Keeping It To Myself and Not Losing Face

It seems that social media is still abuzz about the unusual claim(s) made by a local professor and has not died down (I'm tired of reading the posts when they appear on my wall). One comment goes even to the poiint of invoking Judgement Day for those who are supporting the said professor (I do not have such confidence in facing Allah swt with imperfect deeds). My position is the same: debate within academic circles and not social media (including the said professsor). Something seems to be wrong about how academia is, if these do not suffice.

Knowing full well how toxic social media (and back-biting) can be, I have decided not to do any rewrite of my post on Mostaque's ideas for a magazine publication (just saw that there is a NotebookLM version which I hope to check out). I was made to become aware of  'AI experts' ridiculing others who probably wanted to venture into the field amateurishly. Note that my own post is not so much on the AI materials but more on the ideas of physics underlying some of Mostaque's ideas. However, critiques or even insults are the least of my worries. The bigger worry is that the book 'The Last Economy' is really about economic phase transition due to widespread of AI tools. My only encounter with economics is when I was teaching Applied Calculus at XMUM for economic sciences students. So I dug out the books of Silberberg and Takayama, thinking I would read it for some reason.

I got particularly lost when Mostaque suggested the solution of the dual currency system, the foundation coins and culture credits. I know nothing about bitcoins and crypto-currencies. Thus, in my post, I do not dare touch these topics. Certainly there is a yearning to read more on this but it will probably take me a long time for me to digest the topic. Then I remembered about Svozil mentioning the problem of money when he was here for EQuaLS, but at the time we wanted to focus on quantum foundation ideas. He has an article in arXiv about this, which I showed to my family (hoping to stir some interest in the problem of money and later on cyptocurrency). My reading of the article (perhaps my interest is not here) is rather slow. The next step is perhaps to find a simple book on blockchains and cryptocurrencies. Thus, my understanding of Mostaque's dual currency system is probably a long way off. But there are other things which I have not understood. For instance, there is a Lagrangian given in Appendix A Part II whose form is not quite in the form of difference of 'energies'. Supposing that the optimization problem of an objective function is the same as action extremizing principle, it doesn't quite correspond to what I know as in physics. I did try to search the literature (within economics) if action or Lagrangian approach has been used, but the ones I got have different formulations. Sort of gave up at the moment.

Thus, my decision not to have another rewrite until I can understand at least partially what is going on. Today, I saw another podccast with Mostaque that had some verbal details of his ideas but I really wanted a written technical paper that I could read and digest. In the podcast, this is the second time, he raised the idea of wave-particle duality. Need more details of how he think about this, but I have always maintained this is simply due to configuration variable whose conjugate variables involving time derivatives (which I implicitly mention in my post about the flow). However, in this particular case, there seems to be no reason for incompressibility of the phase space volume (needed for an uncertainty principle). So for now, I will wait for more details and hence save me from possible ridicules for now.

Family matters: My son Izhar has moved out from his place in Shah Alam (losing the deposit due to broken contract) and set up his 'office' in his room at home.

He will probably travel to work from home now.

Just Want To Be Better

Hmmm ... my last post seems to have more traffic. Sometimes people think I should not raise certain issues. Maybe. I'm not siding with anyone. I simply want to raise some awareness that might escape people's attention (e.g. Black Athena). It is rather unfortunate, many times things are being framed here along racial lines. Coupled to this is islamophobia. The irony is islamic outlook (addressed to mankind universally) is against racial outlook. In any case, one should be aware the unconscious ugly psyche that creeps into discussions.

The post was probably the first time I cite Qur'anic verses in a blogpost (I can't really remember if there is any before this and I will not bother to check it). I don't want to pretend to be a religious person but I do want to be a better Muslim and also a better intellectual. Must say, there are struggles to do both. I wish that I know Arabic well to understand the Qur'an directly, but I don't. Being a theoretical physicist, we are still a minority in the physics community. Before retirement, I did try to push theoretical physics agenda because I don't think anyone else would do that for us (at the time). Anyway, my days are nearly over. Soon I'll be 63, which is around (or more than) the age when our Prophet Muhammad pbuh passed away. My other half has already warned about the books and papers I have, may become a burden in the hereafter. I'm trying to use them (and perhaps teach) as much as I can now and once I finish (very unlikely) or decide to stop, I will probably give them away (or sell them).

