Before May ends, I would like to update some personal things here. First, on my other half's conditions after the surgery. So far, there seems to be no recurring nasal fluid discharges like before. Due to the internal wounds after the surgery, my other half is not allowed to carry out heavy duties in order for the internal wounds to heal, particularly there should be no excessive cough or sneeze - the places where the leaks are mended are still fragile. For prayers, she has to pray in the sitting position and not allowed to bow down for the ruku' and sujud.
The first follow-up on May 18 had the doctor checked the interior of my other half's nose. The mends were said to be intact but one part of the nasal mucosa organ (not sure what it is called) was detached from its place and fallen, for which it was reinserted manually by the doctor. The doctor also mentioned that her dura mater was thin and perhaps has caused the leak and a visible crack seen during the operation. Thus, she was advised not to lift anything that is heavy and the likes (causing further stress). There is also no visible tissue growth over the mends. Nevertheless, the healing process seems to be taking place.
Our second follow-up was today and my youngest son followed along for the first time. Again, the doctor checked the interior of my other half's nose and everything seems ok but the doctor still suggested to my other half to pray in the sitting position, for at least another two weeks. There will be another follow-up at the end of June (we were hoping that was the last). The doctor was very kind to us and he has not charged us for the follow-up consultations. As a sign of thanks, we bought him a basket of fruits from the shop downstairs. Below is the pic of the Dr. Abdul Fattah (one of the two active doctors in the country that can do such surgical procedure) with my other half.
During this trip to Ara Damansara, had the opportunity to meet Choong as he handed over his bound PhD thesis (thank you). We discuss on matters of theoretical physics near the mamak restaurant near the hotel.
Other things that happened since the surgery is that I have applied for a (part-time) job at a (local) private university. In part, I would like to remain active scientifically but the main reason is to get some extra income to help support me paying for the ever increasing expenses. I was interviewed and even did a mock teaching session during the interview. The interview was positive and I told them that I'm happy to help where I'm needed. I will start in September, God willing and will teach Mathematical Methods in Physics (on complex analysis) and Electrodynamics.
Before this, I told myself not buy any (scientific) books until I know that I will still be active i.e. working. Once, I was given positive indication of the interview's outcome, I began ordering books to help me teach those subjects.
I even bought Bob Coecke's latest book (with S. Gogioso) just to rekindle my research interest.
Last week too, I met a friend who came back for holidays from the States. He came down all the way to Seremban to see me and his other friend. We met at Seremban Prima and discussed about academia and ideas. Here are our pics.
He also brought me some books to give to me. One is the story of Jason Padgett "Struck by Genius - How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Genius". He introduced to me this story sometime ago on social media and got me interested. Now, I can read more about it (yet to do it). Another book was David Allen's "Getting Things Done For Teens - Take Control of Your Life in a Distracting World"; the intent was to give it to my youngest son who is still in college. Being an easy read (but not easy to follow) and not organized myself, I found myself going through some of the ideas in the book. Will give this later to my son. Having these gifts, I felt a little guilty not having bought him anything.
Having rekindled my interest in science (with me teaching this coming September), I thought I should introduce quantum field theory to our group (particularly with Aqwa soon taking Part III), noting that most of them had not encountered quantum field theory before in their previous studies. So last week, I gave a talk on relativistic quantum mechanics as a start, which can be watched here or on my YouTube channel.
Not sure how this will go in the future. Hope that I have enough energy to continue to more advanced stuff. Already I'm getting a feedback that I should give details, which should be done on the board rather than on slides. This will have to wait (my tablet has problems at the moment and I don't want to spend more money at this stage). Why field theory? I felt the need to go back to this since part of my PhD study was supposed to look into this (well string theory, a 1+1d field theory) and in a certain sense, looking for completion. Quantum field theory is just hard, and at this age, I don't think I can contribute anything new (unless by a stroke of very good luck). It's more for one's own understanding (and then I can leave planet Earth in peace). Let's hope for the best (regardless).
It has been awhile since I have posted anything about science or academia. Since I have promised to put up a post on my Part III experience in Cambridge, and due to a relatively recent news (see the end of this post), perhaps I should do it now (roughly an hour before going to Ara Damansara). I have also been posting Ellie Sleightholm's videos on her experience of Part III in FB, much to give some awareness on the matter (and not being a show-off of being a Cambridge alumni, which is not the intent). The latest one is this.
