Excuse Me

Today I decided that I should take a rest from teaching. Perhaps it is better this way as Ramadhan is approaching. With old age, I have been slower doing things and I get tired easily. So with Ramadhan, I fear I will not be able to teach well. As it is, my students rating in XMUM was not that good and what surprised me (maybe I should not), I had poorer rating for Mathematical Methods, the subject which I find more interesting to teach than Electrodynamics. Then I realised that Mathematical Methods was taught in the afternoon (during lunch time) after Electrodynamics in the morning. Two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. Thus by the afternoon, I was already quite exhausted. Of course, there was also less sleep in the night before, to prepare four hours of lecture. Certainly, I wished I had done my teaching better. I could give justifications on the less ideal situation that I'm in, but I won't. As the students say, these will be just excuses. This week, when I opened my e-mail, I saw that I have a few more reports to submit for my teaching portfolio (note this is much more detailed in comparison with UPM). There was an excel file that I could not get to work the first time (during my portfolio submission) and I had to find some details from the colleagues in XMUM for me to proceed and it needed tweaking. One of the things when you have a standard set-up for everyone, there is little room for variations in the way one does things. An easy example is that I give choices for students to pick exam questions that they are more comfortable to answer and also with continuous assessment, due to the many questions that I give them in the assignments, I used capping marks in order to help those students who could not do all of them. Both of these need workarounds for the given excel file and it took more than three days for me to do this. Finally, I submitted all reports and returned the marked exam scripts to the exam unit. So I went to campus for the last time and returned my office keys.

Another thing that came up, was that I found people are making fun of me that includes a past student. I was feeling down but maybe I shouldn't be in this age of trolls. Being older, I tend to be more sensitive these days. Sometimes people make fun of someone, looking down on him/her, because they want to feel better themselves. If so, I felt disappointed on what happened. Perhaps I have trained them wrong. For now, I have made all my blogs private (for fear of more mocking). I'm not sure when will I make them public again. I prefer to spend time alone at this stage, reflecting on things, doing work in silence. I will spend more time in the smaller room at the back, simply because it is cooler here in the afternoon. My own room gets too much sunshine, it gets terribly warm. Here is my view (perfect for working alone).

The other thing that happened this week was Aaron Bushnell setting himself on fire as a protest to the current genocide. I watched the full video and I felt a little sick and had to lie down. There has been many cases of self-immolation (a new word I have learned) in the past but they have been done as the extreme form of protest. In the case of Bushnell, some parties tried to paint him as mentally ill, perhaps trying to lessen the impact of the message that he is carrying. 

Finally I would like to close this post with this supplication:

Wedding, Birthday and Post Irrelevance

Last Saturday, we went to the wedding of a nephew in Klang. This took place in Villa Warisan, Klang. The venue had this wonderful traditional atmosphere with wooden village houses (reminding me of the old days at my kampung in Tapah). However, the roads leading to the place are narrow and we were warned to bring a smaller car. At a few places, there were dips in the road that made the bottom part of my son's car scratching the 'road' surface. Here are some photos.

Our travel back to Seremban saw heavy traffic ao that we had to stop by at Dengkil RnR to perform our Dzuhr prayers.

Today is my youngest son's birthday but we 'celebrated' it yesterday night since my other half is working today. We simply bought a cake for this purpose. We wanted him to be happy as he will start his industrial training next month.

The next part of this blog entry is my preoccupation with learning new stuff. Also, I got distracted by some social media posts that I consider interesting. I resisted urges to make comments on other people's posts but I failed to do this in one case. Most of the interesting posts that I saw are philosophical nature (one can't write too much maths on FB) but at times the post hinges on foundational matters that have bearings in theoretical physics. And my comment was on one such post. Later, I regretted that I did it; philosophers often have different aims in their research despite they tend to comment a lot on the work of physicists. Right after my comment there, I downloaded this philosophical paper of Muller entitled "The Influence of Quantum Physics on Philosophy", just to read if there are common grounds to discuss with philosopher friends. The answer to the title of the paper according to Muller is minimal, if not none. Well, I should have stick to my own theoretical physics materials. With to respect to social media posts, I should have stuck to my principle "Do not offer thoughts or comments if one is not invited to do so". If there is a need for (academic) discussions, I prefer a closed one rather than a public one because ego can easily get in the way in such public discussions that often entail disrespectful comments (one can always have difference in opinions without mocking each other). Another thing is that uninformed public may get the wrong idea/perception of the matter being discussed particularly when it is of frontier topics. Anyway, I will say less from now on.

