Superheroing One's Way

I just woke up at 2am in the morning. It is pouring outside and this would be condition that most would like to have a good sleep. Me, having tons on my mind, decided to stay up and work. Yesterday, I had only one hour of sleep to complete the marking of a huge pile of exam scripts that a colleague requested that be returned to him in the morning. After my class yesterday, I went back home straight to have an hour nap as I was feeling groggy (my fear has always been the moments of micro-sleep while I was on the highway). This morning, I'm doing much the same thing, to finish off one bundle of scripts that another colleague wanted in the morning. I'm also having an 8am replacement lecture this morning and I doubt that I will return to bed at all. Besides this, I am just a day away from travelling to Krabi to attend SQST2024 and I have not quite prepared my slides just yet (though ideas have been brewing in my head). This is what my working corner floor looks like, not knowing what to focus on and hence the desire to blog.

It was during these conditions that I conjure up the thought of that one needs to be somewhat of a superhero to make it through life successfully, bearing all the struggles and pains. Holding these thoughts, I asked ChatGPT to picture me as an Asian superhero and it produces the following photo.

I thought 'I' looked too much like a Korean in this pic. So I added the phrase that I am a Malay and wear glasses and this is what it produced next.

This is just for fun. I guess one could use ChatGPT for better (scientific) purposes but for these, I tend to prefer my own creativity than ones which is assisted by AI (perhaps it is my ego in the way).

The superhero image is also the image that I thought many would like to conjure up in social media, showing one has better abilities than others, hiding away weaknesses and failures (more appropriately, the unsuccessful features of one's life). It is mainly a pretense to make oneself feel better, which on its own is fine for one to soldier on. Without control, it leads to arrogance, failing to recognise one's own fragility and limitedness. Right now, my concern is that my ageing has led me to be weaker in may sense of the word, at least physically, I'm no longer capable of working continuously as I wanted or even needed. In these thoughts, I can only pray that I will be given just enough strength for me to continue and wishing for a good ending.

Traffic Jams and Marking Weekend

I love to work and hate to be idling unnecessarily. Thus, going to work is no real problem for me but the time we need to spend travelling (and not being able to do anything else) is something I dislike. What more, if we are met with traffic jams. And, I'm not considering at all about the stress and risk that go with it. So yesterday and the day before, I went through massive traffic jam. On Thursday, as I went back home from campus, got into a huge traffic jam in the stretch between Serenia exit and the KLIA-PLUS interchange.

The jam was caused by a trailer completely blocking the Seremban fork of the interchange. Traffic was diverted towards the Bangi fork. That means we had to do a u-turn at some toll northbound; I did my u-turn at Bandar Seri Putra toll which was totally packed with u-turning vehicles and those exiting at this toll. What should have been a 40-minute drive home turned into a three-hour plus travel. Given that I had to go to work the next day for a replacement lecture, I was on the watch-out to see if the blockage has been cleared and I found this on X:

So, the next morning as I went to work, I met with another traffic jam. In my mind, I will certainly be late for my 9am replacement lecture. Luckily, I was able to message one of the students to relay the message that I will be late. Now, the traffic jam this time was caused by a horrible accident. As I passed the scene of the accident, I saw at least one car completely wrecked (I can't imagine what happen to the people in it). During the jam, several ambulances went by. The 40-minute journey this time turned into one and a half hour journey.

To comfort myself during these traffic jams, I reminded myself that it is fortunate for us not to be there at the time of incidence, alhamdulillah. 

Travel time has increasingly become a wasteful part of our life. After Covid pandemic, we had the chance to reduce our work-travel time by allowing work from home for tasks that do not require our physical presence but I guess employer-employee mistrust is still high. Lecturing tasks are however best done physically as interactions can make them more meaningful, but extra lectures could easily be done online as academic staff had the experience of doing it during the pandemic. For replacement lectures, some of the students have indeed suggest that we just do online lectures but unfortunately this was not allowed.

This weekend, I will be alone with my eldest son as my other half with the youngest will be at Temerloh for an engagement occasion of her nephew. Before this, I was planning that I use this weekend to focus on the preparation of slides for my talk at SQST2024. Alas, I had this huge task of marking around 1000 exam scripts briefly mentioned in the last post. Below is a picture of part of the exam scripts that I need to go through.

Not visible in the picture are the exam scripts with the other examiners. I don't feel confident of finishing these. Already I'm feeling fatigue and growing back pain. May Allah help me.

Varia: Inevitable Aging Matters

Been awhile since I posted anything, much due to enormous amount of work. Right now after Fajr prayer, I thought I should post something before I get back into my work-rhythm.

Just a few weeks, I saw some queries in my XMUM e-mail account from international students about possibility of doing PhD and MSc studies with me. Where did they get this information from, I thought. It was only then, I realised that the department put up a webpage of me in the departmental webpages. Being a part-timer (whose affiliation is only on a contract basis semester-by-semester), I replied to them I had to decline. Also at this old age, perhaps supervision is best left to younger energetic people. I no longer want to be blamed for 'unfruitful' research life ventures (note that as far as I'm concerned, students have been given ample freedom to choose what they want to do).

Speaking of old age, it certainly does not disqualify me for being adventurous or creative. There was this phenomena of using ChatGPT to create a picture of what their life looks like. Before asking it to do that, I started asking scientific questions that I was interested to know (mainly quantum and mathematical stuff) for this 'soulless' entity to gather information about me. I also include my 60-ish age, then it produced this first pic.

Pretty boring, I thought and then I remembered I haven't told it I have musical interests and after I did, it produced the following.

