Varia: Thoughts on Teaching, Another Trip to Ara Damansara

Last Friday, was my last day of teaching. It was a replacement class for my Linear Algebra course and I was teaching Singular Value Decomposition. I have never taught this topic before even though I have come across it. Some hours went into reading and thinking on how to best teach it. For some reason, it had me thinking about more general topics on maps, kernels and images (see pic below from the book of Lay, Lay & McDonald, the textbook for the course)

I did mention about this in the class, just to inform that things are much richer than what they have encountered in the class. In many ways, I have tried my best to convey some general concepts all he way throughout the course so that they can connect the pieces when the time comes. I do notice however, there is a difference in styles of teaching here, which is more centred on problem solving skill set. I remembered putting out some problems for one set of quiz (involving general ideas of vector spaces) but was discarded then.

That week also saw me returning their midterm exam scripts to the students so that they can see how they performed and how the exam was marked.

Almost immediately, I had queries and complains about their marks and my standard answer is we tried to conform to the marking scheme given. They had also the chance to compare their marks with each other. Many complained about why they were not given the full marks for some questions but less complained on how marks are given to different students. Since each lecturer is marking specific questions, the tendency of giving marks uniformly is better. Nevertheless, I do consider there is always the possibility of genuine differences being made and when I raised this matter to colleagues, it is not meant to question anyone or undermine the system of marking (I do respect each colleague's independence on how the matter is perceived or judged). So, there is a balancing act of entertaining the students' queries and respecting the colleague's way of marking. It also means that my marking is not really over just yet as I need to go through each query.

In a way, this semester's teaching has been very much labour intensive and much more than what I was expecting (given I'm paid only through teaching hours). But I can understand the administrator's approach to the whole matter. Have been part of admin before. I told one colleague, while one can do multitasking, there is often a limit of what one can do. Given these limits, I have set up a hierarchy of priorities of what should done first (the education of students over the satisfaction of students). Imperfect as it is, this was what I can do then.

So with the semester ending, I will soon be back to be unemployed. With old age, I guess there is lesser chance of getting opportunities. Some may say that I should just simply retire (and I know some advise me not to return to work), but I still have to work to support the family and pay financial bills. In any case, I hope there is an opening for a job with the preference of one with more creative tasks than one with physical labour.

Yesterday, we were at Ara Damansara Medical Centre to meet with my other half's doctor, Dr. Abdul Fattah, who has operated on her for CSF leak (see this post). Sometime last week, she complained about hearing impairment on her left ear (hearing echoes and noises). First, she went to a local ENT specialist clinic in Seremban, and she was given some medication to reduce what was thought as an inflammation on her inner ear. It was diagnosed as Eustachian Tube Dysfunction. There was little improvement even after a few days of treatment and thus we thought that we should return to Dr. Abdul Fattah, fearing for a more sinister cause. She went for an audiometry test and there was a loss of hearing for the lower frequencies. Dr. Abdul Fattah said it was due to damaged nerves (and not a more sinister CSF leak-relate problem). She was given high dosage of steroids but he told her that this prescription was best done in the early stages for better recovery. For now, we just pray for the best; she is due for another audiometry test in two weeks time to see if there is any improvement.

From '62 To Sixty Two

No words will be able to describe ... 

Marking Weekends and EQuaLS Forum

The past few weekends have been full of marking activities. I'm pretty stressed out with these tasks and at times I went into a slight depression. The student clients ('bosses') kept asking when will they get their results and my fellow colleagues also asking the same, on behalf of their own students. In a way, I have started to regret my trip to Thailand. Not only has it caused financial stresses (yes, I know, my own doing) but it also came at the busy period of marking. By going to the conference, it had caused further delay of my marking (not helping with the expectations of current job). As I have commented before, what was I thinking when I accepted the invitation. Perhaps I have attached too much importance of my participation as a Malaysian representative to the conference (nobody really cared or noticed, right?). Thinking back, will there be any difference with my participation in the conference with the otherwise situation of my absence from the conference. Back to the marking, I have actually delayed marking scripts of my own group of students (to their displeasure) and gave priority to the scripts of the students of my colleagues. Of the two subjects, Linear Algebra was the one harder to mark particularly those problems involving row reduction procedure since there are many ways to do them (some perhaps not considered by the marking scheme). I have finished my marking of Linear Algebra, and now I am left with just scripts of my Applied Calculus students, which I hope to finish this weekend.

