The Last Post of 2025

I guess I should do one last post for 2025. The last few posts that I did are mainly to explain myself for not being able to help others that much. While this is a personal blog and I should be able to write what I want, I will try to do more blog entries that are more educational. Nobody really wants to read one's rants and personal problems that much.

So for 2026, the resolution is ... still 1920 × 1080 ... just kidding. I guess, I want to do more educational writing, sharing more of what I know in the hope of they pass as good deeds. But let's see how it goes. Sometimes one gets overly ambitious and only a minute fraction of them gets realized.

With the family, I tend to share what I think would be useful to them in general but this I do within our famly's WhatsApp. Here is one of them - Why Big Companies are Leaving KL for Negeri Sembilan (You Need to Know). This will inform the forthcoming development in Negeri Sembilan and hopefully it will help us to strategize for our future. Related to this, I also shared this piece of news of semiconductor industry in Senawang. I have also shared what Yanis Varoufakis explaining about trade and money but unfortunately the video has been taken off. I managed to write the main points of his explanation:

• In 1971, US President Richard Nixon, severe the relation between US currency with the gold standard (The Nixon Shock).
• In 1973, was the oil crisis and US made the Petrodollar agreement enforcing oil be traded in US currency.
• In June 2024, this agreement ended and there is a gradual move of oil trading in non-US currencies.

Yanis explained the future may be rather unsettled and it is best that one gets prepared for whatever outcomes there might be. I did not know all these before and I am certainly no economist but this scares me (a little?). My awareness now is perhaps triggered by earlier read on Emad Mostaque and Svozil's paper in this post. 

Just this afternoon, I have finished commenting of the revised paper that my former PhD  student has done and hopefully it will get published. There is still another paper to be edited hopefully done in January 2026. As a consequence, I have been reading about entropy (since the two papers dealt with Tsallis entropy). First, there is a pedagogical article by Baez, "What is Entropy?" that seems to have grown out of his tweets. Another is this book by Denbigh & Denbigh, which I bought as a second hand book from Galloway & Porter in Cambridge.

I thought of finishing the book before the year ends and that is not going to happen. I normally picked up the book when I am going to bed and you can guess what happens next. I'm not even half-through yet butthe book is centred around how the term entropy has been used as incomplete knowledge to ignorance and from ignorance to subjectivity. The latter seems to be the problem. It demonstrates how problems can arise when a term is being used loosely and this happens quite a lot in the popularization of science. Talking about 'loose' usage, I remember how a famous social science professor criticise my working paper in a meeting, saying that the paper is 'too loose'. From then on, I started to learn that working papers are best written in a legalistic language and to a certain extent thee seems to be a formula or procedure in writing them. I was never taught about all this but I have learned this on the go and from examples that people gave me. In meetings, one can go on indefinitely discussing a working paper and its 'many-worlds' interpretation. So this e who aspire to be in the management, be prepared ....

Falling

Yesterday I was supposed to send my youngest son back to college. Unfortunately, I was not too well and my other half advised that I stay home given there is a high expectation that the traffic back home (northbound) will be really heavy. Earlier I had transferred some sum of pocket money to my youngest hopefully enough for two weeks. I felt rather sad that I had to ration a little the money I gave to him (wished I was richer) and now I was not able to send him back to college. Here is a picture of him during dinner after having his hair cut earlier.

That morning, I spend almost half a day in bed trying to ease the pain. When I got up for Dzuhr, I spend a little time listening to music. The lyrics to Faouzia's new song "Don't Ever Leave Me" strikes a chord.

Cause pain is holy, pain is holy .... When I'm falling, I know you hear me calling

Despite the upbeat nature of the song, the lyrics are quite deep, just like one reaction YouTuber had noted about the song. Not sure what Faouzia had in mind for this song, but I can take the lyrics as spiritual. Whatever pain one is experiencing, one knows that it prepares for the greater pain whenever one is leaving this world. The second part of that lyric quote, whatever weakness and difficult circumstances I go through, His Guidance and Mercy is what I pray for.

Last night (after sleeping so much), I was pretty much awake. The oldest cat in the house, Stephanie (the sole survivor from the kittens Dr. Chan gave me) slept in our room. She almost died when she was young due to parvoviral infection. She is now close to my eldest son particularly after she had some concussion due to a fall and her head tend to slant a little (experiencing vertigo). This week however, my eldest son is working night shifts and is not aound at night. Thus, she came to our room instead. May Allah help us as we have helped the cats in our house.

