After Ten Days

I thought I should do another update since the last post was ten days ago. Been quiet mainly tending to my own problems which I try my best not to say too much. I will just say enough so that those who are close to me are in the know.

I had gone to UPM Medical Center and told Dr. Sufi about HPUPM could not help me with the letter to IJN. He rang up some of his acquaitances to see if HTJ has a cardiologist that could help but could not get anyone and then he suggested either Hospital Serdang or PPUM; since the former will have a longer queue, I decided on the latter. Managed to get an appointment at PPUM on 24th December and lets see what happens from there.

Was worried about my youngest in UiTM who is staying out of campus.He send us his first own cooked meal.

He was supposed to be able to go home last two weeks due to the haze (when the university decided to have online classes but he decided not to in order to keep his friend company at the rented house. Here is a photo of them eating dinner in Merlimau.

I have also asked my other half to help out with his pocket money before I top it up this week when my pension pay is in. Soon again, we will have to travel to Terengganu for my other half to attend a course (necessary for her to renew her practicing license). Just two days ago, our TV in the living room was not working and I told my other half, let us not do anything about it (it has already had problems before). In any case, I rarely watch TV nowadays but the TV was often used to play Qur'anic verses and prayers as my two sons tend to come home late in the evening (we had unwanted incidents before).

Some time last week, I decided to have a haircut since I wanted some change.

I have also decided to look through at all the books that I want to let go (mostly religious books at the moment). Started making notes on the Muslim World Book Review journals that I had advertised to let go (nobody seems interested). I discovered lively debate in the journal and saw people like Maryam Jameelah, Abdul Rahman I. Doi and S. Parvez Manzoor giving reviews on books. The last one, I recognize as a columnist in the now-discontinued Afkar Inquiry magazine. I used to follow this author as one that I had the greatest difficulty in understanding (need to look up the meaning of sophisticated English words). None of them writes on physics and mathematics but at the time, I sort of had a religious awakening.

I will probably stop putting books that I wanted to let go on social media and will do it elsewhere if I have the energy. I am working on another writing project now.

Next Please

In the last post, I spoke about my writing project. It was really an article I have promised to write for the online-magazine Majalah Sains. The magazine publishes articles in Malay, written largely by local scientists. In the past, the magazine has published a few of my articles but they come from posts of my Malay blog. The current article is the first written exclusively for the magazine and it is semi-technical. When I started writing it, I wasn't sure if it is ok if I include equations in it and had asked the editor on the matter. Once I had the green light, I continued with the writing for otherwise, it will just keep brewing in my head. They uploaded it last Friday and I was anxious to see the reception by its readers. Before it was even uploaded, I had gone through the article a few times and each time, I thought I could have done better. Knowing that there will never be a perfect piece, I just let it go. The semi-technical nature is really by design since I thought the article should serve more beyond a layman introduction to the subject. Indeed, we need more of this; as most popular articles tend to touch merely the (top) surface and almost always made the subject too easy (giving a false picture of the efforts that go into developing the subject matter).

After the article was made available online, I gave another shot of explaining the subject better and be less technical and posted the writing on my blog. I think it had better exposure that the semi-technicalarticle. The feel-good mood sets in thereafter. But as usual, once the writing is done, the feeling that one always have is that the things one write had a sense of triviality, several houra after. Indeed, I consider myself as an average person/scientist/writer, with many others are much more talented than me. This is also the reason that I stalled the idea of writing an autobiography. I come from an average family and whatever experience I have is simply a result of good accidental opportunities that I have in my average life. In comparison to others, I was never involved in things like the (different) olympiads or well-known competitions. The only competition I was in (as a group member, not individual based), is a state-level science competition during my high school. The project we took up was on detecting polluted water (so, it is chemistry-based) and if I'm not mistaken, we did not win anything.

I'm happy to have taken up the writing project mentioned above; it help me feel I am still useful. Will there be another one? I guess in a way, this depends if the magazine is happy with the one that has been written. In any case, I will just continue to write regardless (whether for publication or simply my blogs), much to satisfy my curiosity and my sanity needs.

Family matters: My third son has changed job since our trip to Kuching. He now works for Touch n Go office in Bangsar South. So far he has been travelling from home to work. It was actually tiring for him, partly due to his many late evening (online) meetings. So yesterday, we went to scout for a possible place of stay for him to rent, closer to his place of work. It is in Vista Angkasa apartments - from the outside, it seems a bit rundown but it will do if everything clicks.

