Ramadhan 1446 Varia

We are now in the second week of Ramadhan 1446. Alhamdulillah, I am able to fast once more. I hope this Ramadhan will make me much a better person. My sons, Ihsan and Izhar came back home to spend some time with us, but they sort of miss each other.

I have just updated my Malay blog with a post on the International Year of Quantum Science & Technology. I wanted to do a better post, but the progress made in quantum technology is too much for me to read and cover. In a way, I miss those days when we have group meetings and we sort of shared what we read almost weekly. You can read some of the development here: Harnessing the power of the second quantum revolution. Preskill who coined the term Noisy and Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) has also recently come with another visionary talk: Beyond NISQ: The Megaquop Machine. In many ways, I wish I could be part of the mainstream efforts in pursuing QST locally (as my friend from a neighbouring country said), but I think those days are over. I will stand on the sidelines and watch how things unfold.

Myself will be going back to basics. I will be joining back XMUM to do part-time teaching and tutoring in basic calculus, this coming April, God willing. In a way, it coincided well with what I have been posting in my technical blogs (see previous post): going back to analysis. This is a topic that I certainly have gaps and holes in understanding during my younger years of studying. At the current age, I may not delve too deeply in it but just wished had opportunities to learn it better. For those who wanted to learn what was taught in XMUM, can look at L.P. Teo's two volumes of notes here and here. I also remembered reading a quote of Dirac in his interaction with Salam on algebraic and analytic approaches as if the former is easier. It was mentioned in the book in Ideals and Realities, but I have lost my copy of the book to ascertain what was being said. Indeed, I do remember the part of canonical group quantization that I find the hardest to learn and do during my PhD work is Mackey's orbital analysis. I had to pick up the two-volume Warner's Harmonic Analysis (see here and here), to understand things. Wished I had these two books with me just for those memories, but they are way too expensive. But what I will be teaching soon (God willing) is much more basic, even my three legged cat is learning them.

Do More, Talk Less

As Ramadhan 1446 approaches, I'm minimizing my interactions with FB, shying away from the public. So my apologies for not responding to any tags, friend requests or messages there. Need some time off to deal with my own worries.

In a previous post, I consider myself as an average scientist, trying to better myself, even after retirement. Indeed, I should do more and talk less. There is just too much noise in the social media and not much that really helps one there. So, one of the things I wanted to do now, is to write more on my blogs. As an average scientist, perhaps there would be some good values and experiences in my writing that others can learn from. Having said this, I'm weary about useless or unnecessary content that has appeared in social media and I would not want to be pressured unnecessarily to put out content (which easily can degrade to 'artificial content'. I will try to write when there is something really meaningful for me to say.

I have resurrected my Equatorial Frequencies blog with a post on Real Numbers and Continuum. Previously I use this blog to dump links of articles on the arXiv that I find interesting. At some point (see this post), the arXiv administrators limit the period of catch-up and later even restrict the amount of download (possibly triggering automated download prohibitive measures). Due to restriction, I froze this blog for some time until the said post. I have another wordpress blog that I have kept. They are both technical blogs due to their LaTeX rendering capabilities. So in a way, I could just keep one blog and close the other. But I decided to keep them both. Equatorial Frequencies will deal with topics that are related to my (current) research. Ketchup Spills will be on everything else (random topics) that is a distant away from my research. Obviously, such division will not be sharp and will be time-dependent. I have just posted Infinitesimals and Nonstandard Analysis over in Ketchup Spills, which I know very little about. The post was however related to the earlier Equatorial Frequencies post, coming from my extraneous readings.

Will I have enough materials to post in both blogs? Well, what I can say is that over the years, I have accumulated much reading materials that I thought I want to go through but I did not have the time. As a retiree, I suppose I can do these readings now, modulo my part-time duties (if I get the job). How frequent will these be updated? I do not know but I hope at least monthly, I can write something meaningful. Certainly going through technical materials is a tough thing to do. Even for the historical stuff for the two updates mentioned above, seems to be a difficult read. It was my mistake to start reading John Bell's 90-page article (150+ page here); I was terribly slow in reading this. Articles discussing history also is harder for me to make notes on since much of them dwells on textual analysis with plenty of quotes. For mathematical ones, it is probably easier to make notes but it will be harder to digest the technical materials. Another thing that I have noticed is that articles on history at times seem like bashing someone rather personally - I try to distant myself away from such articles, if I can. Perhaps more on these in a different post, together with problems of academia and ego.

