Difficult Weeks

I have been very busy in the past two weeks and aggravating the situation further is a few episodes of bad back. Workwise, I have been busy marking the midterm exam scripts, which totals around 350+ scripts. I also have set up two sets of final exam question that went through a vetting process and today I have to alter these a bit before being endorsed by the department. At the same time, one needs to prepare for the lectures and tutorials. I was new to the tutorial classes and for each week, I will have scores of problems to look into and the best part is that the tutorials tend to become lectures with the students tend not to prepare for their tutorials. Tried to get the tutorials to be more interactive but in the end, it will be only the same set of students that are speaking up. 

To spice things up in my classes, I tend to digress into additional topics or even additional problems beyond what is needed for their courses (aware some of the students are familiar with the basic calculus topics). This includes me using WolframAlpha to demonstrate visually some of the mathematical problems, which I hope, will build up their intuition of mathematical techniques. I have also brought up the dimensional nature of the variables involved particularly when the techniques are being applied to economic problems (often ignored by mathematical-minded persons). Despite all of these, sometimes I felt it is difficult to impress my 'demanding' students. Recently, I had one lecturer from Foundation Centre contacted me to allow him to sit in one of my class. I was surprised and thus when I met him, I asked him why he was interested to sit in. He then revealed that one of his ex-students is now in my class, Not sure what has this student told the lecturer but I sincerely hope they are mostly goof things.

With all these works, I do seek some form of relief in entertainment and others, to keep me away from being being bored or stressed out. Of course, the current horrible war that has just erupted about a week ago, certainly has distracted me from work. I would update my own family on this, and was particularly worried of where this war is going to go. Hope it won't be further escalated and that the world economy will not be affected too much while we are still recovering.

I'll end with a happy note. When my sons came back home, we will try to 'celebrate' by going out for special meals. There was a hipster cafe (Nasken Coffee) just opened in our neighbourhood that we went to. The food was ok. The service needs improvement but I observed that this is mainly due to the new staff are still adapting to the system.

In a few hours, we will be travelling to Mentakab for my other half's nephew's wedding. I would have to bring my work on this journey, unfortunately.

Make Our Travels Safe

Yesterday, the whole nation was shocked by the news of a terrible accident of a chartered bus carrying university students back to their university campus, after they spending their Eid holidays. Knew about it, after reading the Prime Minister post in social media. At the time, I had just arrived at the basement car park of my workplace for a 9am class. The Gerik accident had 15 students killed (may Allah grant them forgiveness) and others injured. 

Kept thinking about the news while I was teaching. Just about a month earlier, there was another accident that killed 9 FRU personnel in Teluk Intan.

Both news reminded me of an accident which involves our close relatives on my mum side (see below paper clippings), way back in July 2015. We were very close during my younger days as we (me and mum) tend to stay in their house whenever we 'balik kampung'. May Allah grant them forgiveness and blessings.

While still perturbed by the news and I was driving back home from work, a car tailgated me when I was overtaking slower cars in the fast lane of the highway. My thoughts then, even with this terrible news today, people are still driving recklessly. Not sure what was on the mind of the driver from such tailgating (are we racing); does he/she felt invincible in the car and that he/she has complete control of the vehicle driven? There is a Malay saying 'malang tak berbau' (misfortunes or calamities have no scent).

On the same day, my son in JB is travelling home to be with us since he could not come back during Eid. Alhamdulillah, he arrived safely that evening. These days, I worry about my children travelling and I, myself tend to feel vulnerable whenever driving. Indeed, I would prefer that my family and me not to travel too much given the tendency of reckless driving, particularly from the heavier vehicles. I sincerely hope that actions will be taken so that our roads and highways are safe for all to travel.

Eid-ul-Adha

Our Eid-ul-Adha celebration is pretty simple. We went for Eid prayers at Masjid Hussain quite late and we had to pray outside on the walkways.

After the Eid prayers, we had our simple breakfast before we headed off to Kepong to visit my sisters-in-law (wives to my late eldest brothers). 

We took the route near FRIM to get to Taman Ehsan. We reached around 11 am and met Kak Long (wife of my eldest brother); her eldest son was at work, but Aisyam was there (about to go to work in the afternoon). We took photos near the spot where she had extended the living room around a year ago.

Her slouch around the neck area seems to be more noticeable. May Allah grant her good health and her sons take good care of her.

Next, we went to the house of Kak Faridah (wife of my second eldest brother), which is just around hundred meters away. As we were there, we met with her eldest son and family as well with her brother who used to work in Brunei. Unfortunately, we did not take pictures there. We had a long chat and we were told that her eldest son and his son had some heart problems in part due to a certain degree of curvature in the back. This, to a certain degree runs also in our family. I have my own scoliosis that had led to my back problems. May Allah help us overcome these conditions and grant us good health.

Reflections Before Eid-ul Adha

Have not posted anything for two weeks now. I have been busy with marking the mid-term exam scripts of one subject while carrying out teaching duties in normal working hours. Have just finished around 100 exam scripts and exchanged exam scripts with my colleague (Dr. Athirah) just yesterday. Note that for the shared course, each of us is marking specific questions to maintain consistency. Before the exchange, I had about ten scripts left for me to mark. I finished them off while resting in the car (note part-timers don't have an office and I had classes in the morning and later in the evening that day).

I jokingly told my younger colleague (who at the time was communicating with me) that incovenience is 'a way of life', reflecting that we have to go through many inconveniences in life (often not of our own making) and we are required to be patient while facing them. At the risk of belittling whatever problems and inconveniences that each of us face, mostof our inconveniences are nothing compared to what Ghazzans are facing (May Allah help them). Yet, we have this quick tendency to 'complain' for whatever small inconveniences that we face as if we forget that patience is virtue. Recently, I had this inconvenience of my students from both courses being booted out of Moodle (without notification) and my quick workaround is to manually reenroll them back. Not sure what is the cause of this, but the workaround of reenrol solves the problem at least (I thought). But now, I was told that this has led to a more serious problem of students not being able to submit their quiz answers in time. Without knowing what is the cause of the problem, I have to come up with an alternative way for students to submit their solutions (was thinking Google Form and Google Workspace), for a quick workaround.

Some other reflections: In this holy month, I have this constant fear that whatever 'good' that one think one does, the deeds could be thrown back to our faces due to impure intentions. Our self-worth and potential for good deeds are often conflated with ego. To not do this, it requires constant self-check. Working against this is social media platform that helps one do the opposite. On the other hand, there is this wish for us to educate or inculcate positive vibes with others (as social beings). So besides self-check, constant prayers for us to be guided is necessary. On questions of justice/fairness, we are not omniscient and as such our sense of justice is at best partial. Passing hasty judgments are thus prone to errors. On questions of leadership, since one can't read the heart of others, the best that one can do is to base it on past actions and consistency (habits). Words are often cheap and actions speak louder than words. On pursuit of knowledge, care must be given to one's intentions. There is a danger of breeding sense of superiority, which leads to arrogance.

Enough rambling, about a week ago, my third son bought me a Macbook. Perhaps this is due me 'complaining' about my old laptop in the family WhatsApp. I was thinking of only replacing the battery and possibly reformatting the hard disk to make C drive larger. I didn't expect him to buy a Macbook. I used to say to my younger colleague that Mac is a rich man's computer. In any case, I'm thankful for the gift.

At this stage, I have not quite used the Mac as yet since I need to get comfortable with it first (two fingers to scroll, three fingers for something else that I can't remember and the colour buttons). Also, I have to find adapters for me to connect the Mac with projector and the tablet to write things. So probably won't use this in the current semester. I was also advised by my son to get used to storing files in the cloud, something which I;m not comfortable with at the moment.

Teachers Teach

Less than a week ago, we celebrated Teacher's Day (I'm well aware of the other Academia Day on October 5th, announced by the Higher Education Ministry, but a teacher is somehow placed more dearly in my heart, knowing the ups and downs of academia), I thought to myself who would I remember most as a teacher. I have to name Prof. Herbert Green as one who had influenced me quite a lot. Indeed, he introduced me to theoretical physics and the creativity that goes with it (now, put this in the context of myself not even knowing what theoretical physics was then). He taught me Mathemtical Methods and Statistical Mechanics in my third year. Next year (Honours year), he taught Elementary Field Theory. 

