Infrequent Reacts

I rarely want to say anything about something which I do not really know about. If I feel strongly about something that I do not quite know, I will probably play different scenarios in my head and evoke different responses. Imagine doing that every time something viral came up, it will be very tiring. I certainly do not want to live my life as such, making one's life revolving around others.

I consciously make the choice of only saying things, mostly when it greatly affects my own personal life. For instance, the last two weeks I get to know some remarks made indirectly about some personal choices I have made on my research. One is from abroad, which is on our choice of picking up topics that are not quite in the mainstream of quantum information, and as such is probably deemed useless to many in the field. Such choice is made because our group is pretty isolated and can't be as fast paced like other more active groups. Until our group grows bigger and more focused, it is difficult to pick a niche that is more popular, without good support. The next thing I got to know is about our new staff intake. The comment there is to select one doing theory, who is not near to my type of research (my guess is mathematical physics). I guess, I can pretty much conclude that my type of work is not really welcomed here. Same old story, the story of my life. Anyway, it is good then that I will be leaving, so that the power brokers can do whatever they wish and gear the local community to their own design.

Moving to a larger scale, the social media has been rife with viral posts about religious personalities making comments about science. Usually, I tend to ignore such posts, reading them only for the sake of awareness of what is going on. My past experience finding science-religion intersections with religious figures, has not been that pleasant, to the point that I concluded it is more meaningful to do our work separately. The viral event that appeared last week, somehow got my attention a little bit more. I decided to listen to the religious preacher (pretty popular) on what he said. After listening for a while, I had to stop because I can't stomach the errors he made and the way he is trying to deceive the audience. I didn't hear or get to the point where he said scientists lie (claimed by some responses). The religious preacher has pretty much decided that scientists are wrong. With respect to the false impression that he is building, that there is dissonance between what is mentioned in the Qur'an and what scientists have to say, one has to clearly differentiate between what is really in the Qur'an and the way he thinks he understood some verses. His challenge to the scientists to investigate what is meant by the Qur'anic verses rings hollow, given that he himself has not quite done this job itself. There are Muslim scientists who have studied the problems he is alluding to, both in the past and at present (see Bruno Guiderdoni, for instance), if he cares to read a little more. Anyway, I feel sorry for those who stood up and defended the religious preacher, without properly understanding the claims on science that he had made. As far as I am concerned, I would prefer to listen to other preachers who are more scholarly in behaviour.

In the issue of geocentric universe versus heliocentric universe, let me recall an experience I had. There was once a student from the Indian subcontinent, who approached me to seek supervision for PhD studies. I asked him what is his interest and he blurted out that he is certain he can prove that the Earth is the centre of the universe. My alarm bells rang off. Not to cut off his enthusiasm, I asked him what is his latest reading on this matter but he seems to be evading to answer this directly but my own perception then is that he only knows Newtonian physics. When I told this story to the late Prof. Twareque, I was allowing the possibility that the student might know that there are theories about cosmic voids of which we (our local galaxy) are probably situated in, and that special situation may give us the observation of an accelerating universe. Prof. Twareque then replied saying that I was giving too much credit to the student. To the student, I redirected the student to other researchers who may have interest on history of science (say on geocentric versus heliocentric debates) or on philosophy and metaphysics, so that he could probably learn better on these, since my interest then was not on those.

So for my relativity class yesterday, I remembered I had the following text in my notes.

I thought of highlighting the issue of geocentric universe versus heliocentric universe. However I did not manage to reach to this point but only taught about Galilean relativity. However I did say to the students, the need for their knowledge to expand, to generalize the knowledge that we had before (in this case it is Newtonian physics). I touched a bit about misconceptions that can arise if the knowledge that one has is limited (say of high school physics or even everyday experience, which are really special cases). I referred to the viral event of the comments on science from the religious preacher (not named) and hope that they get some lessons from the matter.