Small Steps Forward

 Yesterday, I have managed to complete a writing project and in some way, I consider it as an 'achievement' of some sort for me to take small steps in believing myself again. Ever since my retirement and not taking up part-time jobs, I have always been questioning myself with may periods of feeling self-worthlessness. In any case, some people say that it is after retirement that one gets to do what one really wants to do. To some, it may be going on holidays (not rich enough), going for pilgrimage (only managed to do umrah, not yet haj). For me, it seems I just want to make the most out of my thinking life while I still can (I take note of the moments of when I get to be forgetful).

Before my retirement, I told myself that I wanted to return to quantum field theory where problems are aplenty. Instead I found myself to relearn statistical mechanics. Among the theoretical subjects that I have taught back in UPM, this was the least comfortable. It was when I started using DiCastro & Raimondi, "Statistical Mechanics and Applications in Condensed Matter", thinking that it might help the students who are largely from the materials science major. It is certainly not the friendliest book to start on Statistical Mechanics. However I found one topic that was rarely discussed anywhere else in statistical mechanics text book, which is the Boltzmann equation (not the formula for entropy). Whenever I read Boltzmann's molecular chaos hypothesis, I wonder what would be its mathematical form look like and it seems Boltzmann's equation gave what it needs.

From there, I veered into picking up more Statistical Mechanics book that I have. I first took up Yourgrau, van der Merwe and Raw, "Treatise on Irreversible and Statistical Thermophysics". 

However after a while, I found myself taking up this book by Denbigh & Denbigh, "Entropy in Relation to Incomplete Knowledge" again. This is much due to my reading on Chris Fuchs correspondences (see here)

The book deals with objectivity vs subjectivity, a topic that I got interested from reading Fuchs. I thought it would be a main part of the writing project that I mentioned at the beginning of the post but unfortunately it didn't. In the beginning, I wanted to read this book from cover to cover and thought that I could finish in a month. Three months passed and then only I finished the book. This is because I was making notes as I read it and often these notes are being written twice (the first is a draft, the second is the tidied written notes for me to keep). Towards the end (the last chapter), I've given up on the notes. To a certain extent, I was really disappointed with myself.

The writing project actually began quite late (slightly less than a month ago) with most of the time was brewing ideas in my head. I was also reading other papers along the way (without taking notes unfortunately and had to rely on my memory reading them). Having that project out of the way, it's time for me to start a new one. One of the things that I wanted to do is to go through the details of this paper "On the Cocycle Structure of the Boltzmann Distribution" and I hope to blog about it. Associated to this, I would like to go through the work of Caratheodory and Souriau's book "Structure of Dynamical Systems". Let's see how it goes.

Neverending Story ... of Problems

Last two days, our next neighbour contacted us, telling us about that some of their things in their store were damaged due to dampness and fungus growing in the store. They asked us to check our own store which is next to their store, True enough, our store had the same problem.

The suspicion is that there is an underground pipe from our side that is leaking. Why from our side? Well, the last few months we had our water bill increased from around RM20+ to RM30 to over RM50. Trying to be a good neighbour (we know that they are upset with us), we immediately decided to call a plumber to bypass the underground pipe from the main source to an external piping. So yesterday, the plumber came and did the piping bypass. It took them a whole day to do this and as a consequence, we did almost nothing yesterday. The whole external piping costs us RM1800+ which my other half helped pay. So forget beauty (with hidden wiring and piping), consider practicality instead.

Reflecting on the whole situation with previous problem of internal wiring  (see here) and now the problem of internal piping, it seems that problems come in batches. In this case, there is a natural explanation for this batchy behaviour; we did our renovations arounfd 5 years ago and nothing is build to last forever and perhaps with things deteriorating over time, these two problems come around at the same time. But we did not expect these to come that soon; the thought of our previous contractor might have used substandard materials comes to mind. That is why we prefer to call somebody else.

So today, we clear out things from the store and some of my books were damaged. They were put there ecause we do not have enough space in our book shelves and some of these books I have read and others were on the not-so-high-priority list. Thus, I decided wither to sell them or give them away; the latter is easy for me to do since in Mydin, they have some containers for the purpose of book donations. One immediate decision is to give away these journals that I have subscribed from the Islamic Foundation, name The Muslim World Book Review and their supplementary Index of Islamic Literature. I guess I was ambitious then when I subscribed them but with Part III study being so intense and one is busy with PhD research, these books were left untouched. 