Anyway, I was hoping to say the above thoughts after reading the book of Chibbaro, Rondoni & Vilpiani, "Reductionism, Emergence and Levels of Reality" and after reading materials on Adam's lemma to answer a query of my former PhD student. Unfortunately, I'm slow on both fronts and will probably post my thoughts on these in my technical blogs (much) later.

Time .... Passed

Reflecting on the end times. Been more than a week since my previous post. It has been 132 days of horror in Ghazzah with most of its population driven to Rafah and they are still being bombed there. My prayers go to the people there who have undergone so much trials and tribulations. But Western powers who are supporting the genocide seems not to care. The phrase "deaf, dumb and blind" comes to mind. I shared the following video of Dr. Andy Ferguson who had spent time there on FB, with such phrase for those who are aware of such horrific stories and did nothing. Another story of a doctor is that of Dr. Amira Al-Assouli, who has received praises of her heroism in trying to save a wounded man in the face of sniper fire. Indeed I imagine that the world will be (totally) different after this genocide. May Allah restore justice and peace there.

Back to 'mundane' matters. I've been reading posts on FB that I find interesting but at times they turned ugly (restrengthening my view that such discussions should have been done in a less public space where egos have very little space to dwell). I resisted to post any reactions and if I do have the urge to react, I will do it in independent postings mostly on things I have more knowledge on. Much of these posts involve Arabic (technical) terms which I have little knowledge on, despite having read something on them. For me, I would like to be able to internalise them if I really want to be involved in such discussions, not simply just translating the word in my mind whenever encountering them (perhaps making Arabic as a language I will use in my dreams on top of Malay and English, which is rather impossible at this instance). The other thing about these online discussions, they seem to put forward one point of view over another, or even area of expertise over another area. Even if it is nice to learn a lot of things, I find myself running out of time left in this world to do so. I have to pick and choose questions that help me prioritise are: (1) do these things help me understand better my faith and values; (2) can they be applied to areas where I have (some) expertise and do more progress in such areas (actionable); (3) can these (or the eventual areas where they are applied) be of benefit to others. Otherwise, it will not be my main focus. One needs to remember that in whatever area that one is exploring, one needs to invest significant amount of time to be good.

Time with the family. End of last week, picked up my youngest son from UiTM campus in Jasin since, he was alone in his room. At the time, he has one more final exam left. So for his last exam, my eldest son sent him back to campus to sit for the exam and then returned home on the same day.

Yesterday, we had an impromptu family gathering in Saville Residence, KL. It was rather spontaneous and only knew about it a day earlier. Knowing that my sisters-in-law from Kepong (wives of my eldest and second eldest brothers) are going to be there, we take this (rare) opportunity to meet each other before the coming Ramadhan. Here are some pics.

Since we have not met for some time, we asked each other about one's health and talked about our livelihoods which are getting more difficult these days. With my musician brother, we converse a little bit about music and also the ongoing crisis in Ghazzah and exchange notes. I'm happy, being able to meet them even for a short while, not knowing when will we meet next since we are all senior citizens and that our family has grown smaller (not counting our children and some grandchildren). May Allah grant us the chance to meet again, particularly for the coming Ramadhan and 'Eid. 

My Birthday Wishes

Today is my Hijri birthday and I thought I should do another post. Yesterday, I received the news that the institute that I was in, will undergo through changes. I sincerely wish them all the best since the institute will be at its best only with those who are committed to work for the institute and the support that it receives. The news evoke some memories while I was there and this post is simply to share what I have wished for the institute. In no way, that this post is intended to put any form of influence on anyone in matters of the present institute.

Cutting Across Disciplines and Pushing Frontiers

I see the institute as a research body that can bring researchers of various disciplines together under a single roof, that will be different from the traditional structures usually found in the faculties. This, is of course, easier said than done as it divides the loyalty of the researchers. The way that I would have put it is that it belongs to the bigger single entity (the university) and work done in different parts of the entity should complement each other rather than compete with each other. Me being from the Physics Department, wished that more theoretical work that interface with areas of mathematics can be pursued there. In the west, there has been a lot of interactions between theoretical physicists and mathematicians in pushing the frontiers of science. One can read Bott's article here for a glimpse. See also Sir Michael Berry's views here among others.