On yesterday viral news .... aren't people tired of the matter? The ministry and the relevant institution know about it and they are the ones who can act (the rest of us mostly blabber). With Ramadhan coming in a few days, I think we could use some peace and quiet.

A Trip to Jasin

Yesterday we made a trip to Jasin, Melaka to send our youngest son to UiTM there. We had never been to Jasin and we did not know how long it will take. I had to google up whether it has a toll exit and luckily there is. We began our trip after having breakfast around 10.30-ish and reached there before noon. The university was actually a short drive away from the toll. It seems pretty remote, passing through oil palm plantation (we did not pass through any town then).

At the campus, we were stopped near the gate for a check of my son's RTK test (negative) and then we proceeded to near some centre to drop off our son for registration at a centre (seems where the shops are) and drove to park nearby the college to unload his things. He got a room on the second floor (can't remember the name of the block). A slight problem with the room then, is the door can't be locked. On reporting the matter to the facilitators, he was asked to lodge a complaint online. I hope this could be resolved soon since this is a matter of security of the belongings in the room. 

After loading off his things, we asked the facilitators if we can bring him out for lunch and we were told that he only needs to come back before 11pm. We weren't sure then, where to get our lunch. On googling, it seems the closest town to UiTM Jasin is Merlimau. On the way there, we actually took a wrong turn and went through a narrow road (fits only one one car) nearby the oil palm plantation - pretty scary. On reaching the town, we had our lunch at McDonalds there.

After lunch, we stopped by at a grocery store, to get him a broom and dust pan for him to tidy up his place. Finally, we dropped him at the college and then returned home. The journey home was longer due to the heavy traffic all the way to Seremban.

In the evening, we started to miss him already. He has been stuck at home for almost two years and missed out an opportunity of going to the UiTM last year (which is what he wants). His SPM was actually delayed from November/December 2020 to late February 2021 due to Covid-19. In a way, this has affected his education but we were pleased that he got the UiTM Jasin offer earlier this year. I hope he will rejuvenate his interest in his studies and do well there. Here are some photos of his room (after tidying up) and his first meal (without us) there.

May Allah ease his way through his studies there.

Marching Into The Class

This semester I was given back Special Relativity & Classical Field Theory course to teach. I already had notes for this, but I guess I could improve this further, particularly the classical field theory. When I took the classical field theory course in University of Adelaide, I learned even the retarded and advanced Green's function for electromagnetic waves. However, since this is a combined course with special relativity (which was a 2 credit course in Adelaide), perhaps it is unfair to go too deep into classical field theory. I contemplated also whether one should go for some more modern materials, like group theoretical aspects or even supersymmetry as found in Schwarz & Schwarz's book. But these are rather optional topics.

There is another course that I should be teaching (two courses per academic staff not holding any admin post). Initially, I thought it was the second course of quantum mechanics (the combination I had two semesters ago). However, I was given the postgraduate seminar course(s) to handle. This, indeed, was a surprise. It will be a new experience for me and the type of assessment is pretty much subjective (so had to learn all these rubric stuffs). My own concern for this course is not too much the assessment but what they are getting out of it. I thought I should make the students learn about seminar as a community activity (traditions, contributing back to the community) and how I think seminar should be conducted. The latter, in particular, is important since many talks I've seen from students are prepared in a way as a report to be read linearly, with references right at the end. For me, this should be stopped. It should be prepared with instant and nonlinear reading in mind since the audience do not have the luxury of flipping over the slides. For me, references should be written as footnotes on the very same slide where they are cited (instantaneously the audience know what the reference is).