Hmm ... my old age must have made the vinyls appearing in the pic. Not to be depicted as a person with mainly Western music interests, I then mentioned gamelan. Next, it gave me this.

Wasn't quite the gamelan picture I had wanted (rather modern-ish). I wanted to ask for more pics but I have reached the limit of its free usage. More than a week later, I asked it again to depict me as a Westerner, trying to push back the stereotyping of the West being better from some quarters.

Put it online and caused some reactions. No, I'm not taking this seriously.

Having aged, physically I'm weaker now. Yesterday, I even postponed a meeting with an international lecturer because I had just delivered a three hour (intense) lecture, felt so tired and if I wanted to meet him, I had to wait until 5pm. So pushed it to another day. Indeed this is the norm, by the end of each day at work, I would go home feeling exhausted and rested early. That is not so good in my current situation given I have around 1000 exam scripts to mark from the two courses I am teaching (I'm only paid through my teaching hours, the rest is all from a sense of duty). These scripts are shared among three lecturers where each lecturer marks specific questions. If I really want to finish them, I have to continuously work through the night. Perhaps that is how Tyson felt in his recent match.

Old age also means we are closer to our own end. Few weeks back, a UPM colleague passed away, Dt. Mahdi Abdul Wahab. We used to car pool to go to work with Dr. Wan Daud, Dr. Osman (from Ladang) and Mohd. Salleh (from Economy). While together in the car pool then, I thought I barely know him. We stopped car pooling when I got the administrative job in ITMA. May Allah forgive him and his soul be among the righteous.

Life is short. Right now, I continue to work at Xiamen to ensure I can provide sufficiently for my family. I have to say, if I had my way, I would prefer not to work (that hard) and have a more peaceful life. I rarely want to post personal stuff online and if I did, it is mainly for record for me to refer to later. But somehow some individuals must have thought that I'm so rich and kept asking money from me. That is why I rarely want to use Messenger these days.

Complain and hate is in abundance online. In one post, I said that the social media is a training ground for insolence (and ego building); we will all be held accountable for this. Recently, we receive our student evaluation after the midterm exams have passed. Some criticisms I can handle and I can try to improve upon but some are really nasty. When one first reads this online, the first reaction is often gloom (and doom) and took a while to recover. After a while, rationalization kicks in and given almost 300 students in my classes, there is bound to be some hate for this miserable brown-skinned person. I'm there to teach and that is what I will do, educate with technical materials and some ethics (can be intense sometime).

I'll end with better news. My younger colleagues will be organizing EQuaLS 2024 this December. The themes this year is "A Precursor and Realignment Workshop to the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology 2025", perhaps the right time to forge better a national collaboration ahead as Kwek once told me that we have working in isolated islands before this.

Not sure of my participation just yet (maybe as a forum panelist), given my teaching duties and I will have just returned from SQST 2024. In any case, I wish them the success.

No Indoctrination Intended

Few months back, I received an email from abroad asking if I'm still in the institute or not and I replied in the negative. The person then wrote back but now with some negative tone and putting down some colleagues back then. I decided not to reply because of its negativity. The person then scolded me for not replying and thus, I replied saying I have no interest in bringing up things of the past particularly negativities. I said nobody is perfect and that I have moved on.

Time and time again, I do get negativities and today is one such day, which troubles me a little.

I'm not sure what this alludes to. Have I indoctrinated anyone in the past? I may have made remarks privately and they were often reactions to comments and remarks that I have received. Some time ago, I have always been reminded that the organization I was with, was for mathematicians (while I was a staff of Physics Dept.). I did convey to my junior colleagues that asserting this may not be deemed positive by others, will probably work against the institute and thus, I have advised against it in a way. With respect to mathematics, I have my deepest respect for the field, which is quite close to theoretical physics, particularly those within pure mathematics. Historically, mathematics and physics have been quite close - just simply dig up the evidence in the literature; it is all there. I may have also made private remarks on philosophy but this again often as reactions to philosopher friends and colleagues who touch upon theoretical physics matters. I remembered a few instances, a philosopher colleague then presented the hierarchy of knowledge placing mathematics above natural science and engineering, with maths just below metaphysics. Perhaps the ordering is along the abstraction axis, but to me this says little of ethical or even spiritual dimensions. During such presentations, I tend to calm myself down not to say too much and be respectful of what others had to say. It is unfortunate that people tend to elevate their fields of interest over those of others and then made condescending remarks. 

As far as I am concerned, I have been open to different types of sciences (sometimes is required of me being a management member of the institute), some more than others (much due to my own limited technical expertise). With students, I will often tell privately what I know and experience (including opinions), and I often presented matters in a way that they can build their own independent thoughts according to their capabilities. In a way, I regret that some might see me differently. I have posted about labels before in this blog before (see for instance here and here) and I think I have not been disrespectful. At this age, I guess I should care little of what people say and work on more productive things with the little time that I have left.

Happy Birthday Along

Recently, we encountered some difficulties. But Alhamdulillah, we were shown a way out just in time for us to celebrate our eldest son's birthday. Reminded me that Allah responded to our prayers sometime beyond expectation. Hope that we will be constantly guided to remain hopeful but yet we'll be pushing ourselves to be better.

So yesterday, we celebrated our eldest son's birthday in a modest way. May Allah ease his way through life and be successful in this life and (more in the) hereafter.

Even our partially blind cat is waiting for a piece of the cake.

Update on our three-legged cat: he is getting bigger and healthier. He is probably the most naughty of all. Behaviourwise, he reminded us of Lofa.