To be at the frontier, one should be aware of the developments in one's area. For my group, I have always encouraged our group members to check the repository arXiv.org for daily/weekly updates of papers. The repository is good for physics and mathematics as well as computer science. For other subjects, one can look at bioRxiv for biology, chemRxiv for chemistry, medRxiv for health sciences, PhilArchive for philosophy, RePEc for economy and socArXiv for social sciences. Other repositories can be found here. We also used our weekly group meetings to discuss papers of their interest (note: no single person could keep up with the exponential growth of papers, so a group effort seems necessary).

Flux of Ideas with International Outlook

We used to have a good (international) visitor program for the institute. But as use of funds get more restrictive, we were unable to do it as frequent as we want. If one looks at well-known maths institute, they normally have strong visitor programs. Much of this is due to ensure that the institute has ongoing flux of research ideas beyond ones that are internally developed. More so, if our international staffing is quite low (I can recall that most of our international staff is leaving), then a regular visitor programme should be desirable.

Our group regularly holds EQuaLS and the event invites internationally well-known researchers to the institute. I remember fondly how this event are being looked forward to almost each year by our (network of) researchers. Each time we have the event, it gives a breath of fresh air and we saw how frontier ideas are being debated live in front of our eyes. I take particular note that due to our shyness of our local audience, the group of international visitors actually demonstrated to us how they throw (critical) questions to each other, the very least. In fact, the lesson is not only within lectures, but during our social functions, we get to see ideas are being brewed.

Beyond Black-Box Mathematics

This is perhaps the most important dream of all that I have for the institute. Once, a high-level academic/administrator told me that institutes should be in areas where we have strength (usually translated as numbers). In my private thoughts, so that we have more of the same thing? I think differently. When it comes to research, I think one of the most important aspects is that we have a good and deep understanding of the mathematical language that we use (not to treat it as a black box) and this goes even within mathematics itself. To a certain extent, I see the small number of (local) pure mathematicians with our maths academia as a problem and extending this, the small number of theoretical physicists within our physics academia. We can't rely just on the few individuals that are already find difficulties to survive; instead we need to build a strong tradition of good mathematical thinking and strengthen whatever our small number there is. In my humble personal thoughts, this has actually held us back. If ever, we are hoping to have people that could do mathematical breakthroughs, the tradition needs to be put in place very soon as we are quickly being left behind in frontier areas.

Institutes are not new. There are very good mathematical institutes abroad that we can learn from. To this, I would like to point out the policy statement of Isaac Newton Institute of Mathematical Sciences for our reference.

To end, I always remember this cautionary do'a of not putting our personal whims as unrealized fantasies and that our strive is meaningful.

Resurrecting Blogs and Segamat Trip

It has been one month past into the new year. The Middle-East humanitarian crisis still goes on despite the move made by South Africa at ICJ. The situation is so sickening and here is how some want to perceive it.

Anyway, may Allah help the oppressed and change the unjust power structure of the world; the least one can do is to make do'a. 

Last Wednesday was also the last day of my current contract with XMUM. I'm back with reliance only on my pension pay to get through our expenses. The next (long) semester will be in April and let's see if I'm still needed there to teach. With the end of my teaching duties, I'm a bit free to do things that I want. I resurrected my more technical blogs: Ketchup Spills and Acu Frekuensi. The latter blog is my blog in Malay language and I rebooted it with a discussion of a better term for gauge theories; currently the term 'tolok' comes from rain gauge, which is not quite the way gauge is understood in gauge theories. The other blog is done on wordpress platform because it has Latex command capabilities, allowing one to be able to write mathematical equations easily. This blog got rebooted with a topic that I was asked to look into Benford's law. This topic surprised me in some way (not knowing about it) and this law may have wide applications (e.g. fraud data detection). With my limited reading, I'm still puzzled what is really operating underlying these laws. I likened this topic very much like, say power law distribution in complex networks. One may say that it is about information but deep down, I feel there is some disconnect with how the various actual systems work. All of these reminded me of how stereotypes work, with information of the majority (whatever distribution is taken) shapes the stereotype but yet such majority is subject to (the dynamical) change. Back to Benford's law, I was also surprised how deep and exploratory this topic can be; hard-core theoretical probability and dynamical systems, which I think is promising.

Last Friday, we went back to Segamat to visit the husband of my sister-in-law who is due to undergo some heart procedures. Currently he is a bit better than before after receiving medications from IJN. Also, my second son came from JB to see him (he did not have the opportunity) before. Here are some pics at a cendol store.

We went back home yesterday, reaching home before Maghrib. We can't leave our cats for too long.