So the week that has passed was the first week of teaching (it was also a convocation week). I have opted to teach Special Relativity fully face-to-face because to me, it does not make too much sense to have partly online and partly face-to-face. So, we had the first lecture on the Wednesday morning. In the afternoon, one of the students who attended contacted me and told me that she had Covid-19 (did not know at first as she thought what she had was normal and she was fasting). First, I was wondering what one should do but in any case, I thought it is best that the department should know. When I reported it to the department, I was not hoping for anything (like making the class online) but I intend to carry on with the face-to-face class as I remembered the current SOP for closed contact is that there is no need for quarantine if there are no symptoms. The department's response was that I should try to do hybrid teaching, having both face-to-face and online mode simultaneously. Well, that is going to be a challenge since I could not even get the room's projector in the first class and did the teaching using the white board. However, I accepted the challenge and thought of using the theory group's portable projector. So the next morning, did try that and got it to work (see pic below) but the signal was rather unstable. Also I had to used my own broadband wi-fi as the wi-fi in the room was too weak. Finally asked for help from the Faculty's staff just to get the room's projector to work. Finally, we did get the hybrid class going.

For the graduate classes, we were given the permission to do them online. So, I did the briefing for the Graduate Seminar class on the Wednesday afternoon. The only problem with this class, there are five different subject codes (corresponding to different stages of the graduate's study), all combined into a single Wednesday afternoon class, and there is no central listing of the registered students. So had to announce the briefing through word of mouth. Even as I try to finalise the schedule for the students' presentation yesterday, there were still new additions to the class. Hopefully, I will get all the students by this week, so that the presentation schedule can be finalised soon. Below is a pic of the briefing.

Two other interesting things happened last week. First, the announcement of the 2022 Abel Prize on Wednesday evening. It was awarded to Dennis Sullivan. I was aware of his work on topology (various aspects) but did not know the details. Posted this in the institute's WhatsApp group. There seems to be little excitement on the news in the Malaysian scene, perhaps because no one is really working in this area here. Was wondering whether I should learn part of his work just to get people excited. The other thing was INSPEM's event of holding an online conversation with Dr. Aid Fawzal of the Fawzal number fame. I remembered reading about him in the social media. I do not know much about his work but it seems to be in computational fluid dynamics. He was pretty humble in the conversation, mentioning he had academic difficulties (due to dyslexia) in the beginning but he worked his way around it and managed to grab international attention. Below are some pics of the event.

Pain In Comparison

In the past, I have been complaining about my back pain and at times took leave to get my back rested (which I can't do in office). I sometimes wonder if people doubted about my predicament and thought I'm faking it. To a certain extent, I doubted myself too; was it because my pain threshold is so low. This doubt was also encouraged by the specialists that I have gone to, also downplayed my pain - showed me x-rays of severe scoliosis (mine was slight) and lumbar disk with visible protrusion onto the nerves (my MRI showed dark lumbar disk with slight protrusion). So these days, I complained less, only doing so with my other half. Presently I have constant pain at the right hip, have slight difficulty of moving, numbness in the right leg and at times with throbbing pain, and occasionally pain in my ankle. So I take this as part of the progression of the back pain as I'm growing older. Did try to do my own exercises on and off, avoiding going to physiotherapists or chiropractors since they can become expensive. When I lie down, I often twist my body, hoping for some relief.

Recently I had to go to the dentist for root canal treatment, to save one of my tooth. It got cancelled twice; the first time is because that I was on the blood-thinning medication and I had to stop taking it at least three days earlier before the treatment. Second time, it was because of the home quarantine order. Last Saturday, I got to go to the dentist but he found out that I had a tooth stump in my gums, causing slight swelling and pus. He had to take that stump out, essentially carving my gum to pull out the stump. Despite the local anaesthetics, could still feel the pain as it was pulled out and I was in tears and was sweating withstanding the pain. I had my gum stitched up so that my gum does not bleed too much (due to the blood thinning medication). I guess, everyone can relate to pain associated with tooth extraction and know how painful this can get and the subsequent post-extraction pain. I had then the thought of comparing the pain from this dental treatment with the pain from my back. The pain while the tooth stump was being pulled out is perhaps of higher degree but not that it was incomparable to my back pain. In fact, the post dental treatment pain is really comparable with my back pain if not slightly less. So there you go, I supposed my pain threshold is quite high in a way. So, if I say, I have back pain, I hope those who doubted me before, can imagine the same pain after the tooth is being pulled out. In a way, I got used to it though some bad episodes can send me into a fever.

