An Off Day

Yesterday was an off day for me. Ever since I had the message regarding assets under my name and the threat of replacement payment if they are not found, my mind went into a worried state. In the past, I have noticed that my brain simply switches off when I'm in a state of great stress. Once during a meeting with my PhD supervisor, I almost passed out due to being stressed out. Coupled to being tired in Ramadhan and all the travel, I was not quite myself yesterday and was in a drowsy state. I fumbled a little bit while teaching my Relativity class, which is particularly depressing. I need to make it up with the students by perhaps revisiting the problem in the next class or maybe I will do just a recording to give further explanation on the topic where I fumbled.

Right after the class, I met my FYP student for a discussion. Yes, I am still taking a student despite that I will be retiring in the next semester. This is because the student wanted to do a project on cosmology and I was the one who had some experience in the topic. So a deal is made with my younger colleague, that she will take over once I leave. Before this, I had asked the student to read Ellis' Issues in the Philosophy of Cosmology article which touched upon many issues, for him to pick up a particular topic. So, during the discussion yesterday, he was supposed to tell me what topic that he has chosen. When he said, multiverse, I was caught off-guard since I did not expect that he chooses that and is not quite in my interest. However, I took up the challenge and asked if he had been reading other articles, but he had not. Later in the afternoon, I had to search articles on the topic to see what has been discussed. Immediately after my meet with him, there was an online presentation by my ex-PhD student but I was not paying attention since I was in a bad shape of drowsiness.

Fast forward to the time of my driving home from work, it was already raining. The traffic was moderately heavy and vehicles are moving rather slowly. Somewhere after Bangi exit, I was on the second lane and a bus was trying to get into the lane, after which I distanced my car a little bit to let him in. Right after the bus was in the second lane, my thought was just to overtake the bus using the fast lane. So when I switched to the third fast lane, suddenly the bus swerved in front of me into the fast lane. My automatic reaction was to give him a big honk. If I was any faster, I could have easily crashed into the bus or hit the divider to avoid the bus. So when the bus switched back to the second lane, I braved myself to overtake the bus. My thoughts were if the bus driver is a little crazy, he could easily squeezed to the right and caused my car to hit the divider. Alhamdulillah, he let me passed by.

Reaching home, I was in a slight bad mood. It was still raining and I had to park my car a distance away from my home since some workers had already installed the front gate and the ramp into the front porch was not ready for use. The picture below was taken before the rain.

Slight good news during iftar yesterday is that my youngest will be returning home today to spent his Ramadhan with us during the weekend. I will be looking forward to meet him today. If I had the luxury, I would have taken leave but I still need to settle this asset issue. A lot of frustration was building up in me since most of the assets were not really used by me but was bought during the time I was the Head of Laboratory in ITMA before the lab got closed down or merged with INSPEM, whichever way one wants to interpret it. Indeed this is another reason why people tend to decline taking admin positions since they are subject to all these risks and responsibilities and in many circumstances without proper support.

Later that night, I prayed that Allah eased up my path for retirement and if there is an opportunity, will be finding another job.