despite some early problems. Even on the day itself, one of our speaker had to pull out due to health problems. So I decided to offer myself to replace the speaker, since I had ready slides from my talk on the previous day. I hope this event will dispel the notion that I don't do anything for the department (it has always been me focusing on duties at hand in the past). Below are some pics.
After all these, then I had my Test 1 marking to finish before the deadline on the Sunday. Managed to key in and submitted the marks for both the subjects that I'm teaching. We were also reminded in that weekend about submitting reports of the results to our department (as new additional things that we have not really done before). Had a bad back due to all the markings were done through the computer and had me sitting for long hours. Thereafter, the next rush was to edit parts of my PhD student's thesis. As the semester break ends, we had to resume our lectures this week. I have run out of ready-made notes for both courses and almost had to prepare all lecture materials just a day before the lecture itself. This is just to show that we had so many things to do as academics and the pressure that comes with it. Not trying to complain but merely reacting to comments that we are not doing enough. My personal opinion on these is that we have been hurting our own selves by introducing ever-increasing new tasks which are only meant for monitoring (in the name of continual improvement), We should really focus on the contents of teaching and research as these things are always elastic and expansive - there will always be something to do, something to improve on - these will never end.
Personal front: our house renovation has started its final phase with our room and stairs to be retiled. Currently we have a big hole in our room that I hope will be patched up very soon. It doesn't look that it will be finished even by the year end.
Currently, we are in Segamat, attending a wedding. We just had a big family gathering last night from the family of my other half. Seeing all the kids have grown up, sort of reminds me how old I am.
Yesterday (6 December), my eldest brother Aminuddin bin Zainuddin left us. He was hospitalised for a day, according to the report due to a stroke. He was already bed-ridden for some time before that, after his eyesight went so bad (we were told). My regret was not being able to see him before this and also we did not manage to get to his funeral last night. We only knew about the burial only very late (after my family went to get some dinner). Before that, we waited to hear what would be the development, where will his body be brought to. The last piece of news that we had then, that his body was at the Forensics Dept of Selayang Hospital. I asked my nephew today on what happened and he told me that they only knew of the body release at 7pm. After the release, it was already late and his family had already decided to do the burial that night without delay, which we respected. So last night, I told my nephew that since we could not make it to the funeral in time (being in Seremban, which is far away from Kepong), we promised to visit his family today and so we did. Saw my step-sister and step-brother was there at the burial (how I wished we could be there too).
So the three most eldest in my family has now gone (see pic). It was the third loss in our family (nephew Nasy and my third eldest Ahmad Tajuddin in May) this year. Those remaining will one day follow their footsteps.
Note: pics are taken from Nasaruddin's FB page.
My brother Aminuddin was a civil engineer at a government department before he retired. After his retirement, he has always shared his stories with me perhaps due to the fact that I know quite a bit of mathematics (some are about powerplay and was pretty sad that he had to go through a lot). I know that he had this ambition of introducing topology in decision making (at least that was what I understood) and perhaps this was rather at odds with his department. He should have been an academic instead of in the government department (but in retrospect, he may not be fully appreciated anyway). I knew that he acquired an impressive book collection that I envied very much. The pic below is how I would like to remember him.
The books may not mean much to others (laymen) but some books in his collection are really extraordinary. I remember he gave me this book by Lambek & Scott on "Introduction to Higher-Order Categorical Logic". At the time, I probably knew some logic but I knew very little about category theory and thus, he was way ahead of me in terms of scouting mathematical areas. It is unfortunate that I have lost this book after lending the book to a colleague. Perhaps I should consider rebuying the book just for memory sake, if not for research.
In my younger days (when my salary was very small), he used to buy me books to help me with my study. The following picture shows one of such books and in it, there is a punch card that bore his handwriting.
May Allah grant him His Forgiveness and Grace onto his soul. Al-Fatihah.
Today I am on leave, taking some rest (after a day out yesterday attending a wedding). Essentially, I was on standby on whether I need to drive to Kuala Lumpur and was worried being exhausted and hence the leave. Luckily, it was my son who drove. It is the season of weddings (December) here in Malaysia but due to Covid-19 worry, we often limit ourselves to weddings of close relatives. The month before we had my brother Nordin's son (Nizamuddin) wedding reception, which was postponed earlier due to the MCO travel restrictions.