Just minutes ago, I had my teeth/gum x-rayed for possibly another stump embedded in the gum. Mentally preparing myself for another tooth extraction.

Random But Conscious March

Last week, I spent working in office for the whole week, hoping to prove I have no qualms in doing so and am not hell-bent to work from home as previously announced possible. I was told that there were some changes, not sure triggered by what, that academics can punch in once from outside the campus and once inside the campus. Perhaps this flexibility works for many, particularly to those who lives nearby. For me, living in Seremban, 47 km from the university, if I go to the campus, I will just stay there until the office hours end. To me, it doesn't matter any more, I will sacrifice my time for travelling to work on average, one and a half hour each day (if no traffic problems). Not to mention that the drive is tiring (giving my back a beating) and all the risks given that there is a significant proportion of drivers who do not practice safe driving. More importantly, I do not like to be considered as a habitual complainer and a problem maker. I am committed to do work even if the kind of work I do goes unappreciated; I don't work to be visible to be doing work (which seems to be the norm). If I want to be at home (working or not), I will take leave as I will do this coming Monday, just to avoid the heavy traffic during the convocation.

On the topic of visibility, I have stopped counting days on the social media. The purpose of the count is mainly personal and I still do it within my small notebook. I do not want to be seen as attention-beggar, making these announcements. I mainly post things that I felt that there will be benefits for others with the view of myself being an educator. I don't aim to be a social influencer or popularity-chaser. The content of my posts are usually what preoccupies my mind (except links that I find interesting) without the artificiality of trying to find something interesting to say (conscious of this). On keeping links and information, I have started doing my own Random Notes stored electronically. If I find some of these particularly interesting, I will share them on the social media.

Lately, me shying away from people, some may have thought I have given up. I certainly have not but I tend to be more conscious of my deeds and I am selective of what I do, not to be caught in the frenzy of a rat race. On things that I have been told off as doing not as good, I do shy away from them but not in the sense of being irresponsible, rather focusing more on what one can do better. Over the years, I have seen a lot of unnecessary things to do being heaped upon us in the name of continual improvement. Sometimes in the craziness of trying to change, one forgets the tradition one intends to build, usually comes over slow but rooting changes. Some has even told me that I could not fit in the current work environment, to which I feel I'm sorry they feel that way. I am not sure what kind of negative imageries that are being propelled somewhere about me (some of which is very damaging), but I have essentially become numbed to these. For me, I am now preparing myself for the post-retirement phase. I do hope to get to play a minor role in a new work environment. I do hope to get a paid job because I still need to pay my bills and support my children, two of whom are continuing their tertiary education.

My youngest will soon be going to UiTM in Jasin, to do his diploma study very soon. To prepare him for this, just bought a new laptop last Friday night. I pray that he will do well.

Back to Office on Pi Day

Today is Pi Day and is celebrated as the International Day of Mathematics. After a week at home, I am back in office. The Monday had me working from home (WFH), as I thought I could. The Tuesday, I was on leave for a dental appointment (I was advised to go for a root canal treatment involving minor surgery - could not do it there and then because I was on blood-thinning medication, plavix). On early Wednesday morning, we received the message from my son at the testing lab that my other half had her PCR test positive, as mentioned in the previous post. Worried, I thought that I should stay at home (WFH) and get all of us in the house, PCR-tested since we are all exposed and are classed as close contacts. However, I received conflicting procedures/terms on what should be done as I shall explain below. We did go for the PCR test and by 4am the next morning (Thursday), we received news from our son, that our results are negative (apart from my other half). Did we do our part as responsible citizens - yes, we think so, since we are helping to contain the spread . Did I do it to avoid coming to office? I would say no, even if some others might think otherwise.

