Eve of 'Eid 1446

So Ramadhan 1446 has just ended a few hours and tomorrow we will be celebrating 'Eid-ul-Fithri. I hope there is real improvement in ourselves with the Ramadhan that had just past. Indeed, with some difficulties that we have gone through, this has been a humbling Ramadhan.

All my sons came back home yesterday with Ihsan coming back a few days earlier. Yesterday, we also took the opportunity to visit and clean my mum's grave.

Today was our journay to Segamat to meet with my in-laws, reaching before noon.

Unfortunately, I am not really in a Raya mood with the coming teaching duties in mind. I have also written a post over Ketchup Spills, which I will try to finish properly before the Eid prayers. It is entitled PT-Symmetric Quantum Theory: A Cursory Look. This is one topic that I wish that I had learned earlier and one of those topics that tend to surprise you but yet staying close to down-to-earth traditional quantum theory (another is the Berry phase and other geometric phases). This is unlike some of the speculative topics that has become popular, added with grandiose questions and even claims. It rests on good honest mathematics but I have not quite come to grips since it is very computational (and I prefer to the calculations myself or at least know how to proceed in making progress) and it involves complex analysis, topics I've covered in a small way over in Equatorial Frequencies. Perhaps, this is another humbling experience over this Ramadhan, not knowing enough on such topics. I have been reading materials on the topic all this while and I resisted rushing through them, since I can't really pin down the essential ideas and details needed. I also discovered my close colleague during my PhD days , Patrick Dorey has also contributed to this topic from the view of integrable models (his specialization).  He had also contributed to Bender's book on the topic. Below is a pic of me and him when we met in Seoul; he was in a conference in honour of A. Zamolodchikov and I was ina quantum information conference. He is now a professor in Durham where we did our PhD. Knowing this, somehow I felt small and somehow regretted how things went. I told my other half, if only I could be smarter and worked much harder, perhaps I would have achieved more in theoretical physics. So it was humbling going through all the materials (only able to touch the surface). I also intended to touch upon Bagarello's work in these topics, whom my younger colleague, Dr. Nurisya know and had the opportunity to visit him recently. But it was too much for me to take in and at some point, I had to leave this and moved on to prepare for my teaching next week. 

Last Ten Days of Ramadhan 1446 Varia

I wanted to do this post earlier but I delayed it in the hope of another post on Ketchup Spills first. I have already collected a large collection of reading materials for the intended post - they are on PT- Symmetry (something that I wanted to read for quite a long time). However, I have to prepare for my teaching this coming April. Hence, there is a problem of focus. With April being around the corner, I have to focus more on teaching preparation.

We are now in the last ten days of Ramadhan 1446. To many Muslims, this would be the period where Muslims should intensify efforts to do more ibadah (making it more difficult for me to focus). Not being in the best of health, I simply continue my normal pace. But I hope this meant something positive overall (which includes staying away as much as possible from social media). 

It seems that I will have a very short Eid holiday. I will begin teaching by the third day of 'Eid (depending on the official declaration this Sunday). In a way, this has upset the family's 'Eid plan. For this April semester, I will be teaching one same subject I have helped teach in the previous semester (Applied Calculus). But I will be teaching a new subject (in the same mould) which amalgamates Linear Algebra (mainly matrices) with Calculus. This will take more of my time on preparation. In addition to this, I will be handling tutorials as well (which is new). Given all of these, it will slow down my writing on the blogs (particularly the technical ones), despite I enjoy doing them. 

Just to prepare myself for going back to work, got myself a(n) (expensive) haircut, partly accompanying my son.

Let's see what happens the next few days.

Mid-Ramadhan 1446 Varia

We have now reached the second half of Ramadhan and fatigue may have set it for some. But this is no excuse for slacking in ibadah even when I have episodes of bad back.

I have also just found out that yesterday (15 March) was declared the International Day to Combat Islamophobia. It coincided with the day of Christchurch mass shooting at Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre where 51 people were killed and 89 others were injured. With all the many issues arising, I posted the wikipedia link on my FB mainly as a reminder to myself (not knowing that before). I guess some (including closet islamophobes) did not like it. I remember seeing this pic below sometime back, cautioning readers not to let this be widespread. Well, there is no compulsion in religion. Most of the 'revert' videos I saw, tend to be mostly self-realization (not by the sword as some would suggest), after studying the religion.

Today, I uploaded another post over my technical blog on complex numbers and complex analysis. I know that I first learned about complex numbers from Mr. Hilditch, when I was in Daws Road High School for matriculation (and not before that). The one that I can't really remember is when did I first learn about complex analysis. I do remember struggling a bit with complex integration in my third year BSc course Classical Field Theory, taught by Peter Szekeres.

Also, during Part III in the course of Quantum Many Body Physics taught by Peter Landshoff, where I really felt I was at a disadvantage not learning it properly before.

Learned complex analysis more properly when I was asked to teach Mathematical Physics I at XMUM two years ago. Even then, I have not quite mastered some of the advanced topics. At the time, I didn't think we had a comprehensive book that covers all the syllabus. So, I felt I could have done the teaching better if I had time preparing my own notes. This reminds me I should go back and read the book below properly. Never got to use it for the course.

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 fasting 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 was 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 in quantum S&T here: Harnessing the power of the second quantum revolution. Preskill who coined the term Noisy and Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) has also recently come up 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 that I had opportunities to learn it better. For those who wanted to know what was taught in XMUM, they 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 of 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 was Mackey's orbital analysis. I had to pick up the two-volume Warner's Harmonic Analysis (see here and here), to understand things better. Wished I had these two books with me just for those memories, but they are way too expensive. What I will be teaching though (God willing) is much more basic, even my three legged cat is learning them.