It was during this wedding that I learned about my eldest brother being bed-ridden. Yesterday, while travelling to my brother-in-law's son wedding, I got the message from my sister that my eldest brother being hospitalized in Selayang, unable to speak. We are still waiting for his development, hopefully by today, when the specialists go for their hospital rounds. The news dampened the mood for that day. Very sad after all that has happened to our family. Nevertheless, we attended the wedding yesterday as promised, to be seated at the table near the bridegroom and bride. Some pics below:
The next event will be in Segamat and I will be taking leave on Friday, 17 December for this.
The department has probably noticed that I have been taking leaves more frequently towards the end of the year, very much due to weddings & conferences flocking at the end of the year. I was reminded of settling all my duties before taking leaves. I hope I will be spared from the lecture of our leaves being merely eligibility and not entitlement. I have been in the management long enough to know about absenteeism. Whatever the 'problem' is, I never lose sight about sense of humanity and that we are emotional beings, not mere machines to serve others. I think most of us know our sense of duty but sometimes we had to make the hard choice between work and family matters. Already last Saturday, we have excused ourselves from the akad nikah ceremony since I need to attend to my marking (as well as other problems) whose deadline was before midnight yesterday. I did finish all my marking for my two subjects in time and late evening yesterday, we are reminded about the need to send reports about the Test 1 results.
God willing (if there are no emergency matters), I will be at work tomorrow. I will be taking leave again this Wednesday to attend a conference from home (for better network utilities). I will be conducting the JBNU-UPM joint seminar from office on Thursday and I pray that our network will be ok for that.
Since last month, I have been trying to reinvent myself so that I can face better, challenges in my next phase of life. Now, this has not been very successful as old habits are hard to eradicate. I think I have received a lot of negativities in the past and it has affected me quite a lot. Like to reverse some of these. In part, this is the reason why I prefer some level of isolation these days, so that I can focus more on my future. In particular, I try to avoid getting bogged down by unnecessary management matters. I think we have been bothered by management matters too much (despite your main duty is not that) that it pushes out the mental space needed for creativity in research and teaching/learning. (Check: What occupies most of your mind while you are at work and how one is enjoying the work?) In this sense, I hope that my colleagues will spare me that part of life - I have been in management for nearly twenty years since ITMA and I think I deserve a break.
I would prefer that I focus more on scientific matters before I retire. In fact, I do want to get back and dirty my hands in solving scientific problems. Over the years, I have been spending too much time exploring ideas to help students initiate their research (not all successful and not all appreciated). It will also fend off any stigma that I can no longer solve problems. Also, if I were to begin a new phase of life, I would like to be active researchwise. It is always fulfilling to be able to solve problems (though this feeling dissipates quickly once it is solved. I still dream of solving something significant but the probability of this is declining very fast.
However I find the bigger challenge is maintaining a good health and good spirituality. Really need some good discipline to maintain things. With worldly goals still lingering and one still pushing oneself for that, these two mentioned goals often get less attention or steered away from the needed focus for them.
Trying to build strategies to divide my time for the several goals I want to achieve. Very little success. Some things tried: (i) breaking all my activities into half-an hour units with allowance of very short breaks - have not been so consistent; (ii) write and rewrite notes for deep understanding - took too much time; (iii) solve easy matters first - have not been so consistent and tend to spend more time on easy things; (iv) less sleep - just can't do it at this age.
Whatever it is, I tend to do things with a sense of purpose. Recently I was given the duty of organizing a Joint UPM-JBNU Physics Seminar, which will take next week. I have always maintained that any efforts towards internationalizing our work/event is always a good idea. Events such as these create new opportunities and we need more of that (not more of constraints). So far, I have been in communication with Prof. Han Sang-Wook and also Prof. Zainal Abidin Talib (who is now there in JBNU and initiated this joint seminar). I hope the seminar will go well. The seminar is scheduled to be in the afternoon of 9 December. This is just a day after my seminar at TMP2021. Also, was told that we had to submit our test marks by this Sunday. Pretty hectic (countering ideas of lecturers have that much free time).
On a personal front, our home is about to begin the last phase of renovations, which I hope will take place quickly. I should also state that the renovation is for long-term matters of my family even for the time that I will no longer be around. It is not that I have that much money to spend. I will still probably have to work after my retirement to ensure that I can pay bills and support my sons' education.
Rather sad news that I received some weeks back: my eldest brother is not well and is now bed-ridden. Hope to find time to visit him. I pray that his strength will recover.