Let me rewind back to a few weeks earlier. When our vice-chancellor announced that academics can do remote working or work from home (WFH) for two days out of a week in his annual speech on Friday, February 11, I was genuinely surprised. This is due to the usual low trust relations between administrators and government officers in general. There were no conditions mentioned in the speech and I tried to check with other colleagues to confirm that this is true. So on Wednesday last week, when I informed the office about me being a close contact and I wanted to do the PCR test, I was told that I can't apply for WFH. Instead, I was forwarded this new procedure from MoH by the officer (see pic below).

The above got me puzzled and thus I forwarded the document that my other half was tested positive, just to show that I was not bluffing. I also applied for leave for the next two days (Thursday & Friday), since I do not want to cause any complications admin-wise. I was also asked to update my MySejahtera and forward the snapshot to the office. I was already informed that there is often a one-day delay of the MySejahtera update even for those who are Covid-19 positive and for the close contacts, it can even be a further another day delay. My other half got her status updated on the Thursday around noon. Mine was only updated an hour after (see below).

I immediately send this to my boss. There is still the question of whether I should be quarantined or not. It was an hour later that I realised that I had this Home Surveillance Order (after my eldest told me he got the HSO message and he was without any symptoms, unlike me), which means we are home quarantined for the next two days (until Saturday).

I send this to my boss despite that I had already applied for leave the next two days. 

On WFH, last Friday, my colleagues informed me that the Faculty had imposed conditions on those who are eligible for WFH i.e. the individual need to achieve a good mark for their annual assessment and has a journal article as a corresponding author. I personally find this somewhat strange. Essentially, the individual who are not eligible for WFH are actually penalised twice: one for not achieving the KPI and hence less assessment marks, one for the non-eligibility for WFH, I have raised such a matter in one meeting some time ago but for a different context and perhaps have been labelled as the 'aggressive' for doing so. As once-an-administrator, I understand that there is a need to push for staff to work for their KPIs (I expect usually through positive motivation/encouragement and better opportunities). Such action may have the opposite effect, demotivating those affected while those who can game their KPIs get rewarded. Perhaps the matter has been long discussed by the administrators and all pros and cons have been considered. For me, I am less concerned about the matter since I am about to retire it, but for those who have many more years in service, they will be greatly affected. In any case, I still try to work to achieve some KPIs but I have no intent to game them as if these are all that matters. So, today I come to work (yes, I'm not playing truant) but with the red high-risk category from the university website. They should try to update this website as it still asks us of our 14-day history (could have been shortened). Otherwise I will be coming to work with this high-risk category this week and the next.

Finally, let's just enjoy Pi Day and on things that we are very passionate about (and not bothered by the things we are enslaved by). I hope to attend (via FB live) the launching of the International Day of Mathematics by INSPEM later this afternoon with a talk by Emeritus Prof. Dr. Shaharir.

Counting Days and Marching In

Since end of January, I have started to count the number of days to my official retirement. A younger colleague made the remark that normally this is done when one has several days left (as opposed to few hundred days, I guess). I guess what I wanted to do is to remind myself that time is running out and there are plenty on my mind that I wanted to finish (or start) before I retire. Because of this limited time, I have started to pick and choose on what I should do in this period and my apologies if I have declined some requests of certain tasks (I hope they get better people to do them). In addition to sharing the number of days left, I have also shared what preoccupies my mind for the day, rather randomly. Perhaps it is of interest to someone; I hope it is not deemed as seeking popularity.

