Retirement, the Party and Students

I am now officially retired with my 60th birthday yesterday. Currently accompanying my wife to attend her conference in Kedah, together with my two eldest sons. Just the night before my 60th birthday, my other half made a surprise birthday gift (as shown in the pic below), after which we went for a special dinner.

Last week, our theory group made a retirement party for me in our laboratory in the department. Much to my surprise, they called up some of my ex-students, first postdoc (the first postdoc fellow in UPM, according to my knowledge), ex-staff and even past colleagues and acquaintances from other universities (local and abroad). Dr. Umair (ex-PhD) acted as the MC for the event and he called out some of my colleagues and (ex-)students, beginning with Prof. Kuru, explaining my math genealogy (academic grandson to Nobel Laureate, Penrose). I must say it is great to be part of such lineage, though deep in our hearts, we all know that intellectual greatness does not necessarily follow. 

Thereafter, many of my ex-students and the postdoc gave speeches. While appreciating all these, I felt that I am just passing through and it was fortunate of me to have them as students that kept me alive in my career. I was a given a card for me to remember with all their wishes and then gave my own (unprepared) speech.

Most of my speech are simply reactions to what have been said. I told them, when I was interviewed for my post in UPM, I said to the interviewers that I hope to create a theoretical physics group in the university. Alhamdulillah, this, we managed to to do but I was hoping to do much more. It is important to start a tradition and with this, the university and later the country may be known for certain style of theoretical physics. This, we have yet to achieve. On the matter of style, I tend to look at the mathematical tools (mostly geometric flavour) that we use and the latest set of tools that we consider is category theory. Being unprepared, I have forgotten to say many things such as my apologies of my inadequacies and my hope for them to be successful. Thereafter, we had some group photos.

During the event, the other nice surprise are the video messages. Beginning with Kwek from CQT

Bob Coecke from Quantinuum

Sergei Borisenok (currently in Abdullah Gul University in Turkey)

Jesni Shamsul Shaari from IIUM (file too large but can be viewed here)

Mohammed Abdulmakek my ex PhD student currently in Holland

Siti Munirah, my co-supervised PhD student (with Dr. Bahari, UKM) now with USIM

Siti Nurul Ain, my ex-MSc student, now with UiTM

Nor Yusniza, ex-INSPEM, now at the Ministry

I must thank them for them taking time off to do these videos. After all the speeches and messages, we finally got to the food.

Thank you again for all these memories which I will always cherish.

Earlier this week, I had my last meetings as main supervisor before passing them over to Dr, Nurisya as I leave the university: PhD student Ahmad Hazazi

and MSc student, Ahmad Aqwa (the second student doing Categorical Quantum Mechanics)

Yesterday, the day of my retirement, my PhD student Choong Pak Shen, successfully passed his viva, which I consider as a birthday gift:

The viva date was set by the Graduate School with the examiners, perhaps not knowing that I am retiring that day. Also, could not be there for him, since I am travelling then. My apologies.