A Day At Immersify KL

On Thursday, it was a public holiday for Christmas. My son Izhar made the spontanoeus plan of going to Immersify KL. Earlier, my other half told us about the interesting places of visual excitement that she found on social media. Thus, Izhar immediately acted on realizing her wish and booked tickets for us online. I was still on ontok-ontok mode but I went along to make this a family outing partcularly with my youngest is back hoem. My eldest could not go since he needed a rest given that he is working night shifts this week. So let the pics and videos tell the story. Here we are as we waited for the (booked) schedule for us to enter the place.

Here are the pics when we enter the place where they had all the immersifying images on display.

Here are some videos:

Generally, it was a good experience. Some of the 3D-images require one to close an eye to fully maximize the effects. I was told by my other half that there are other similar places with dinosaurs etc. We did not stay that long at the place and we went back straight to Seremban after that. We thought of bringing our youngest to the new eatery PnC Kitchen that I have mentioned here.

The night before we wanted to bring him to have dinner there but the place was fully packed. We were told there is no vacant spots for us and we had to go somewhere else.

Fortunately, for the late lunch after coming back from KL, we were able to eat at the place; simply just to be fair so that our youngest experience his meal there. I think during the week with our kids, I have overeaten and that cause me to have some digestive problems. Normally I eat very little and will stop eating before feeling full. With meals outside, I ate 'more' in order not to waste the meal we have paid for. 

63 @ 1 Rejab

When my other half and her sister came back from their visit of nephew mentioned in the previous post, they sort of planned for fasting on 1st Rejab. At the time, they thought that it should be on Sunday because of some announcement in social media. So come on Sunday early morning, I was woken up for sahur. Normally I would have checked the precise date for 1 Rejab but this time I did not, since my mind is elsewhere. So we went on fasting on Sunday until my son began chatting with his friend online. His friend was puzzled why he was fasting then and mentioned that 1st Rejab is on Monday. We checked the callendar and other announcements in social media. True enough, we were mistaken. The confusion arises from the fact that in Muslim tradition that the day starts at dusk and not at 12 midnight.

Following our (late) realization, we broke our fasting by having a late lunch at a new eatery that has just opened in Ikon complex in Seremban 2 (partly because of my birthday is the following day). To our surprise, this place is packed after we got our food. This goes in a way show that the food is good. Here is a pic:

For the next day, knowing that my youngest is coming home for the long stretch of holiday, only my third son did the fasting. Before this, my other half and son bought a birthday cake for me. Yes, now I'm 63. My son Ihsan form JB posted this meme:

I thought the meme is more suited for a Westerner. Thus, I went on Gemini to create the following meme.

Here are the pics of the cake and myself:

Well, let's see how my life goe on after this.

To Work Or Not To Work

Yesterday I was not feeling myself and had to rest the whole morning in order for me to stay fresh during Friday prayers. Without my kids at home, drove myself to the nearby surau. After Friday prayers, help my other half to dry our clothers in S2 Heights and thereafter had our late lunch.

By Maghrib, it was raining heavily, my other half received a call from my third son. He told us that one of the tyres had burst. We panicked. We borrowed a car jack from our neighbour and drove to my son's location. Thankfully enough, he was alright, alhamdulillah and the car was at the side after exiting the toll. When we reached there, there was already a guy talking to him nearby. Apparently this good samaritan has helped our son to change the tyre with the spare. He told us that he is always driving around to see if anyone needs help and at the same time promote his insurance sales. In my mind, he is working hard to make a living but I'm really glad he was around to help. Out of the little cash I had in my wallet (meant for my other half to buy food at Seremban Main Market early morning tomorroe), I offered him some amount of cash as a token of appreciation. Initially he declined but we insisted for him to have it.

The good samaritan actually told us that all the tyres are almost worn out and may need replacement soon. My son had not even got his first pay for this new job. It was in these moments, I felt that I need to work to help support the family. I have actually given up hope and felt I need to rest more at this old age. If I work, it will also introduce another problem. My eldest is now using my other half's car to work and my other half used mine instead. The eldest had an old second hand car which has not been used and most probably needs massive repair. If I work, then it will spoil the current arrangement. If I don't, I felt useless and most probably we don't have enough to go by. Praying for a good solution.

Today, he help drive my other half and her sister to visit her nephew who broke both his arms. Some photos.