I do have another blog Acu Frekuensi which is in Malay. This is to cater more on topics of probably more local interest. As for this blog, it will be main personal stuff. So, this is how I will write more. Hopefully out of them, will grow more serious pieces of writing.

PS. We will be fasting on Sunday, March 2nd 2025.

Hospital Visits and Youngest's Birthday

Rolling back a week ago, my youngest was applying for admission of BSc degree. He could not find his SPM certificate; he took his SPM examination during the pandemic. So we had to take a trip to Examinations Board in Putrajaya to collect a copy. We had to park at Alamanda since the parking near the building is always full. Both him and my other half walked to the building while I wait at Zus Coffee in Alamanda (I easily get tired due to my back pain). They were there at the Examinations Board for only about half an hour and then they walked back to Alamanda. Being at the shopping mall, we thought of buying our lunch there purposely to try something new. There was a restaurant called A'Decade and got our packed food there. The food was good.

Last Tuesday, we were at KPJ Hospital in Seremban as my other half has an MRI appointment in the afternoon. The week before, she was also here to take some blood tests. The MRI was done on her left ear and the brain. Alhamdulillah, there were no signs of tumor; only for some signs of bacterial infection. She wanted to do this early to eliminate any sinister cause for her rare loss of low frequency hearing. With this MRI result, she can return back to the specialist at HTJ for possible diagnosis and perhaps treatment (which includes surgery).

Yesterday (Wednesday) was the birthday of my youngest son. Instead of going out for a special meal, he requested just to order some food from Bask Bear and we did so for lunch. Later in the late afternoon, I decided to buy a cake for him. 

It's not much; perhaps I can do better when things get financially better.

Mid-February Varia

Been mainly indoors for the past week or so, partly to minimise expenses. Perhaps some might think that we are rich. We are definitely not and neither that we are poor (and I'm not complaining). We don't have a lavish lifestyle; our holiday in Thailand is perhaps an exception of a luxury outing. As I see it, I consider agreeing to a conference invitation as a duty (no matter how silly it sounds) and I also realised it might be the last conference that I will go to. Thus, I took the opportunity to make it as a working holiday (the holiday is mainly for the family).

We do what we can in order to pay all our bills. If we have extras, we certainly help others in need. When we don't have as such, we cut expenses (including helping others, sorry) and we certainly do not want to burden others to assist us instead. In any case, I will have a hierarchy of priorities of where to spend whatever income I have, with the immediate family comes first (over one own self).We do extra work for extra income. Even my youngest is working part time in a shopping mall and his last day is tomorrow (an extra day on the request of his employer). He will be preparing for his BSc degree (I hope he gets somewhere close). In the last post, I told that even my other half has started working. Last Saturday, she took up a duty at a clinic in Port Dickson as they needed a doctor during the afternoon and evening. Due to the longer hours she will be in the clinic, we decided to send her there and thereafter picked her up at night after the clinic closes. On sending and picking her up, we realised that there is less traffic going to Port Dickson in the weekend, unlike the weekends before the pandemic. I guess after the pandemic, people are still struggling to recover economically. In addition to this, my other half has also observed that many clinics she knew (even the new ones) have closed down as they struggled to survive with the soaring prices of medicine. Tomorrow, she will continue to work at the same clinic for the whole day. This is despite her hearing problem in the left ear, having echoing sounds. Today, when she met the specialist at HTJ, she was told to do an MRI examination to check if there is a tumor in the middle ear (acoustic neuroma). The public hospital MRI appointment is due to be in September this year, which is too long for her to wait. Thus, we decided to make an appointment with a specialist she knew in KPJ hospital this coming Tuesday, in order to have her MRI sooner.

As for myself, I don't have any teaching job now and I will just wait for any opportunity coming my way. However, these days I have begun to take a more realistic (pessimist?) view that people would rarely want to hire an old academic. I certainly do not want to work where I am not really needed/wanted. Being at home now, I spend most of my time reading and taking notes instead, for my own scientific understanding and enrichment (which is what I thought I should be doing on retirement).

I also think that I should write more now, sharing everything that I know and hopefully the things I write and share will pass as good deeds to bring to the hereafter. I have started to update my Malay blog Acu Frekuensi. I intend to update my other two technical blogs later, after I have read enough to form coherent thoughts on the subject matter - this will of course take more time. I will make the announcement of the posts through this blog. If the post has some further importance for others, I will make the announcement in FB but I'm trying to avoid as much social media at the moment. I prefer to write only when I have something 'real' to say; I do not want to fall into the trap of needing to create something 'artificial' just for the sake of making new content (like what some would do). I hope to stay true to this.

