Mid-December Update

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.