I've put the 'ad' on FB, in case if anyone is interested (so far none). The issues that are with me are as follows:

• Vol. 8 No. 4 (1988)
• Vol. 9 No. 1 (1988)
• Vol. 9 No. 2 (1989)
• Vol. 9 No. 3 (1989)
• Vol. 9 No. 4 (1989)
• Vol. 10 No. 1 (1989)
• Vol. 10 No. 2 (1990)
• Vol. 10 No. 3 (1990)
• Vol. 11 No. 1 (1990)

So, if anyone from Malaysia is interested, just let me know.

Another expense for today is our Malibu car was sent for service as this is the only available day before my other half use it for work next week. The servicing plus a battery cost us RM700+. In th afternoon too, our youngest son told my other half that his money is running out as he had to buy books. With all these, I have to apologize that I will not be able to help others at all.

The Certain Future

Yesterday was the passing of Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali (12 July 1926 - 28 September 2026), wife of he former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir. Inna lillahi wainna ilaihi raji'un. Allahummamaghfirlaha warhamha wa'fuanha wa'afiha wa' fu'anha. Condolences to Tun Dr. Mahathir and family.

As a plain commoner, I do not have the good opportunity to know her personally apart from knowing her from afar as the wife of Tun Dr. Mahathir. She was accorded an honorable state funeral and laid to rest at the National Cemetery in Putrajaya. Having not personally know her, I headed over to her wikipedia page and it has been conveniently updated.

Each time there is a funeral, it serves to remind us of our definite future, our own ending. In the case of Allayarhamah Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah, there is the soothing sight of people putting their political differences to pay respect at the funeral. Many commoners like me have become tired of the constant political bickering. Saw that there are still disrespectful comments from our own local breed of fasadists but we should ignore them.

Speaking about negative feelings, I have been disappointed with myself for not being able to complete some tasks before September ends. I need to find ways to renew myself appropriately and soldier on.

Youngest At Kampung Seri Mendapat

Yesterday, we went to send our youngesr back to UiTM Jasin and brought along the newly repaired green Chevrolet Aveo driven by our eldest. The car still has a good pick up since we were trailing behind the car. We arrived at the house our son rented in Kampung Seri Mendapat just around 10 am.We were quite early and met a Sarawakian student (Adit, I think) who had arrived earlier.

We had a look inside; I think this has been left vacant some time and needed some cleaning. Our son told us that his room is the fourth one and we need to get a few things for him particularly a table for his computer. The room is not big and we need to make sure what size the table should be.

Later, we met En. Rizuan, the person who helped the house owner (En. Suffian) to look after the house and coordinate with the students renting there. Apparently, he has alao his house rented to students nearby and thus there is a community of students there. The door to our son's room is pretty stucked after locking and we need to buy WD40 to ease up opening the door.

We went to Merlimau town for lunch and get a few things for our son. Unfortunately, we cannot find the 'right' table for our son. Thus, we decided to go to Mydin in Jasin and bought a table with foldable legs.

Back at the house, helped unpack and cleaned what is appropriate. Prayed Zuhr there. Finally, we decided to take some photos outside the house.

We left the place (unfortunately my son is still alone there) around 3pm. There was a bit of congestion on the highway back to Seremban. Apparently it is due to the installation of 'lamp poles' with what looks like solar panels on top. I first noticed this when we first arrived at Jasin toll; the poles are put st a nearby distance apart, which I find was quite odd.

Reched home around 4pm and had received a message from our son telling us that his room mate has arrived. Here ia a photo of Idris (room-mate) with Izzuddin.

I hope that he will quickly get comfortable with his new environment and focus well on his studies.

Sandalous Varia

Update: The cost of car repair and service amounts to RM991. See photo below.

This is my pair of s(c)andals. Took them off while having a rest after our monthly shopping for our needs (usually last only for a little more than two weeks) this morning and also bought things for my youngest son's needs when he is back at his university (rented a house shared with his friends). We are supposed to send him off to the house this Saturday.

We have sent our old Chevrolet Aveo for service and the estimated cost is around RM850 and possibly more if there are further parts to be replaced. Definitely my limited budget will burst. My other half has kindly offered help to pay the semester registration. Staying ourtside of campus will also certainly require more pocket money especially with a car.

My other half once made the remark that it is a pity that during his studies, I am already retired and have less money to spend on him. We tried to be fair to all our sons but circumstances differ from one son to the next. Thus, there will be variations on how we can help and take care of them. My prayer in early morning today that our sons will be matured enough to understand our situation on this matter. It is important to me to ensure my children will not go hungry though we are aware they sometime skip meals. Sometimes I regret that I did not apply for professorship so that I get a higher pay and hence a bigger pension. At the time, there were several things going on and I sort of gave up on that opportunity (perhaps some would consider me not worthy enough?).

Currently there is rivalry between two factions in (s)electing the 'next' king (called Yamtuan Besar) of Negeri Sembilan, between the sitting Yamtuan and a challenging contender, made complex by Adat Perpatih. Social media is rife with competing narratives on who should be king; some can be very rude and unruly. I told my family to stay out of this dispute, though for our sons who are born in Negeri Sembilan should take better note of the situation. While I'm not a N9er myself, there was this 'name' that cropped up during the current controversy namely Pagaruyung, which I recognised from my younger days. I never had a proper knowledge on this but what I was told while I was very young, that our great, great grandfather had a royal lineage related to Pagaruyung. At that age, I had no understanding of the matter and of course, I did not bother to find out further. My elder brothers and sister whom had the opportunity to live with our grandfather in Tapah might know more on this. In some way, I wish I had know more of my roots coming from the Rawa tribe. I tried to teach my kids Rawa language which is similar to how the N9ers speak but there was little interest.

On scientific front, I'm going through second revision of my former PhD student's paper which had detailed comments by the referees. It sort of disrupted my work on a (possible) semitechnical popular article. Perhaps I will blog on this at another convenient time.

Just a few minutes ago, the serviced and repaired car is ready. Here is my youngest (the driver of the car) with our dinner tonight.

Six Series

Yesterday was the 60th birthday of my other half. So she has joined me in the community of senior citizens, beginning her journey within the six series. Me, I'm almost half way through the six series and I should remind myself that time is running out.

To celebrate, my eldest son bought her a chocolate cake.

In the evening our third son gave us a dinner treat at the new eatery Boorak Chill & Kitchen in Centrio, Seremban 2. The location was previously Polperro Steakhouse but it has now closed. Business is hard these days; another one that has closed is Nasken Coffee. Shop rental is expensive here and business owner has to make sure there are enough customers  just to break even. Here is a picture of us at Boorak:

Now back to the worries mentioned in my last post. On the data on external hard disk, the freeware can only recover small amount of data, so that I had to buy the licence for an advanced version of the software. On top of this, I had to renew MathType license last week. So both of these cost around a thousand ringgit.

For my youngest son, he has found a house to rent just nearby the campus (see video below). Despite being near the campus, it is not of walking distance. Thus, there is still a need for a car. We hope to get our Chevrolet Aveo to be serviiced (another financial worry).

This coming weekend, we will be sending him back to UiTM. Will miss him.

Troubled on Malaysia Day

My youngest son will be going back to UiTM Jasin before the end of this month. So I will need to worry about the upcoming semester fees. As if this worry is not enough, we just heard yesterday that he will not get a place in college for his accommodation and he will be required to find a house outside the campus to stay. Staying outside woud mean higher expenses plus the trouble of getting into camous for his classes. An idea is for him to bring the old Chevrolet Aveo car but the car has problems and I m certainly uncomfortable with the idea. Food relatively is more expensive outside but this is a lesser worry.

Yesterday too, our Malibu car sent out a warning signal probably in need of a service. Just this morning, one of my external hard disk (which was my internal hard disk before and where I stored my work before) went unresponsive after my computer restarted. Right now, I'm trying to retrieve the data on that disk (unsure how well it works with the freeware downloaded) and there are around two and half hours to go till it 'finishes'. Still thinking where I should store the data if it works.

What a way to start Malaysia Day today! Would now have to consider seriously of side income generation. Here we are, having our breakfast together, courtesy of our eldest son (not working this public holiday and not in pic).