The way he taught things is very original because we had a difficult time to find out what books that we should refer to, to understand his notes. In the end, we had several different books to look at and most of them we had to decipher the notations used by the authors to agree on what he had used. As a result, we had developed our own way of (profound) understanding the subjects that he was teaching, which is very useful later when we do research. His pic in the Wikipedia page shows a younger Prof. Green; the way I remember him is shown in the pic below, with white hair and white beard.

When I finished my Honours year in 1984, I went to see him if he is interested to get a graduate student. However he then advised me to find a younger supervisor for my graduate studies. If he had agreed, through him, I might have had Max Born as my academic grandfather. Also, I would probably be doing something very different, since in his latter years, he was more interested in biological and neurophysiological models in collaboration with Terry Triffet. One can have a good glimpse of his life from the article of Prof. Charles Hurst. His last book was on Information Theory and Quantum Physics: Physical Foundations for Understanding the Conscious Process, and I hope to read this in the future. As a tribute to him, I hope to put the notes of his lectures in LaTeX, for people to read, sometime in the future.

The last thought is in line with what I had in mind, when I came back from my PhD, namely to let our students know about theoretical physics, not simply for its technicality but also for its creativity in understanding the world (a thought that I told the panel of interviwers when I was applying the job at my former university). Today, I'm teaching part-time at XMUM. Even though, I'm teaching basic calculus and algebra, I internalize the subjects in a way, that I can say something different when I am teaching my students. Most of the teaching and its materials are done electronically. This is my teaching set up, with a writing tablet attached to my (very old) laptop (see pic). So, with skeleton slides of teaching materials, I write extra notes and explanations on the slides so that the lecture has a feel of a real traditional lecture.

In order to access the projectors, I have to borrow access card from the library at BlockA3, to insertit in the AV module (see pic below) and return the card back after my lecture ends. So, a bit of running around. For full-time staff, they can simply insert their staff card there.

Recently, I had to teach this new subject handed to me, which is an amalgamation of linear algebra and applied calculus and I had reached the calculus part. For many Malaysian students, what they see in calcuus is probably a boring repeat of what they have learned in schools. So, I saw my students getting bored and even played games while they were sitting in the front row. That stressed me out and I thought I should make the lecture more interesting by saying things that they probably would not know. In the past (last two semesters), I already dug out Silberberg's The Structure of Economics to help me understand why they are studying calculus. 

This time round, since the accounting students are more advanced, I dug out Takayama's Mathematical Economics for a much more advanced and broader perspective.

Unlike what people think they know about lecturers (some falsely claim that we are using decade old notes), we do renewal of the teaching process and at times look into research papers to see what's the latest in these topics. By stating this, we do not want all these 'renewal' or 'continuous improvement' processes to be stated in the QA documents. Like what I've always said, teaching and learning will always be creative processes; there is no universal blanket algorithm that will cover the infinite facets of teaching and learning (and we should not waste too much time on such administrative tools). Teachers teach and should be less bothered with administrative matters.

Come What May

Yesterday was mother's day. I always have my late mum (and dad) in my prayers. As many things on social media, I have resisted to post anything so that it becomes like a performance for the public to see. So yesterday was like an uneventful like any other day. Our son Izhar was back with us for this extended weekend. He will soon be starting a new job in an industry after leaving APU some time last week. Late night, we went out for tea in a local mamak restaurant (nothing fancy), perhaps celebrating mother's day with their mum there.

While things are somewhat difficult, we have to keep ourselves happy. Among the things that were on my mind the past week or so, is the various ambitions that went unrealised. Most of these are worldly things and I'm training myself not to be attached to them. I should count my blessings. Lately, I'm feeling a bit vulnerable. In particular, I had a really bad back episode last week that my other half recommended me to get a voren injection, and so I did. I hope this relief of pain will last when I go back to work this week. Have been trying to finish off some teaching preparation. With only a small desk (recalling the luxury of large desk when I was in management), I had to use the bed as my work space - not a very conducive place to work (as I can easily dozed off), but it will do.

As I said, I should be thankful that I can still work. 