This morning, I started to watch YouTube on my TV. Some weeks ago, we were given the IPTV box for free. Watching it on TV, it allows freeing up the memory on my old laptop. I have just watched a Moonshot episode where they had Peter Diamandis hosting a forum in Riyadh with Eric Schmidt and Li Fei Fei. Some pics.

Currently watching The Tea hosted by Myriam Francois with Subhadra Das discussing eugenics and how they have currently transformed.

After a while, watching talks like these, there is a feeling of 'sembang warung kopi'. What do I get and how do these made me better? My frequent prayers that I'll be given beneficial knowledge.

What One Says or Writes

Lately, I prefer not to read postings on the social media because (insulting) reactions to (unusual) claims made by a local professor. What is troubling is perhaps this is not the first time and the person would have known what reactions that will come thereafter. Note that in any claim, the burden of proof is upon the person who makes the claim. The more extraordinary the claim that is being put forward, the bigger is the burden of proof. This is also true within the 'hard' sciences. The bigger the difference with the normative science of the day, the more resistance one expects. This is well understood. I recall having a potential PhD candidate (or was it MSc) who came to see me, wishes to prove that Earth holds a special position in the universe. Knowing modern cosmology's idea that there is no such specal position, I asked the person what is the latest form of cosmological knowledge that the person knew. The person did not respond directly to the question, emphasizing only the faith of the person. Naturally, I would not want the person to be my PhD student. Also, with respect to these claims, I may have some differences in the past with a colleague on some claims but whom I respected because of his Arabic knowledge and the ability to access primary Arabic sources. I do admire his passion of getting (non-English) historical documents, and their careful reading whose contents are largely unknown to many of us who are educated in the West.

Tried to view the whole episode within a larger lens; I remembered the book Black Athena (three volumes) whose claim is that Western civilization has its roots in North Africa and West Asia, not simply from the Greeks. I knew about the book from my reading of its review in Afkar Inquiry magazine. I actually bought its first volume and I still have it, but it is stashed away in the inner depths of my book shelf. While I think it is interesting, given the geographical proximity of the regions involved, history is not really my cup of tea. Talking about proximity, when I first heard about Golden Chersonese during my school days, I was already puzzled how our region gets its way into the literature of the Greeks because of the distances between Greece and South East Asia. This piece of history was learned together with history of Francis Light 'discovered' Penang and Stamford Raffles 'discovered' Singapore. Later, we do understand that these were just the perspectives of the colonialists. So, with respect to history, care must be taken on who is writing them. This is not to say that history has to be left to the whims of the historians. The better evidence, be it in terms of documentations or archaelogical evidences, the better the historical claim i.e. closer to the 'truth'. With respect to this and the Friday today, I remember the Qur'anic ayat:

The Cave (18:22) 

سَيَقُولُونَ ثَلَـٰثَةٌۭ رَّابِعُهُمْ كَلْبُهُمْ وَيَقُولُونَ خَمْسَةٌۭ سَادِسُهُمْ كَلْبُهُمْ رَجْمًۢا بِٱلْغَيْبِ ۖ وَيَقُولُونَ سَبْعَةٌۭ وَثَامِنُهُمْ كَلْبُهُمْ ۚ قُل رَّبِّىٓ أَعْلَمُ بِعِدَّتِهِم مَّا يَعْلَمُهُمْ إِلَّا قَلِيلٌۭ ۗ فَلَا تُمَارِ فِيهِمْ إِلَّا مِرَآءًۭ ظَـٰهِرًۭا وَلَا تَسْتَفْتِ فِيهِم مِّنْهُمْ أَحَدًۭا ٢٢

Some will say, “They were three, their dog was the fourth,” while others will say, “They were five, their dog was the sixth,” ˹only˺ guessing blindly. And others will say, “They were seven and their dog was the eighth.” Say, ˹O Prophet,˺ “My Lord knows best their ˹exact˺ number. Only a few people know as well.” So do not argue about them except with sure knowledge, nor consult any of those ˹who debate˺ about them.

— Dr. Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran (https://quran.com/18/22)

On the above controversy, the best place to dscuss or debate is within academic circles and journals. Social media is not a good place to have intense debate on this and most certainly only degenerate to gang-shaming. Social media is really a domain of attention-seekers, and not truth-seekers.

Social media is also prone to propaganda and narrative wars. I suppose people have the freedom to do these but be careful of what they entail. I saw a lot of Islamophobic narratives or comments. One of them, I saw this morning is about the splitting of the moon miracle (see also here) made by one writer. While not explicit, the intent is essentially to ridicule - the person showed pics of the moon in Arabia (split) but it was whole in other places - one explanation I have seen is that in far away places, they are in different time zones. But 'miracles' or out of the norm events do happen in other religions too, so in a way what the writer did was cherry-picking. There will always be parts of the religion that we do not understand. For me, the honest and humble thing to do is to reflect on places where we are asked to reflect (and not in places where one don't have the depth of understanding - very much the same in science, we leave problematic cases for others or future generations to expound on - or we can wait for the Hereaafter). On this note, muslims are not allowed to insult the religion of others as indicated in the following verse:

The Cattle (6:108) 

وَلَا تَسُبُّوا۟ ٱلَّذِينَ يَدْعُونَ مِن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ فَيَسُبُّوا۟ ٱللَّهَ عَدْوًۢا بِغَيْرِ عِلْمٍۢ ۗ كَذَٰلِكَ زَيَّنَّا لِكُلِّ أُمَّةٍ عَمَلَهُمْ ثُمَّ إِلَىٰ رَبِّهِم مَّرْجِعُهُمْ فَيُنَبِّئُهُم بِمَا كَانُوا۟ يَعْمَلُونَ ١٠٨

˹O believers!˺ Do not insult what they invoke besides Allah or they will insult Allah spitefully out of ignorance. This is how We have made each people’s deeds appealing to them. Then to their Lord is their return, and He will inform them of what they used to do.

— Dr. Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran (https://quran.com/6/108)

I think the ridiculing also happen in less sensitive areas; often we giggled at the fantastic parts of Kollywood films that seem to defy physics. Then my other half reminded me, the same can be said of some Hollywood films, where we don't giggle that much.

Anyway, here is how I felt after reading social media postings in the past week or so.

My youngest son just send me this photo where he had his Friday prayers. May Allah helphim with his studies and I hope he is eating well (have just topped up his pocket money this morning).

Birthday & More Brooding

Yesterday was my eldest son's birthday. Given 'the special day', we had our meals mostly 'outside' and in a way we ate more than we used to. We bought him a cake.

For dinner, however, we just had kebab, thinking we had enough for the day.

Now in a previous post, I mentioned about a blogpost I've made about 'AI hype'. Have I been bought in regarding AI? Not really. It is just my style to learn 'new' things. Am I convinced that AI will change our lives in the future. I don't know. Certainly, it will be good for us to be prepared. We have seen ourselves how internet has changed our lives, both positively and negatively. Will I be doing research in AI? Most probably no, at least in the conventional sense. I would be interested how quantum science may intersect with the progress in AI. More generally, how 'new' mathematical structures (including linguistics) will help S&T progress. Again, I have a wide interest even before the AI boom.

Back to the blogpost, still contemplating on a follow-up or even a polished version of the article since I do believe there is some value in the post (it is not simply a summary of Mostaque's book). Too bad, it did not quite generate too much interest probably drowned by all the political commentaries in the past week or so. In a way, the national goals have some weight in shaping our interest and focus, particularly the way that we are perceived as small players (what more if some look down on us). With people like Terence Tao and Tim Gowers expressing interest in AI, I guess in a way, it would be silly just to ignore this 'AI hype'. Another point, is that scientific problems are getting more complex by the day. the AI tool may just help. In a different way, the more complex scientific problems are, the more necessary for us to work together (whatever that means). I have always suggested this fact even before this 'AI hype', in part justifying why we need more organizations (or institutes) for us to collaborate with.

October End Varia

During this week, we had Ihsan coming back from JB on Monday. On Tuesday, he went for hiking with Izhar in Melaka. Good time for rebonding.

Ihsan went back to JB early Thursday morning (3 am), just in time for him to get back to work. I hope he had enough rest.

That Thursday too, I had an invitation to an MJMS workshop in Putrajaya, at DoubleTree. My eldest son drove me there. As we were arriving, I thought the place looked familiar. Later when I saw the tower below, I remember it was previously Pullman Lakeside Hotel where we had organized EQuaLS6.

The workshop was held in Puteri 3 room at the 2nd wing.

I was there only to receive the following token of appreciation for my role as Editor-in-Chief during 2016-2019.

At the time, MJMS was already Scopus-indexed. I remembered how my postdoc (ex-PhD) student, Saeid Molladavoudi help designed the LaTEX template for the journal. Before that, the journal had only MSWord template. The journal has since progressed and from the invitation, I was informed that the journal had acquired Q1 ranking within the ESCI category.

At the event, I met with Prof. Dato' Kamel Ariffin, my former boss and after the ceremony, we had our lunch together.

Those were the days ...

Eventful Weekend

Yesterday morning I was watching the opening ceremony of ASEAN meeting. I can see there is a lot of efforts gone into preparing for the event. We do tend to be ceremonial in many ways. Memories of staff and me involved in preparing for official events came back. Some staff went without sleep in order to make sure that everything go smoothly. We worked hard partly driven by the fear of something will go wrong. In my case, I remembered receiving a quiet scolding myself for some hiccups and the unplesant feeling of me scolding some staff. For international participants, some saw it as pompous (I had one such comment made to me) but others were happy the way it was done since it is different from what they have experienced. I'm glad such work is all over now (as they say a retiree phase of RTM- rehat tunggu mati).

I did see some hiccups in the ceremony yesterday and there were already apologies being made by the media. But overall, I still think it was impressive whether one agrees with our ceremonial culture or not. Here are the leaders that came to the meeting.

It is a huge event and hopefully there will be plenty of huge outcomes from it.

It so happened that yesterday I was also rushing to complete my blogpost on Mostaque's book. I tend to brood a lot before writing a post (even for this one), When I start to write, it tend to be spontaneous as it will go with the flow of my thinking. There will be plenty of mistakes on the initial post and I do revisit it to make sure at least all glaring mistakes are corrected. I posted it aometime at 3pm and two hours later announced it on FB. (Un)Fortunately, the announcement got drowned by social commentaries of Trump dancing and on the event itself. Some social commentaries are nasty, full of insults and foul language. I do wish they are mindful of what perception they are giving particularly to international readers. Criticisms are fine and they can be done in a respectful, graceful way. 

Anyway this morning, my son from JB came back and we almost have the full family together apart from the youngest who is now in Jasin. So family activities ahead.

Another MIND

This morning, my other half suggested that we should have only one big meal per day with health reasons but also the cost in mind. By saying this, it doesn't mean we want to only eat once a day; but we can have some light meals between each big meal. Just saw, a stack of bread snacks on the table top for anyone to eat. Well, we just had lunch two hours ago after we had roti canai breakfast this morning. Practically, we can actually really do that because our children have been skipping some meals since they have been busy with their work. O do think we (Malaysians) are eating more than we are supposed to (leading to obesity problems). Myself, I rarely have more than one small plate of rice in one meal because I get easily full. In fact, when we have our meals outside, I normally have difficulty to finish up what is being served since it is more than what I wanted to eat (but I finish it up anyway because we have paid for it and normally it will cost (in-)digestion problem). Let us see how this plan goes - usually we can skip our lunch and the only time all of us can be together is in the evening, which implies heavy meals before bed (not so healthy then).

The real intent of this post is to say something about Mostaque's MIND capitals, which is said to be scalable all the way down from country to organization to individuals. For individuals, these are

• Materials (M) Capital: One's physical health, personal savings and the sustainability of personal physical environment.
• Intellectual (I) Capital: One's knowledge and skills and the rate of learning them.
• Network (N) Capital: Quality and strength of one's relationships with the family, friends and community.
• Diversity (D) Capital: The portfolio of one's options of resources that can build resilience against unexpected changes.

When I saw this, I thought that Mostaque is also playful/creative with acronyms. It also reminded me about a label that we came up with when we were asked to reinvent our maths institute, namely Mathematical Institute for Natural and Disruptive Sciences (MINDS) - see this post and this post. That idea never saw the light of day but never mind about that. In the past, when I read self-help and management books, I realise that the management gurus really have the habit of creating acronyms (at a time I wonder why such fuss). But then physicists also do that including this scrawny self. Take for instance, the acronyms EQuaLS (Expository Quantum Lecture Series) and QuEST (Quantum Explorations of Science & Technology). The idea with such acronyms that it can be easily remembered and if one is lucky, it can be viral and be beneficial. Once, I became so playful and created horrible ones (remember LuFTER?) until a high school mate called it childish (thank you Zaki for the criticism), and thereafter I stopped. Yes, I do listen to criticisms. Another instance, Bob Coecke was telling me that I complain too much on social media, after which I do less rants. Having said this, imagine how foreigners perceive the commentaries of our local social media users ...

Back to MIND Capitals. How do I fare? For M Capital, have a comfortable home now (pushing now for spiritual betterment). Health and savings are so and so but I'm thankful. For I Capital, I never stop learning and browse the arXiv daily for four different counters but at this late stage of life, I should be pushing for spiritual knowledge. For N Capital, this is where I perform the least, being a shy and introvert person. For instance, I did have the opportunity to reconnect with some high school friends in a reunion, but circumstances just wouldn't let me. I  have once my best primary school friend with whom I have reconnected in FB much earlier on, but due to the kind of posts he made, I unfriended him (feeling embarrassed); I should have simply unfollow his posts but I did not know that I could do so then (feeling regretful). The same goes for friends in universities with whom I mainly reconnect through social media but not so much since most of them are in high positions. In my former workplace, I tend to become a loner mainly because of the field I'm in. Thus, so much for my N-capital. I should just stick to the surau community given the current age. For the D-capital, my skills have not been diverse enough to venture away from academia. Earlier what I've thought to be investments tend not to help much (some are even scammers). So leaving only my writing or teaching skills that I have not really capitalised. I wonder whether it is too late now. 

But really in the above, I'm still thinking in materialistic terms. Shouldn't it be more than that? During my earlier reading of Mostaque's book, I had imagined a different kind of the 'last economy' as I had the impression of what he meant was what it means to be truly human. I coined the term 'amal economy' emphasizing good deeds that we can bring over to the hereafter. Even this, I'm not confident about how one fares. Can we be sure that our good deeds not be thrown back to our faces. Who could be that sure?

The Last New Post?

What title should I give this post?

Anyway, last Monday, which is the public holiday of Deepavali, we send our youngest son back to college. He was still recuperating from the fever he had - it did not intensify over the weekend and thus probably just a normal flu (as opposed to influenza). Bought some food items for him during the weekend and banked in some pocket money hopefully enough for another two weeks. While we were there at his college, I helped out carrying things to his room and I met his room mate, Shahrul. It is good to meet and know him.

Driving back home, there was traffic congestion almost all the way as people are returning home to work from the long weekend.

The following few days, I was thinking about the future a little. I come to the following thought of not putting myself as a burden to anyone while still hoping for some opportunities. In the past, I was always asking what and how I can contribute to the organizations I'm with. While we are earnng our pay, I sometime get offended being labelled as simply 'makan gaji'. I do hope people see that I have tried to go beyond that, played my role in building ip theoretical physics. During the early stage of my carreer, some probably thought I was just doing high energy physics, though the training was on mathematical physics adaptable to many different domains but the specialization was quantization. I was generally eyeing on the mathematical techniques that I can use for me to explore various types of physics. This explain why the different areas of research that I was involved in.

Right now, out of current rave about AI, I started to listen to many AI podcasts, just to keep my options open. During the MSC rave, I tried to get into webste building, learn some computer programming and at the time, I was interested in doing computer visualization (even helped building an MSc curriculum in the 90s surrounding topics of Computational Physical Sciences, which includes even quantum computing - that early - but it was never realized). I was also trying to popularize Mathematica as a tool for doing science but those closer to engineering preferred a different software. Indeed just a few days ago, I had to sadly uninstall my Mathematica software (bought out of my own pocket) from my laptop as it was eating up 5GB of my hard drive and causing problems to my laptop. I would have to resort to WolframAlpha after this. So after that (brief) period of computer visualization interest, I found myself leaving these computational sciences (as they are rapidly changing) and focus back on doing mathematical stuff. So, given this experience, my interest in AI is a bit more cautious, probably focusing more on mathematical matters.

One of the things I did was to buy Emad Mstaque's e-book The Last Economy over in Google Play. I have been listening to Emad Mostaque several times and he seems to be well-respected, As he was a hedge fund manager and founder of an AI company, he has the expertise to write on the topic. Reading it on Google Play is not really my thing and I was hoping to have a pdf version. Little did I know that it was available at his Intelligent Internet website. Anyway, just finished reading the whole book (including the appendices which have more technical details) this afternoon (yes, I'm a slow reader and would be considered 'hopeless' in the AI age). Hopefully I can convert some of my notes into a blog post in Acu Frekuensi soon.

The journey continues .... ?
Or should I stop?

Education - Are We OK

Woke up this morning, thinking of what is wrong with me and then extending it beyond myself and see what is wrong with this world.

There is a lot online about how current education has 'worsened' and much of this tend to do the easy blame game, some degenerated into political comments. These are often of no help and in fact may deteriorate the situation. Here is my take on this and I hope it will be limited to this post. Too much noise on this.

First, the current education system is inherited from past policies, good and bad. Second, education goes beyond the classroom and the education syatem is very much an open system subject to external influences. Focusing on the first and ignoring the second will make us continue with the same mistakes. There is so much filth online accessible to anyone and external prohibitive measures often do not work. Have we been able to educate ourselves and our kids to guard ourselves against external negatve influences. We all have seen acts of bullying, violence, sexual abuse online and some are proud to exhibit them online (no shame or fear?). Remember the four letter word that has been adopted as part of vocabulary of many to express disgust, surprise or even feeling cool about it? Such expressions would have made Steve Rogers say 'Language'. For muslims, we know that we should not use such foul language but somehow the wider community has normalised it (even a political leader of superpower country uses it publicly). Are we okay with it? Take this further in the age of AI and there are already talks of sexbots, erotica agents acting to your whims (listen to this to know on their existence - mentioned in the podcast about Grok's naughty agent - and how we are making our brains to evolve). On the larger scale, are we ok with the current g*n*cide in the Middle East available for everyone to watch (note that embarrassingly I even have the fear of spelling some words in full, why?). Even on the abstract level, are we ok with the idea of truth being malleable according to each own's world views?

Some treat education as a monolith and expect a single stroke of solution (policy or whatever) to make education right. In reality, we all understand the multidimensional aspects of education and yet we are entertaining comments that are unidimensional. At this stage, I have always maintained that teaching and learning are creative processes but what happens now, we tend to make them as an algorithmic process, often introducing bureaucratic processes along the way, adding workload to the teaching and learning agents, positively or negatively. Are we ok with monolithical instructions with the risk of stifling creativity and not to mention lessening the passion of agents in the teaching and learning processes? I tend to see many plans and strategies were made within an engineering framework (see remark later about Snowden's complex system approach). But there are many aspects to education for any single person or body to handle; there are too many aspects being entangled - our colonial past, our cultural values, our social engineering experiments, external technological incursions, all giving rise to our present state of society. That is why I'm more interested in diffusion processes as used by Snowden (see this for example) and consider dispositional states and adjacent possibilities within the Sensemaking and Cynefin frameworks. This is more action-oriented and perhaps fall outside the formal classroom system to be considered as a possible solution. I remember mentioning about Snowden's approach and a junior colleague said that it would not work here. Maybe so, but how can we proceed then? We think we know what we want (do we really) but yet we do not know how to get there.

I'm a retiree now and my actionable sphere is limited. As such, the actional sphere (burden) falls upon the younger generations in order to better our educational system. I'll shut up now. Will resume taking gabapentin (see here) perhaps to dull my senses, growing old as I'm supposed to.

Learning with my three-legged cat, the companion of an old person.

Mid October Already?

At some point, I paused posting anything. Partly, I was busy handling personal matters and partly, I also resisted the feeling that I have to be posting something, just because I wanted to be a content creator (I used to joke with my youngest as content kereta). Many do so, to an extent that I felt silly, making things up just to get the attention of others. I would prefer not to do that and in fact, I am really a shy person all my life and only got to be a 'social' person out of necessity. Otherwise I prefer to fade in the background, doing my own kind of things uninterrupted.

Speaking of my youngest, he was fetched by my eldest to be home for the long Deepavali weekend. Apparently, he was down with fever and given the current influenza outbreak, I took him to the clinic this afternoon.

Let me retrace back to several days earlier. Well, October was the month of Nobel Prize announcements and the Nobel Prize in Physics  this year goes to a discovery in quantum science, namely macroscopic quantum tunnelling. 

In the past, I would have written something 'elaborate' in the social media or make a blog post about it. This time, I don't feel like to, because of the feeling that everyone seems to champion quantum S&T these days and like what I've said above, I prefer staying in the background and not be a 'quantum cheerleader'. For chemistry, I find it interesting to see Omar Yaghi as one of the Nobel laureates, given that he is a son of a Palestinian refugee. But perhaps the name also stand out to me, because of his visits to UPM before this.

Back to personal matters; on Wednesday, we rushed to Rompin to visit my sister-in-law and her husband who just had an accident. This is the shape of their car. Really bad, total loss.

They were hit by a runaway oil-palm carrying lorry, rolling down a slope without a driver. Alhamdulillah, they escaped with only bruises and minor cuts. The husband (driver) spent a night at the hospital (now discharged). My sister-in-law was actually thrown into the back seat on impact. I can't imagine what they were feeling then. It could have been worse. Their car went into one side of a ravine while the lorry went to the other side. So far they are ok. Here's a pic of my sons with Abang Mat (rightmost, the driver).

Today, while my eldest went to fetch my youngest, we had our breakfast at an eatery in City Park. My son had a job interview this morning and another interview online in the afternoon. He has yet to arrive home this evening, probably stuck in the traffic jam as people going off for holidays for the long Deepavali weekend. I have returned the Macbook that he bought for me back to him since he needed it more than I do. I'm fine with my old laptop as is. When I have enough money, I just hope to upgrade the hard disk and get a new battery - probably will stick with it till the end.

That's it for now.

Back to College Varia

On Saturday, we send back our youngest son Izzuddin, back to college for his BSc studies. It was also my first time using the petrol subsidy Budi Madani for my car that has not been used for awhile. I paid RM50 for petrol that was supposed to RM65.33. Every help counts. 

Most of the registration matters was done online and his registration at the campus was a breeze. My other half helped pay his fees while I provide for his pocket money for at least for the first two weeks (to be topped up later). 

Despite all the preparations for this trip, there are still some necessities that we forgot to bring e.g. a pillow, padlock for his locker. So we went out to get these as well as bringing him to lunch.

We left him at the college sometime before 2pm.

After having him stay with us since his industrial ttaining, I kinda felt sad as we drove away. I used to joke a lot with him at home and I will certainly miss him. I pray that he will be successful in his studies.

Currently our third son is with us at home and he is currently seeking for a new job. Today we will be sending his car for service. So we are pretty much occupied at home with personal matters. Elsewhere, the news is abuzzed with the humanitarian aid floatilla to Ghazza being intercepted at international waters. The floatilla group, this time, is big consisting of 496 participants from 47 different countries.

They have been 'arrested' on interception and many are still being held in prison despite the international protests. With the help of our Prime Minister and many others, 23 of Malaysian participants have been released, alhamdulillah.

On another piece of interesting news, the Prime Minister has also announced the forming of a national team for quantum science & technology. I do not know who will be on board but I certainly hope that it will be inclusive particularly given that there is already the MyQI initiatives. 

I am also happy to see that my younger colleagues in UPM has started to organize events in collaboration with UM (see here). I hope that it will be successful.

Just Another Derailed Post

Well, earlier planned things seem to have derailed but life goes on, of course,with  relatively tight budget (particularly just found out that even my final part-time pay being further delayed). My real main concern is not so much about myself but my children. Sometimes I do feel that they deserve to have a better father so that they get better support. 

Anyway, I woke up today recalling the economic hard times when I was a BSc student. I was send to Adelaide under Ministry of Education scholarship. My parents are not rich to send me abroad and without the scholarship, I would probably be studying locally like my other brothers and sister. Recalling how my parents must have struggled to make sure that I have enough cash to study will make me go teary. During the matriculation year, I did try to get some side income (together with my housemates) to work removing rubbish but the (Malay) employer decided I was too physically weak. I tend to joke around about this - not good enough to be a rubbish remover. I remember an incident where we were scolded by the bus driver for paying fares in copper coins (one cent and two cents usually collected from change after buying something). Another memory of when we fall short of cash is cooking for the housemates with frying onions with turmeric just to eat with our rice. I also tried keeping long hair with the excuse of not having enough money.

Those were the days but now I would want to provide enough for my children so that they won't go hungry. Coming up this weekend, my youngest will go to UiTM Jasin for his BSc degree. Got to make sure he has enough money for meals and stuff like fees. 

Last Friday, we did solatul-hajat after Friday prayers for the Global Sumud Flotilla which has Malaysian participants in it, so that they have safe journey and their humanitarian aid that they carry will be safely received by the Ghazzans there. I am aware also that some might raise a different narrative even among the locals. I also saw Islamophobic posts on social media but really, it doesn't matter for us Muslims, just recalling the hadith of Ghuraba. Maybe those uninitiated locals who harbour such feelings will better listen from a fair-skinned Westerner (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVtgaIzPkes). Also from a surgeon who has seen all the horrors (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5csAOVUIpUw)

Recently I shared a post about John Searle in which I initially was unaware about the controversy about it. Note that there are many other scientific personalities with controversies, for instance the following on this quantum legend. The intent of this sharing is mainly awareness about what is already known in public. In some way, I tend to compartmentalize the scientific life from the personal life when one can. In areas where one can't, one just distance away or beware of cultural trappings.

Inner feelings of sailing away ....

Varia: September End Matters

Alhamdulillah, yesterday my third son, whom we had not seen for awhile, came back home. Just earlier in the week, my second son also came back home much due to his place had water disruptions. Apparently, he had contracted conjunctivitis and the day after he arrived home, went to the clinic to get some medication.

Our youngest also went for a medical check-up at the same time for his BSc admission. He will be going to UiTM in Jasin for a BSc degree in Computer Science. When he first got the offer, he did not get a college accommodation. This will mean that he has to find a house somewhere near the university and associated with this, will mean he has to bring the Aveo green car (was used by our eldest) as means of transportation. It also meant that his expenses will be higher. He made an appeal for a college accommodation and alhamdulillah, the appeal was succesful (two days ago). So, God willing, we will be sending him to UiTM Jasin next weekend. A day ago, I used up my MyKasih assistance to buy some things for him to bring to the college and some things for home. Every assistance matters for us.

I have not been doing much earlier in the week because I experienced some food poisooning (I think) and it left me relatively weaker. My other half also contracted conjunctivitis from my son (after tending to my son) but she immediately took medication. This is always the risk for frontliners when tending to patients that possibly many did not realise (imagine the scare during the Covid-19 pandemic) - so be kind to medical practitioners.

Other matters: I bought Emad Mostaque's "The Last Economy" through GooglePlay and it was my first experience to do so. I first heard of him during the Moonshot podcast and he seems to be well respected among the AI circle. Here is a recent example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkKeK0qWrxI

My reading of it is kinda slow, but I hope to give review in my Malay blog later on. In the meantime, let me share some reels I build using AI for some mathematical thoughts. Note these are done by using a free version of PixVerse and as such they are not of too much technical depth. To do more, I guess one needs a subscribed version and for now, given that I have no extra income, I will avoid doing so. The first video is a Hopf fibration and since the three-sphere requires four dimension, I specify the extra dimension as a the animation time. As such, the 3-sphere will have expanding radius (compactifying it will mean 'closed time-like curve).

The other one is hyperbolic tessellation using triangle group; I did not specify which triangle group it is. The video is less visually attractive; to do more, will need more technical prompt, which I do not bother for now.

With more resources, I guess one could make more interesting animations. I'm still explooring what else can be done (did one for Kochen-Specker vectors in 3 dimensions but it does not add any more understanding and thus I have deleted it).

Time Slipping By

Yesterday was my other half's birthday. I just bought a chocolate cake (she loves chocs) plus some food for dinner. We simply use birthdays (or other events) as a reason to celebrate and be happy. Circumstances can be better but we are contented with what Allah has given us. We will say 'Alhamdulillah' (God willing) if things are good or bad.

So time is slipping away for us. Being old, if we are not careful, will appear to others as being useless. I keep reading (or watching YouTube videos) to keep my mind active. I don't go out too much and the kind of work I do most of the time at home forces me to be less (physically) mobile. I should be more mobile to help me with my bad back. Today, for instance, had the intention to an event of my in-laws, but unfortunately my indigestion and back problems suggest that I should not go. So I spent my time watching videos of the experience of activists going to Ghazza and elsewhere. I shared one of these on FB of Australian doctors whom at the end, made a remark that they are unsure if they will be alive the next day. May Allah help them all. Our prayers are the least that we could offer.

So you can probably see I spend less time on scientific matters, sadly, mainly attending to many personal issues and depressing state of affairs of the world in general. I hope to return to working on science soon.

Just to entertain myself and my other half last night, I did this AI video so that we could be 'younger'.

The AI tool that I was using is PixVerse. The first video I made was our three-legged cat Hitam.

Again, this is mere entertainment but I hope I can use AI in a more beneficial way. May Allah guide us in these challenging times.