Before writing up on Part III, let me mention the period before I went to Cambridge. I have joined UPM as a tutor in 1985 and was looking for a place to do my postgraduate studies. Was pretty lonely then, not having anyone to converse with, on theoretical physics (in the way I would like it). Given my First Class Honours during my undergraduate, I thought I was smart and I looked for the top universities with top-notch theoretical physics departments. I can't precisely remember why I had decided to do Part III but I knew I had to go through it if I want to do my PhD there (advice given by the Admissions Office). So I applied for a place there and got the offer. I had to look for a college and chose Darwin College because it is a postgraduate college, thinking to myself that Part III is a postgraduate course. I did not know then, that most theoretical physics students chose other (well-known) colleges. I did not read too much on history of theoretical physicists at the time.
I knew nobody in UK at the time and sought advice from colleagues in the Faculty and one gave me a FOSIS contact. Thus, on arrival at the airport, I took the famous (expensive) black London taxi to get me to a FOSIS office (and the guys there were surprised). From FOSIS office, they helped me find my way to Cambridge using the train. On arriving in Cambridge, I went straight to Darwin College to register myself and got a room there on the first floor. Now DAMTP then was at Silver Street, and I only need to walk a few hundred meters from Darwin College to get there, which is convenient. I vaguely remembered a briefing that we went to and we were given a list of courses to choose from. Note that I didn't know what the courses were before, since I did not have access to internet (all correspondences were through snail mail). Looking at the list, I thought (foolishly) some of them would be just a revision for me as the Honours courses that I took in Adelaide were pretty advanced.
So there I was in DAMTP, being the only Asian for the Part III courses they had offered. Met so many students from all over the world but none was directly from Asia (as far as I know) and the bulk of the students were those who have taken Parts I & II. I did meet Patel (can't remember his full name) but he was from London and he finally joined Cavendish (I think). There was also Fay Dowker who has seemingly an Oriental look (and I thought she was Chinese in origin) but she is the daughter of John Stuart Dowker (a theorist who I have been following and even wrote to him to get his famous Selected Topics in Topology and Quantum Field Theory lecture notes - see pic below of the notes with his scribbles). She later became the top student of the class for Part III in DAMTP. Being an introvert and not knowing anyone really close, it became a disadvantage for me. So whatever exercises and revisions that I had to do, I don't really have anybody to consult and was mostly doing them through own hard work.
The courses were really hard and time-consuming to work on, even for those that I had exposure on. I would spend hours filling in the details for those I am sure that I will take their exams. The courses for which I took the exams are:
Supersymmetry and Supergravity (lecturer: Paul Townsend)
Electromagnetic and Weak Interactions (lecturer: Ronald Horgan)
Advanced Quantum Field Theory (lecturer: Ian Drummond)
Part III essay (on Witten Index - supervisor: Paul Townsend)
There were other courses that I had attended but I did not take their exams. They are:
Quantum Chromodynamics (lecturer: Hugh Osborn) I remembered getting lost rather quickly during his lectures and hence decided early not taking the exam.
Cosmology (lecturer: George Efstathiou) The course covered a lot of grounds including observational data that led me to decide not to take up the exam.
Black Holes (lecturer: Malcolm Perry) I followed details of his lectures in the beginning and quickly I lose energy in deriving details in the later part of his lectures. Thus, I did not take the exam.
Advanced General Relativity (lecturer: John Stewart) Just like Black Holes, I was interested in the course and he had detailed notes for his lectures but for some reason, I did not take the exam. Perhaps the pattern that I see was my tendency to do mainly quantum courses. Note: I did not know he has passed away in 2016.
Quantum Theory of Atoms & Molecules (I remembered the lecturer is an elderly famous quantum chemistry professor but I have misplaced the notes for this - will update when I find back the notes).
Classical Mechanics - there is no lecture for this. We attended the briefing for this course and John Stewart was telling us to read the second half of V.I. Arnold's book Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics, and return at the end of the term to sit for the exam. I was shocked that this was allowed.
Here are some pics of these courses:
John Stewart gave a complete set of lecture notes (see pic below) and I believe this forms the basis of book Advanced General Relativity. This is no ordinary course of general relativity; essentially we are introduced the use of spinors within general relativity.
The set of notes given are pretty complete and that makes me rather lazy to rewrite the notes; another reason why I did not take the exam on top of its difficulty.
As mentioned above, I tend to like the lectures of Malcolm Perry and made an effort to rewrite the notes (see below).
As the lectures progress to more advanced stuff, could not do this anymore. Here are my scribbled note not being rewritten.