Clinic in Mantin and Balcony Visitors

My other half has started working today in a clinic in Mantin despite her impaired hearing on the left ear. As much as I was hoping that this will be unnecessary, we need the extra income, particularly in this period when I don't have part-time teaching. The clinic is a new one owned by another doctor and my other half is just doing part-time stints during the day. Yesterday, we went to have a look at the clinic in order for my other half know the way to get there. The clinic officially opens today.

Also yesterday, we received some unexpected wildlife visitors to the balcony of my eldest son's room. I guess this is due to a green area at a junction nearby our place has been cleared, leaving only a few trees. In a way, I feel bad for them.

Today, they made a repeat visit to the balcony. I do hope they won't be our regular visitors and that they get a better, safer place somewhere.

They also went over to our neighbour's shack and was trying to find food, I guess, since we saw them eating the catfood there.

I hope they won't cause any menace or started to enter our homes.

Leaving School and Musical Adventures

Have been indoors mainly this week and as I was organizing things, saw an old folder that was used to keep important documents, following traits of my late father (with little success).

Examined its contents and found my school leaving certificates. At school, I was a very shy and quiet person, not socializing that much. You can perhaps see signs of this in my school leaving certificate of my co-curriculum activities (very few).

Perhaps the next one will surprise many (found together with my school leaving certificate).

This is for winning a 'singing competition' or rather a talent competition that we participated in. We, T-Blues Band, we called ourselves, comprised of Ayub Los (lead guitar), Amiruddin Zain (second guitar, vocals), Abdul Malek Eusoff (bass) and myself on the drums (also Khor Tze Ping as guest keyboardist), actually competed twice. The first one, we played two songs; an original by Ayub Los (can't remember the title) and Muddy Waters' "Walking in the Park". We did not win then. It was the first time that I get my hands on a real drum set (before that, I was just drumming in my mind or at best, on a table). 

The second time, we played songs that have more commercial appeal. The Malay song was relatively unknown song from Discovery called Malam Sepi. Right after we played this song, it sort went popular for a while at the school. The english song, we played next, is Ten Years After's "My Baby Left Me". For these, we won the competition (I think it was the group category, unsure if there were other categories). Why we chose blues/rock n roll genre, I can't remember why; but I knew that we wanted to be different. 

The next document in the folder was the school leaving certificate from Daws Road High School, the school that I went to for matriculation education in Adelaide.

As you can see, I remained the person with quiet personality (even more quiet). The photo below is my class with Mr. Hopkins as our class teacher.

I continued to pursue my musical interests after school. Played drums during the term holidays while I was at University of Adelaide.

One special jam session I had was with Mustaffa Ramly, who visited Mile End, Adelaide in 1987. We played Police and Dire Straits music. Mustaffa later went on to be the guitarist who played with Zainal Abidin. Other musician-students that I had jammed with then was Harith (don't know his full name, but partially visible in picture below), Anuar Kasim. Pic with Mustaffa is shown below.

Back in UPM, sometimes I was asked to play guitar for some events but I was never really good at it.

I have now laid my guitar to rest (somewhere in the store).

64

Yesterday evening, I wrote in FB (recall Islamic day begins at sunset - see here)

"When I'm 64 in Hijri calendar
  What I was made for, is to surrender
  Not the song others put asunder"

Yes, I've grown much older. No, I'm not a poet. Words often can't really describe what I feel inside, but only through words can I convey my feelings.

In many ways, I do reflect on whether I've done my duty in this world. I would like to consider myself as a scientist, probably an average one. Some may disagree, of course, and they are entitled to their opinions, but I will surely challenge them on some points. However for me, over are the days of arguing, particularly, if it is over in the social media. As one grows older, one values more the peace of mind. From my past experience, there will always be people that dislike you for no real reason. Usually I can read the body language of others, bosses, colleagues and even students. For most parts, I just walk away from them and pray that we will not cross path too much. I will try to keep myself busy, contributing in any way that I can, even in situations where I'm being disliked. Finally, I tend to seclude myself, so that I won't get in the way of others. Doing that, I miss however, a stimulating environment, discussing with others on one's work or on recent developments.

