Honorary Fellow and Failed Visits

Yesterday, the Malaysian Institute of Physics (IFM) conferred to me the Honorary Fellowhip of the organization. I knew about the matter actually weeks ago when the Secretary of the organization; I was surprised but felt honoured. I kept mum about it until it was officially given to me yesterday.

 

Perhaps what is not known to many is that I was already a fellow of the Institute before, since 1998. This was before I got my associate professorship in the year 2000.

So what is the difference between a fellow and an honorary fellow? Unsure myself, I searche this on Google and Gemini gave me this summary:

When I read this, I was wondering what has been 'outstanding' about me, particularly towards IFM. I only served as a council member of IFM for only several years (in 1994). At the time, I had just came back from Bintulu Campus of UPM (now rebranded as Universiti Putra Malaysia Sarawak - UPMS) and I was trying to be active through IFM and various other committees at the university and at the national level. However after, I received my first administrative position in UPM as head of laboratory in 2002, I had to focus on development of the labs at the institutes (then ITMA and INSPEM). My last administrative position is as Deputy Director at INSPEM. Before landing at this position, I started off Expository Quantum Lecture Series (EQuaLS) in 2007 and later had IFM coorganized some of these events. The pictures below are from EQuaLS5 with the late IFM president Prof. Chia Swee Ping and John Baez is among the invited speakers.

Actually even before INSPEM, there were activities in ITMA involving IFM.

I think these lecture series are among my accomplishments and these event triggered research directions that our group has pursued. The main aim was really to get our theorists acquainted with the technical level of the distinguished speakers. Some indeed questioned why our group has not collaborated or co-wrote papers with these speakers but that was not the aim. Proper progress requires an organic growth of our talents and usually this is a slow process. Among the results is that one of EQuaLS1 speaker, the late Prof S.T. Ali became the supervisor of my younger colleague Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nurisya Mohd Shah who is now a Fellow of IFM, appointed in the same ceremony (congrats to her),

So what is the responsibilities of an honorary fellow? I had Gemini giving me this answer: 

I will try my best to do so and may Allah help me with my duties.

While we were in UM for the above conferring, we thought that we should just cross over to Shah Alam to visit our son Izhar whom we have not seen for quite some time. Unfortunately he was not there when we arrived.

So instead, we went to a mall to get our lunch and we went to Masjid Denai Alam to perform our prayers.

This morning, we made another visit to his place in DK Impian to see him but again, unfortunately he was not around to see us.

We left some goods at his door and hoped that he is alright wherever he is (may Allah grant him safety, peace and tranquility in performing his duties). I told my other half, we should not do anymore unplanned visits since the travels have their costs. Back home, we took back our sick cat Yaya from a clinic costing us about RM500+. Here is a video of Yaya recuperating.