Another fond memory with Malcolm Perry was his generosity with students. I was doing Witten Index essay and I wanted to get the reference of Witten's Holomorphic Morse Inequalities, which only existed in the form of a preprint. If it was published in a journal, I could go to the library and get it (Note: There was no internet access for me then). Knowing Malcolm was at Princeton at one point, I braved myself and asked if he has the preprint. He replied that he will look for it and then gave a copy to me. Much later in 2018, at a conference in NTU, I met Malcolm again (braving myself again to meet him) with his former PhD student Edward Teo.
For courses of which I took their exams, I do a rewrite of all the notes, filling every single details. This was really time-consuming, requiring hard work. Sometimes when I could not do the rederivation details, I would leave a blank on the rewritten notes, hoping to get back to it, when I know how, but I find myself frustrated and depressed doing this, most of the time. I do spent a lot of time scouring through books, to get ideas. My favourite pastime then, was to do window shopping (spending hours there) at Heffers and Galloway & Porter (a second-hand book shop) looking for gems. More often than not, I ended up buying books that I really wanted, almost finishing whatever allowances I had. I also spent hours on the chair, sometimes sleeping in it through the hours in the night. Perhaps due to my lights were on most of the night, the principal of the college, Peter Gathercole once did a spot check on me to see if I was alright. I told him that I was preparing myself for the exams but he advised me not to get burnt out.
For the essay, I had chosen the topic of Witten Index. First, I was already reading materials on supersymmetry and supergravity by the end of my undergraduate studies. This would be the natural extension of my final year project on modifications of minimal SU(5) grand unified theory. Supergravity was thought to be a possible candidate of unified theory that includes gravity and it was popular during the mid 80's. At the time, string theory was not popular just as yet. But what attracted me at that point in time, was no longer the unified theory theme but the use of exotic mathematics in physics (see e.g. Witten's Topological Tools in Ten-Dimensional Physics). So, the subject of Witten Index was a step towards these exotic tools. While I may have sat in courses of topology during my undergraduate (and at the time, did not understand it), I had to learn algebraic topology and differential geometry of bundles, necessary for index theorems by myself. I began to see Witten index in a bigger picture and include them in my essay. For this, I got my only distinction in Part III for the essay. I was told that some researchers also saw my essay and were said to have liked it (perhaps this was exaggerated). Later in 1997, I invited my essay supervisor Paul Townsend to Malaysia, first to the department and then to a Quantum Physics conference in KL. It was my first invitation of a well-known researcher here and it was with the help of British Council and my own local research grant. Unfortunately, I could not get enough people to attend his talks in the department and embarrassingly he made the remark they are not interested.
For me, Part III made me realised that I was not that good as I thought. With people like Fay Dowker, Max Niedermayer, Nigels Burroughs (the person who brought a large teddy bear to the lectures) and the likes in Part III, one certainly feels dwarfed. I did not get to do my PhD in DAMTP but instead went to Durham to work under Richard Ward (student of Penrose). If I was just interested to be a Cambridge graduate, I could have accepted a verbal offer from Cavendish Labs (Mark Warner told me that I would need to tone down my mathematics if I do this). Instead, I pursued my 'mathematical physics' interest elsewhere. Part III was not for the weak of heart and mind, the chances of failure is real (my confidence spiralled thereafter); my other Darwin College colleague who did Part III (name not revealed here) was not successful in getting the certificate and he later turned to economics.
Beyond study life, I met a few Malaysians while I was there: the closest was Shahidan Radiman (doing PhD in Cavendish) and Shahreen Madros (doing PhD in structural engineering), who frequented my room. The rest, I only met them at the mosque (not the current big one). For food, in college I would request for vegetarian food and often frequented Nettles, a vegetarian eatery. I also did my own cooking at college when I have time. Before leaving Darwin College, I actually cooked some dishes for my college room neighbours. Some 'celebrities' also came to my room like the son of Tun Razak and the grandchild of Tengku Abdul Rahman. I also lend my room to Kalim Siddiqui of Muslim Institute for prayers. There is almost nil entertainment while I was doing Part III, so it was pretty boring life. If there is any advice I would give to Malaysians intending to do Part III, I would recommend getting prepared for all the interested subject way before hand, get used to essay-like answers for the exam questions to show that one knows the technical stuff and finally get a real friend that one can conversed with on the subject matter (and not being alone). In other words, make the knowledge seeking adventure during Part III as enjoyable as possible.
Here is a picture of me packing my things to leave Cambridge for Durham.
What actually spurred this post, is the successful viva of my (final) MSc student (Ahmad Aqwa), my second student doing Categorical Quantum Mechanics.