I consider most tend to conflate self-worth with ego (including the person who writes this), which is rather unfortunate. The unpleasant thing is when one finds the situation where one is trying to inflate his/her self-worth by degrading others, disguised under the banner of criticisms (whether it is true or not). This has been how most knowledge being developed throughout history, with a touch of arrogance. In a recent conference, I do feel my presentation was criticised indirectly by throwing terms like ad-hockery and appeal to authority. My reply to this, would be good luck in trying to escape from these, particularly for quantum theory. So seclusion to me, while not being a good solution, seems to be  'natural'.

Enough rambling. Today, we went to a wedding of my other half's nephew in KL. Some pics:

End of Current Duties

Monday this week, was the final day for us to submit marks for our courses. The few days before was then essentially for us to complete everything, totalling up marks and enter the appropriate percentages for the course assessments and finally keying in the marks. My colleagues informed me then I could export a csv file from some Excel worksheet and import them into the marks module. However, I have always felt uneasy doing this (particularly if we know there might be differences in the fields or data not updated) and I preferred keying them one-by-one by myself manually into the system. In a way, I keep a check of what goes into the system. Of course, there is always the possibility of doing mistakes out of say, being tired (as my colleague suggested). So, I was wide awake that Sunday night (and early Monday morning) trying to finish up everything (including scanning samples of exam scripts).

Had about two to three hours of sleep that day. By the evening, I told my other half that I need to take pain killers to ease the pain. So the following day (Tuesday), I was essentially drowsy and was unable to do much.

For Wednesday, we have already planned to go to my former university to collect the supply of medicine which has almost finished. It is almost always when I visited the university health centre, the doctor that I was meeting, changed to someone else; it does not matter much since all the records are in the system they kept. For some reason, I thought I was supposed to do my blood test that day but the doctor told me to defer this to April. So I was there only briefly.

Today, I further completed some tasks of signing documents for the teaching portfolio. The only thing that's left for me to do is to return the exam scripts  to the Exams Unit. I will have to do this at some other convenient time. After that, I will be considered unemployed.

Tomorrow, I will have relatives coming to our house since there will be a wedding we need to go to during the weekend. Besides that, my youngest has already taken up a part-time job at the nearby Aeon mall.

Final Phase of Marking Varia

I'm currently n the final phase of marking. Recall that our final exams started only last week (see this post). Next Monday will be the deadline for keying our marks (in total) for the courses we are teaching. I told my colleague that in my former university, we have around of two weeks to complete our marking. Thus, the window that we currently have is much shorter. As a result, the marking that we went through in the past week or so, is very intense. Many times, I feel light headed, eyes all teary and my body all tensed up. I avoided taking pain killers to make sure I can stay awake to finish the marking. Hopefully by tomorrow, I will end my marking (with my group of Linear Algebra being the last) and the weekend will be simply for keying in the marks, God willing.

The job does not end with marking. After this, we will be occupied with filling up with OBE forms, scanning samples and preparing our teaching portfolio for the current semester. Today, while my colleague and I were switching scripts, I told her that I was caught by surprise the level of details that the staff needs to go through. I mentioned when I first taught at the university, I was preparing the exam in the same way as in my former university, namely allowing students to have a choice of questions for them to answer in the exam. To me, this should benefit the students to be able to choose the topics that they understood better and that having choices also reflect real life. However, having this flexibility caused difficulties for me to fill up the OBE form where teaching aims are more rigid. I guess there are pros and cons on this matter. My own stance is essentially teaching and learning are creative processes and making things rigid might stifle the creative process.

Update on my other half's health: The specialist in HTJ, Seremban told my other half that what she is experiencing could possibly be Meniere's disease, a rare disease with no known cure. She has been asked to go for MRI to observe details of her inner ear. Currently, she has to cope with the echoing 'noises' in her left ear and also the problem of balance. When will the MRI be done, is not known yet. If it is scheduled too late, we may have to opt to get it done at a private hospital (and pay higher expenses).

My near future: I still seek whatever opportunities that are available for me. I may have to return to part-time teaching with the current university. In some way, I do wish I can help in the activities of International Year of Quantum Science and Technology in some small way. My younger colleagues will take lead of course. Recently, I saw Dr. Yap was named CTO of a start-up in Singapore (see here). I toyed around with a similar idea and suggested this to my younger colleague at my former university, even if it may seem remote to be realised. I have been listening to many talks on such related matters. In a way, we need to take risks and be more determined in our actions. Well, small steps first.