Mid-December Post

Yesterday I completed my editing of former PhD student's paper. Yes, it took me a long time to do it. Part of this is due to me relearning some of the technical contents of the paper particularly on Tsallis statistics (I may or may not do a blog entry on this; just watch this space). But I won't lie, I had my time spend mostly on the things I've been doing all this while; updating myself with papers on arXiv. When Jussi Kalkkinen asked me a long time ago, which 'counters' do I follow and when I gave my reply, he said that is a lot to follow (mainly because of my wide interest). Today I follow slightly less - removed cond-mat and physics from the list (the latter is mainly because I had interest in complex networks and its applications). Actually, I wanted to add cs counter due to my interest in logic and right nw AI but then I thought that the cross-listings should be enough for me. By next year, I hope to reduce this further. My other half is already 'complaining' why am I still 'working' given that it is very slim that I can get back to academia. I have no answer to that; perhaps, there will be a time when I will stop reading science altogether or maybe my departure comes earlier.

My son from JB came back home on Saturday evening to spend time with us. However he has gone back to JB around four hours ago as he has to work tonight at 11pm. Normally when any of my sons come back home (before this - now my eldest and third sons are living with us), we will have some special meals. Yesterday night, after my eldest came back from work, ordered some extra food to add to the existing food carried over from the day before. I can see the smiles of my sons' faces along with my other half's. For me, I simply do not want any of my family to go hungry in any way. That is why I kept looking for a job despite my retirement; not to enrich ourselves and live a lavish life, but to make our lives to be worry-free (enough savings for emergencies) and continuing support for the family. Anyway, with all my sons working (except the youngest), I hope things will get better. For the youngest, I hope there's enough for his semester fees and his pocket money.

So this morning, we had breakfast outside in a 'mamak' restaurant (my eldest however did not join since he often goes to work by 6.30am). Here's a pic.

Since my other half had her eyes closed, my son asked Gemini to modify the photo to have her eyes open.

Here is Ihsan before he leaves for JB.

Narratives and Past Experience

I read with interest the narrative of the recent ASEAN Quantum Summit. Once again, I say bravo to the organizer team that made this happen.

Here, I merely want to make comparison of my own experience of organizing events, which I consider as a different experience. When I was with the institute, I believe we have done many events (associated with quantum science or not). At one time, I do notice that our events almost did not get the exposure in more formal media. I did mention this to the committee then and had the committee work harder with respect to the publicity. Once I thought it was just probably that our events were 'mathematics-based' and appeared less sensational to cover as it seems that there are no 'physical' showcases for people to see. Next, I recall hearing a remark that these are merely events of this nobody 'Dr. Hisham'. A prevalent narrative among 'office politicians' then was events are done for 'glorification' (of individuals/institutions) and less on the importance of the materials they carry. After awhile, I tried to fade myself in the background though this is more difficult than I thought (given my administrative post). The next level of realization is perhaps one was considered not to be favoured by some, particularly for highlighting events. I certainly remember the two instances that my pic was cropped out from the picture that appeared in the more official media. Of course, these were among other more subtle things. Thus, finally I took a rest from holding positions. 

Why am I recalling all these stories? The very human reason is it is seared deep in my mind but a better reason would be to help others learn. In any case, I am happy to be given the opportunity to do things that I believe in like EQuaLS. I was told that the series had some form of impact. I was asked to write about EQuaLS in the AAPPS Bulletin: see the article here. The biggest EQuaLS event that I did was the 6th Asia-Pacific Conference & Workshop in Quantum Information Science (EQuaLS 6). When I was first asked about hosting this conference, I wrote to a few individuals about the idea given my worry that it would not get the support it needed. At the time, I had already some experience in chairing very specialized conferences and the difficulty to get people to participate (what more if the requirement is to generate income; in most cases we would be simply satisfied if we could just break even). In the end, we proceeded with all the risks in mind. Here is the group pic.

This is me with Bob Coecke (left) and Robert Spekkens (right) during the conference dinner (note: both are Birkhoff-Von Neumann Prize recipients).

Being old, I wish that Allah remove the desire of fame and glory from my mind and what is best for me is the record of good deeds. I take those things I have mentioned above are simply fate and in the end all I want is husnul khatimah (may Allah grant me this). If it is granted that what we do has the bonus of people's good narrative then Alhamdulillah, otherwise it is also Alhamdulillah (good for the heart).

Note added: Yesterday, again I had to babysit all the cats at home as my other half went to a conference at Movenpick Hotel, KLIA (my son Izhar drove her there). The conference is necessary for the doctors to collect points for their annual practicing certificate. Here are some photos.

Me and the cats: