In my last post, I mention about the honorary fellowship conferred to me last Saturday. I also posted the news on FB but I hope it is not viewed as braggery and me being full of myself. I would like to consider it posting more on positive matters as opposed to negative ones that seem to flood the social media. In fact, I'm more comfortable to post things on my blog than social media that pushes content to people's face. Blogs are often read only by those who are interested in them.
By saying the above, I would like to project my views about myself as being an average person who had opportunities to go abroad learning theoretical physics and the motivation to improve oneself on and on until I guess I'm on my deathbed. There will be ups and downs but the general direction is improvement. I would also like to push back the idea of mediocrity that some might want to paint. In the past, I would be obsessive of such a push-back but at this age and tiredness, I take things in a stride and be contented with what Allah have ordained for me.
Just to get a glimpse the subconscious psyche in me, some weeks back, I dreamt of talking to Gary Gibbons and I woke up, questioning why did I dream of him (note that I had other researchers who have influenced me more). Gibbons was there in DAMTP when I did Part III but I had never met him up close. I did meet his collaborator, Malcolm Perry (Gibbons & Perry collaborated on the seminal paper of Positive Mass Theorems for Black Holes together with Hawking and Horowitz) face-to-face asking if he has Witten's Holomorphic Morse Inequalities paper (since he had been to Princeton) just for me to get a copy (and he gave me one). Researchwise, I have not being reading papers of Gibbons recently and influencewise, the papers of Gibbons that attracted me more are not the usual ones that people refer to (e.g. Traffic Noise and the Hyperbolic Plane). Just a few days later, then I saw the news of Gibbons as one of the recipients of the 2025 Dirac Medal.
No, I'm not telling you this story as if I've been granted Divine secrets or that I have clairvoyant capabilities (far from it!). The real reason is perhaps how the story went in this dream. In the dream, I put up the courage to talk to Gibbons who had expounded on an idea that I had publicised (yes, it's only a dream) and tried to sound intelligent. On hearing my points/questions, he was telling me how shallow they are and I was taken aback and felt embarrassed. The story actually reflects the reality of what we have been facing and tried to overcome. Most of the time, we explore ideas of theoretical physics but found difficulty in getting their technical details, much due to our less exposure or really the lesser experience of technical depth in researching them. The inferiority complex and the insecurity is somewhat ingrained in us and it is a real challenge to overcome this. Part of the motivation in organizing schools like EQuaLS is to overcome this challenge. The fact I'm still dreaming this shows that we have yet to do this successfully, despite the many EQuaLS we have organized. We need something more. In the past, we had QuEST almost weekly meetings and incorporate the Gelfand (seminar) mentality in the meetings. However, it is difficult to maintain such meetings given our commitments. Again, having activities is only part of the story; we need the right environment that can nurture our curiosities and technical capabilities. We need to reflect on our priorities, I guess,
When I told my wife about the dream, she told me I was thinking too much about work and reminded me that I am now a retiree. But that doesn't mean I should stop thinking about science, right?
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