Yesterday, after my replacement class at XMUM in the morning, I drove to UPM for EQuaLS2024. I was invited to the forum in the afternoon. I was told that I should share my experience of building the quantum research ecosystem.

I started off by saying what I have done (the so-called 30 years) can only be of historical note, but what is more important will be how we forge the path ahead. The EQuaLS series is part of this history, a continuation of the lecture series I initiated in ITMA (TSL Expository Lecture Series). When I renamed it to EQuaLS, I was actually asked the reason why I did not name the lectures after the name of the lab. Having experienced being moved from one institute to another, and then from one lab to another, I thought it was best to name it after the research theme that it should carry. In this way, the lecture series is independent of the hosting institute and laboratory. Indeed, there was once the vision of EQuaLS as a national event, that may be hosted by a different university. It almost did happen until the intended organizer backed off. In the forum, I explained the intent of the lecture series is to bring us to the level of international experts with enough mathematical sophistication and maturity and of course, this could take years. Without such level, no one will take us seriously and it is highly unlikely for us to progress without substantial amount of acceptance of the relevant (international) community.

The other thing that we did, mentioned in the forum for a historical note, is our regular weekly meetings, that we called QuEST.

The point of the meeting is to allow members to share what they have read or worked on with other members. This inculcates a culture of critical discussions among members, which would pave the way to attain mathematical sophistication and maturity mentioned before. The other problem that it addresses is the fact we have limited reading capacity, while thousands of publications are being produced daily. So if we wanted to be well-rounded and be aware/on top of current issues being discussed, then we need to distribute the 'responsibility' of reading/reporting among the members. Perhaps another matter that can be instilled with the weekly meetings is the sense of urgency in doing research. Having said all this, a danger would be falling into the trap of having meetings for the sake of meetings. Every now and then, there should be some form of renewal of the spirit of these meetings. So a good thing to have (which we did not do), is to assess the situation at some regular intervals.

All of the above points raised seem to be out of synch with the topics raised by the other panel members; they touched upon policies, working papers, financial issues, legal frameworks. If ever, some criticise what I have raised is too idealistic or emotive or whatever, I can also retort that some of the issues raised are really like putting the cart before the horse; we are still facing very basic issues. However, the point here is not to put anyone down; everyone's contribution should be welcomed, particularly when the meet is meant to foster collaboration among us. In any case, we do need realizable actions from all these discussions, so that whatever being discussed does not end with the forum itself.

At some point in the discussions, I did raise my concern of unhealthy attitude that may take place while pursuing these quantum agendas. With the recent attention of the government on quantum technologies, there may be tussle about who should take lead. This may happen when personal agendas are placed above the overarching national agenda. Ideally, everyone should be leading in areas that they are familiar with. Opportunities should be open to all with complementary contributions from each group. Dreaded are ideas of sabotage or wanting others to fail. If there are any, then rightfully such persons should be shunned from the collaborative efforts. I also stressed the fact that no single person can carry the quantum agenda for the country on his/her own; we need all the help/contribution that we can get. I hope that by saying this, I will not offend anyone but it is a sincere thought from me.

After the forum, I met with my junior colleagues. As a follow-up to the forum, I did say that we need to come up with some coherent direction for the group, something that we could say to the world, these are our contributions. It is quite easy to say that we need to work on topics that are close to experiments, but what precisely are those? Perhaps using the Thailand experience, we should turn the question around, we need experimentalists to work closely with theorists. The cooperation between theorists and experimentalists should be organic and this will take time (maybe we give, say another five years?). During the forum, I did point out that Singapore had started off with high energy physics in the beginning (80s). It was only later (90s) that they turned to quantum foundations and quantum information with topics like Bell inequalities and qutrits, before they arrive to where they are now.