After the viva, I was told that he had been offered to do Part III at DAMTP. I was surprised by this but perhaps I should not be - he had actually mentioned this intent to me before and had borrowed my Part III notes. So last Sunday, he visited me at home and we had a long conversation. I gave some advises similar to the ones I have mentioned above. I also have mentioned to him, given that he has done his MSc here, doing Part III would be like doing a second MSc and there is no guarantee for a PhD. He seems determined to continue and I indeed applaud him for doing this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I wish him all the success and hope he can have a better future than me.
As stated in my earlier post, my other half is due for a (minor) surgery to treat her CSF leak on 3rd May 2023. So we have booked a hotel room at Z-Hotel again for a few-day stay (at the time, we did not know how long).
Apart from my youngest( who is at the college), all of my sons were there to accompany my other half for her treatment with our third son, Izhar, who had just moved to a new place of stay, joining us at the hotel, only at late night.
Before travelling to Ara Damansara, we had our (special) lunch at Hard Wood Cafe that we have not visited for a long time. It has a traditional decor, with the dishes served like a traditional Malay meal shared together with the whole family.
For dinner (after arriving in Ara Damansara), we treat ourselves at Onde Onde Restaurant in Cita Mall.
The special lunch and dinner is to let my other half enjoy meals before she switches to a restricted diet after the surgery.
The next morning, we arrived early at Ara Damansara Medical Centre. My other half was already fasting to prepare for her surgery. She had to go for Covid Test before getting her ward admission.
Sometime in the afternoon, the doctor and anesthesiologist came to explain about the surgery she will undergo just an hour after that. All the surgery will be done through a scope into her left nose. Some fat will be removed from her tummy for use to mend the leak (together with an adhesive). She was advised to do jamak prayers before the surgery as she will be unconscious for a long period. She was wheeled away to the operation theater almost immediately after she finished praying.
During the surgery, I waited in the ward for any news on how the surgery went.
The few hours that we spend waiting seems so long and I was already nervous after two hours. There was a procedure of injecting dye through her spine to easily locate where the leak is, that we were told had to be omitted due to fear of myelopathy complications. So, the extended surgery hours was expected. Slightly before 4pm, my sister in law from Bandar Tun Hussein Onn came to see her thinking that the surgery will be over but my other half was not back in the ward yet. It was just before 6pm, that my other half was wheeled back to the ward and was in an unconscious state. Her face was slightly swollen perhaps due to the surgery wounds within. She was conscious momentarily just before 7pm and I could see tears rolling down her cheek (I can't imagine the pain she was in). I was told by the nurse that she must not go to the toilet (which is problematic) and that her head cannot be tilted beyond 30 degrees. Since I was supposed to stay with her in the ward, I took a self RTK test to show that I was Covid negative. However the hospital insisted that I go for a swab test at the hospital, and which I did around Maghrib time and it is negative. For the night, I rented a collapsible bed-chair. My sister-in-law came briefly before the visiting hours ended but my other half was unconscious.
During the night, routine checks by nurses were made and also intake of pain killers for my other half. The next morning, my sons briefly took me out for breakfast and left my other half in the ward for a while (she was already conscious during the night and that morning). Note that we had to go out as the hospital's cafeteria was closed that morning since it was a public holiday (Vesak day). After breakfast, the doctor came to see us and he explained what had happened in the surgical procedure. He said that besides the leakage point, there was a crack in the layer that helps protect the brain. So, more repair was needed and that probably explained the longer surgical procedure. The hospital staff had given us a pen drive that contained the recording of the surgery. It seems that the recording was nearly four hours long and the two files was roughly around 4 gigabytes.
Before the surgery, we had already asked whether my other half could be discharged earlier, if there is no complication. So the doctor agreed to discharge my other half that day provided extra care is given. He said coughing and sneezing should be avoided and even climbing stairs should be avoided, This is in order for the wounds and the repaired leaks can heal properly.
So by noon, we left the hospital and went straight home, Initially, my other half stayed in the room downstairs. But then she realised that she had to walk far to the toilet and most of her clothes are upstairs. Thus, my sons helped her walk upstairs to stay in our room (the master bedroom with attached bathroom). Izhar went back to his new place (separately from us), while Ihsan took leave until the following Monday where his shift was during the night.
It is now already past a week since the surgery and the antibiotics she was on, has already finished. We probably replenish this tomorrow at a local clinic. She had to be on a specific antibiotic since other antibiotics had some side effect for her. Also, it seems that nose had bled a little. Hopefully it is not serious but only comes from the surgery wounds. We are set to have a follow-up on the 18 May and we hope that the healing process is in place and quick.