I have paused my blogging for weeks now because I had many tasks to complete: reading the draft of FYP dissertations of my own students (four of them), setting up final exam questions for my two subjects (two different sets, bilingual with solutions), marking the second test, collecting marks for the various assignments (marked by my graduate student as teaching assistant), finishing whatever (recorded) lectures that I can, reading drafts of PhD thesis, papers of my postgraduate students, examining thesis of FYP students of others and marking the final exam. Juggling through all these, sometimes I need to shelve one duty, prioritising another to allow for more focus. Sometime I get frustrated over some of these; for instance, I had to spent more time than I should to read (some badly written)  drafts of the undergraduate theses, when I am supposed to rush my final exam questions. I did notice that they did some of the corrections that I have asked them to do but just do not have the time to recheck. I have always advised my FYP students to write their thesis with their colleagues in mind as the audience/readers since usually the readers of their thesis will be future students (not us researchers). So if they write as if it is a research paper, its value would be diminished.

For the final exam questions, we had to make some judgment calls about what is to be included despite we had less number of weeks to go through the course contents due to the extraordinary break due to the floods and only later we were asked to replace the lectures (no additional weeks were given despite the break - this is to ensure that the Chinese New Year holidays do not go into the exam period. One somebody told me that I have mellowed over the difficulty of exam questions over the years. Part of these mellowing is due to better experience of what should be tested. The other (major) part is realizing sometimes we are making our ego interfere with the real purpose of examining the students (showing how clever we can put up the questions). I remember once, a mature student (a teacher, who was also the wife of a college principal) complained how little marks she got did not reflect her efforts and her understanding of quantum mechanics (the subject I was teaching). Thereafter, I thought carefully about what should goes into the questions balancing conceptual and mathematical skills. Students actually get themselves more frequently wrong for the conceptual parts more than the mathematical parts. For the mathematical questions, however, most of the time they are able to answer (parts of) them, otherwise they can't do them at all. When our exam went online, getting a balanced set of questions is even tougher. Some have the tendency of designing questions that the students have not seen or have not experienced solving them. However, I maintained the simpler idea that one should be examining materials that they have learned and know generally what the techniques are. This, perhaps, made my exams a little bit more predictable than usual but this does not mean they are easy or straightforward, especially for the students who have not studied.

After struggling with finishing the lectures, it was time for me to mark the final exams. It took me a while to get started (with many other things in mind) since I had to sort some matters of the marking scheme of my shared course. My other half had told me that she had to go this conference cum annual general meeting in Kuantan on February 25. She wanted all of us to go along with her as part of our family holiday while she attended the talks and meeting at selected times. I wanted to get my marking done before the trip but it was just too much for me - both of my classes hit the maximum number of students (40). So brought along my work and did it partly there. Here are some pics from the trip.

We came back on the Sunday, February 27 and once we reached home, we made a small belated celebration of my youngest son's birthday.

Thereafter, I continued with my marking and was able to get all done by the deadline. Even after submitting the marks online, there were things to do, which I sought help from my younger colleague. Besides these teaching matters, I had other things to do, some of which, I just had to decline. In my mind, I need to focus more on those things which matters most.

Fast forward to March, something unexpected happened. The omicron wave was already hitting our country. As a doctor, my other half had to see many patients, some of which are not very honest with their health status. By last Friday, she was already not feeling well. She took the RTK test on Saturday and it showed negative, I also took the RTK test on Monday as I wasn't feeling that good and I had a dental appointment on Tuesday. So I wanted to be sure, I was infected and the test comes out negative (see pic below)

My other half's condition, however, was worsening and she had a bad fever and thus on late Tuesday afternoon, she took the PCR test as this is more accurate. My second eldest son who was working at the testing lab, got the results earlier before the formal report and messaged his mum that the test turned out to be positive. I was about to go to work that morning and I was unsure what I should do next. My son advised that I should also take the PCR test along with my other sons in the house. So, we did just that today and the results should be out early next morning. I was told that MySejahtera will not change our status until the next day (for Covid-positive patients) and the day after for close contacts. There was also a slight confusion on what I should do with respect to work and I was given the following info from the Ministry of Health by my boss.

Whatever the results tomorrow, I may need to take leave to be with my other half. We are trying out all possible traditional and popular remedies to reduce the symptoms. May Allah grant us speedy relief.