It was nice to meet with my junior colleagues. I left the place feeling rather estranged, not knowing my future. I wish my younger colleagues all the success and hope that they can carry out the national quantum agenda successfully.

Day 4 of Krabi Trip & Travelling Home

On the fourth day of the conference, my family decided to go for island hopping trip but the morning weather seems prohibitive and the family decided to postpone the trip till the weather is better. In a way this is good for me since I can then attend the last session of the conference as well as go with the family for the island hopping trip later in the afternoon. Also, I was feeling slightly under the weather since the kayaking experience and feeling almost feverish, which I had hope will decrease as the day goes by.

The morning keynote was given by Rodney van Meter who spoke on Networks for Quantum Modular System. I remembered in the early days of quantum computing, downloading his PhD thesis - it was not quite the usual quantum computing literature that I've been reading as it focuses more on the possible architecture for quantum computing. The talk was in a similar vein; he made his cool, interesting slides available to the participants by putting a QR code in his presentation but unfortunately I could not take a snap shot in time. Had the opportunity to have a little chat with him during one of the coffee breaks and was guessing that I am from Malaysia (perhaps he was there in my talk). He told me that he had once went to Malaysia for an Intel-sponsored conference but his experience then was limited to the airport and hotel room, without ever seeing much of Malaysia. I told him that he should come back to Malaysia again, hopefully in better circumstances.

The next talk is by Sylvain Gigan on quantum optics with complex media. He was likening complex media as a swiss-knife of optical devices. He recommended Nature Physics articles for an overview of the subject. After the coffee break, there was another keynote talk by Anthony Laing on advances in photonic quantum computing, within which he also describe some similar vibrational spectroscopy topics covered by Kwek earlier. The next two talks was by Thailand researchers, one on subsystem coding for quantum communications by Theerapat Tansuwannont and the other on quantum communication progress in Thailand by Poompong Chaiwongkhot. The latter seems to be very active during the conference is a member of QTFT (of which Areeya is a co-founding member). From all these, I see that Thailand has made substantial steps for building an ecosystem of quantum science & technology. I hope that Malaysia can do the same - we have been talking about these for years now and we need more substantive progress.

After the closing session of the conference, I wanted to thank Areeya in person but she was busy. I approached Narakorn Kaewkhao who was there throughout the conference and who had waited all day long for us to arrive. It was only after arriving home that I've learned that he is interested in cosmology and gravity. Here are photos of me with him.

Also before I left, Islam Jubaidul Tanveer gave salam to me (was surprised then) and introduced himself as representative of SEAQuantum. I told him that I am aware of SEAQuantum will be participating in this year's EQuaLS. I guess he did not know that I was from UPM and had started EQuaLS many years back. Here is my photo with him.

Immediately after, my family and I went to buy tickets for the island hopping adventure. I had my phone in the trackbottom I was wearing, thinking that it would be safe at that height. As we were trying to climb up the boat, the sea water was already at our waist level (not realizing that this will cause problem). On the boat, I tried to quickly wipe the phone dry but it was too late; the camera had already stopped working. The same happened to the phone of my youngest son. The rest they had put their phone in a sling bag (above their waist) and also had a water protective cover. Lesson learned: Buy the necessary accessories there and not regret thereafter. Some photos and videos below.

After the island hopping trip, we were extremely tired and we decided to finish whatever food stock that we had left. At night, my other half and sons decided to make another final visit to Aonang Night Market and also get food for our dinner.

I can't even remember what I had for dinner since I was too tired. The next morning, we were ready with our bags packed and had our final breakfast at the hotel. We took a Grab van to the airport thereafter. At the airport, we made a collection of our Thai currency to pay for our luggage. Boarded the plane around 12 noon and reached KLIA at around 3pm. I was feeling feverish perhaps out of exhaustion and back pain. Reached home around 5pm and took the rest needed.