Another Day At Ara Damansara

Today we were at Ara Damansara Medical Centre for my other half's appointment. She had another audiometry test, which is longer than the last one due to more elaborate testing (see figure below). After two weeks of taking steroids, the curve that corresponds to the nerves seem to be responding well. However her hearing is still impaired according to what the doctor said as conducting loss. We were thrown a few medical terms for which I write here: grommet, tympanosclerosis, otosclerosis. From the doctor's brief study of the curves drawn by the audiometry tests, my other half is probably suffering from otosclerosis. The treatment for this probably involves surgery and the doctor has referred us to the public hospital in Seremban this coming Monday, as the surgery will be more invasive than the previous one. We can no longer afford such treatment at the private hospital.

(Source: https://dizziness-and-balance.com/disorders/hearing/otoscler.html)

My other half joked a little about her getting these rare medical cases: first, the spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid leak which rarely happens without any form of head injury, and second, otosclerosis where her impaired hearing occurs at low frequencies (usual impaired hearing involves higher frequencies). As much as I want to be humoured, this is no joking matter. Both of these will cause further financial stress on me and today I also heard about another financial worry. With her impaired hearing, she could no longer perform her normal doctor duties and any possible near-term locum seems to be out of question. Note that she has already closed her clinic in Rembau years back and the usual clinics where she sometimes did locum have mostly closed down. The only means of help to alleviate financial stresses has been my part-time teaching duties, which I will probably continue in the coming April semester.

Final Exams and Marking Extravaganza

This week we had final exams for the two courses I am teaching, namely Quantitative Methods and Data Analysis I (despite the fancy name, it is essentially Applied Calculus), which is on Monday, and Linear Algebra which is on Wednesday. Both subjects had six different groups; I taught two groups for QM (this is what it is popularly called there by students and staff and it took me quite awhile to get used to this, since QM in my head, automatically translates to Quantum Mechanics) and one group for Linear Algebra. Each group may be of different size, typically over sixty. I had 87 and 105 for QM and 68 for Linear Algebra. So in order to conduct an exam for all the six groups for each group simultaneously, we do need a big exam hall. Indeed, they had LY3 (which stands for Ling Yun 3 - unsure what the name refers to), with the ground floor capable of accommodating around 600 students. I was told there were other exam halls, which I have not gone to as yet.

Exams are conducted in strict fashion and are administered by a central Exam Unit and invigilators are discouraged from staying put or looked at the mobile phones during the exam. I had already a little experience before while I was teaching at Physics Department there, but I only had a small group then. For this semester, it was a real learning experience dealing with large number of students. They also implemented that uniform marking across different groups with each lecturer marking specific questions for the exam. So for the previous midterm exam, I got a huge surprise of having roughly 1000 scripts to look through (roughly 500 for each subject). I was terribly slow then given my first experience of such large number of scripts to mark, and we had to prepare for our lessons as well. Then, I also had the conference in Krabi, Thailand which sort of slowed down my marking (absence of a week). For this final exam, my colleague lecturers spared me from looking into many questions (I can't thank you enough). Also, with no teaching left, I was able to mark faster now. I have already switched bundles of scripts with my colleagues and tomorrow, God willing, I will be doing another exchange.

So for this week, my condition is very much like the cats below with lyrics of Adele's songs "Hello from the other side" in my head.

Difficult Start for 2025

Well, we are now in 2025. I posted this on my FB; whatever importance that may be to anyone. For me, it is just another passage in time, and I don't think it is any more different from 2024. I will still be working hard to support the family as a whole.

Just before the New Year Eve, I received the news of my son Izhar was diagnosed of having a swollen heart. We asked him to come home for a further check-up at a private hospital near our place. Over there, he did an echocardiogram test (an MRI test would be more detailed but it was just too expensive for me). What would be the cause of the problem? Most probably being stressed out by too much work. I had a similar problem way back in 2011. Perhaps such incidents should be a reminder for the employer; as much as one would like to squeeze as much work from an employee, his/her health may be put to risk.

The check-up at the hospital (particularly without an appointment) almost always end up at least spending almost a half-day of waiting. I had plenty on my mind with so many unfinished tasks. I developed another bad episode of back pain during the new year. Yesterday, I had to take pain killers to relieve the pain (and slept most of the day through and still feeling drowsy). So far, I have not complained about my back pain and have grown used to it, but out of prolonged sitting in the last few weeks, the pain worsened and I just can't ignore it.

The whole family was actually back together briefly for the New Year holiday, but I was not able to spend much time with my sons due to work (or resting from back pain). Mainly spend it with my cats.

Here is Stephanie (the oldest cat in the house), recovering from a minor surgery to remove an inflamed swelling from her body.

I was hoping that I get better news for the New Year but it seems they are not forthcoming.