I do worry about the future and what will my children face. I kept myself updated of the happenings in the world. While I dislike politics (including those in workplaces), one should not be so naive as politics tend to have a large influence in our lives. I do tend to keep my family updated on significant things happening in the world from time to time. May Allah make us wiser and ease our living.

May the Fourth (Be With You)

I guess another post is due.

I had just put out another post in my Malay blog last night. It was meant to be posted during the World Quantum Day on April 14. However I was still reading up materials for the blog entry. Initially, I wanted to rush it to make the post in time. Then I rechecked my intention; if my post is meant to educate those who are interested, then it doesn't really matter when I post it. So I took my time reading as much as I could, including my surprise doscovery of Prof. Shaharir's papers way back in 1974. I thought it would be a good idea to publicise such technical materials. I posted the link on FB so that the article gets a wider reading. Again, intentions need to be rechecked time and again, not to chase popularity at this age but to increase good deeds

Did a lot of reflections over the period in Syawwal and now in Dzulqaidah. Found myself still wanting a lot from this world, which is not a good thing at my age. Financial wants seem to take a huge chunk of it, particularly when expenses tend to grow over time. I'm still blessed with a part-time job in XMUM and I hope the opportunity will still be there in the future. I have still my youngest who intends to start his BSc education later in the year. Also, none of my kids have yet to marry (so my 'Datukship' is still far away). Recently, we went to our surau's neighbourhood day cum belated 'Eid celebration and there was some health check station and optometrist station. My other half took my youngest to check his eyes. Ever since he broke his glasses in college (I think), he went on without wearing glasses. The check-up showed deterioration of his eyesight. In my mind, I was already worried about forthcoming expenses since new pair of glasses can go up to 400 or 500 Ringgit. We were told then he need his eyes checked by a specialist to be sure of what his problems are, in a way delaying the expenses.

Many times I do delay spending in things that I want to have, to ensure we have enough until the end of the month (or whenever the pension pay comes). An immediate need is my laptop (see pic below) whose battery is no longer working and due to its expansion, cracked an opening in the laptop.

Once, just before a lecture, the laptop could not be started and I panicked. After a few times switching on and off, it finally booted up. Unknowingly, the laptop's clock was slowed down to around 7 minutes late. Not realising this, I tend to finish late with my lectures, overrunning another staff's lecture. After realising that the clock was slowed down, I made the effort to apologise to the lecturer in the following week. So my laptop will be at the top of my priority list given that I have at least three months of teaching left. Other things like my own back treatment can wait (hope to do better pain management and get me off the dependence on pain killers).

Hosting Own 'Eid Celebration

I have been slacking in updating my blogs. This is mainly due to me not being well while bearing a constant back ache for the past few weeks. It has been (almost) a week since we hosted our own 'Eid celebration. I guess it is long overdue for me to post the pics that I have during the event.

The event started off wuth my in-laws decided to come to our place for 'Eid. Thus, we started to invite our family members, neighbours and close friends. We did not plan anything really special, an ordinary lunch with plain rice. Gradually it went bigger and we ordered more food. I also extend the invitation to our theory group members through Dr. Nurisya.

So here are the pics (with no particular ordering).

The last pic is me with Aqwa, my former MSc student who did Categrical Quantum Mechanics, who graduated after I have retired. I have not seen him for quite a while and was pleasantly surprised to see him come. It seems that he read my blog post on Kashiwara and we discussed a little bit the state of affairs of theorists and pure mathematicians in the country. He is currently waiting for a PhD opportunity abroad and I hope he will get a scholarship to do this.

The following pics are courtesy of Dr. Nurisya and Faisal.

During the event, we had to put our cats in cages, so that they do not get in the way.

Some unfortunate things happened. As the day progressed, some of the food went bad, without us knowing. We sincerely apologised if anyone was affected by this. Before this, we had no problem the food caterer and was surprised by the outcome. Perhaps they had prepared the food too early since we heard they had to cater another wedding event on the same day. I felt silly going around taking pics of the guests, thinking that they are enjoying the food. Our apologies again.

The other unfortunate thing was the car of my son, Ihsan, got scratched sometime during that day. Despite that this is minor, one can't help feeling frustrated.

In any case, we are most grateful to everyone who went out of their way (going through the traffic jam) to be at our event. May Allah reward your generosity and kindness.