Auta-Gate

"When the going gets tough, the tough gets going", they say. Or probably the second half should just say, "act or pretend to be tougher". 

In my last post,  I mention about my other half was down with fever and bad cough. The fever has subsided, but there is still residual cough and had to buy more medication for the phlegm. Medicine are getting more expensive these days and one feels the financial pinch.

To add more financial worries, our auto-gate stopped working. This has happened before and at the time we only replace the battery for the autogate motor. Apparently, the problem did not stop there. The reason that the battery died is because the electrical wiring for the auto-gate was faulty, causing a blackout for the front portion of our home (living room and porch). This time, we call our usual handy-man, Lan, to help diagnose that wiring problem. The unfortunate thing is the wiring are all concealed. To check where the problem is would mean to break the floor tiles and the wall, a thing that I would rather not do. From what Lan was saying, the auto-gate was a quick job done improperly and for concealed wiring, it should be done with 'aro' cables. The auta-gate affair (Note: 'auta' means untruthfulness).

My first workaround is to let the gates be opened at least temporarily. But then we had a visitor (a stray dog) that did not just sntered our property but caused some mess.

Thereafter, we figured out to open the gate manually and for nowuse whatever temporary workarounds to help our gate to remain closed (particularly at night).

Hopefully we can find a better and more permanent solution to this.

Yours Insignificantly

Ever since we got back from Kuching, most of us were just relieved that the travel was over and we are now facing the (financial) consequences. Not only that, my other half was down with fever and bad cough. She was already having a bad cough before the travel as she was seeing several patients who had influenza (and even covid) the week before. The tiring travel and then the bad haze must have worsened her physical condition. So yesterday we went to the clinic to get an RTK kit to test for influenza and alhamdulillah it was negative, which means the current ill spell is from bacterial infections.

So today, we decided to get some stronger antibiotics from the clinic where she did part time as well as dropping off the Sarawak layer cake that she bought for her staff there.

On the way to the clinic, she received a message from her friend (used to be her business partner when she works in Port Dickson) that her younger sister has passed away. We decided to travel all the way to UPM mosque where the funeral prayers will be conducted.

Being there, it brought back memories of my long service in the university. All seemed come to nought. Even when I did my frequent scientific reading and note-taking, I have doubted myself on what use of it. I contemplated on making side income from my writings to help me pay bills and support the family but I doubt whether people will be interested in them. Over the years, I've run my blogs to collect small donations and have run adsense, but I could not even get over the minimum for getting a payment. Scrapped the idea. Some colleagues asked me to write a biography but I don't feel that I'm that important or significant. 

Being in the mosque, maybe I should just focus on my next life. Even then, I have not done enough and fear all the deeds that I do will be thrown to my face. As we have left the house vacant during our Sarawak trip, I felt that I could not protect the family from spritual disturbances, despite my recitation of Surah Al-Baqarah every now and then. All that I have now is just hope and prayers.

I took over the wheel on our journey home to find myself rather tired and having leg cramps thereafter. What hope is there left with this old age.

In Kuching Day 3 and Independence Day

Our third day started off with breakfast at the hotel. Thereafter, we decided to take a group photo at the tourist spot where they had 'Kuchng' statues.

This was the second time we were there but now with Izhar (our third son) who was absent before due to a wedding task. I have also decided not to join for their tour next since my back pain was quite severe. Without me they will be 'freer' to have more fun.

They went to Jong's Crocodile Farm and Zoo next. Here are the pics and video.

Next, they bought some Kek Lapis Sarawak from Mamasu. My other half once told me that these cakes take hours to make due to the delicate layering of the cake. Thereafter, they went back to the hotel since the haze condition is worsening and also Ihsan had to return the rented car later in the afternoon. During the evening we had fast food for dinner and they (me asleep) watched a movie in our room.

Yesterday is our Independence Day; we had our breakfast and finished up packing of our things to check out. Before checking out, I took a photo with the hotel staf who has been kind to us.

We took two taxis to the airport. After checking in our luggage, we decided to have early lunch at Skydine by Sumiran. This is simply because I saw that they served mee jawa and I remembered how I had mee jawa frequently in Bintulu Campus. The others had mee kolok and they told me that it tasted better than the ones they had before. Of course, food at the airport are somewhat pricey but it was worth it. 

We went to Gate 9 for our flight and I snapped a pic to show how bad the haze is. I posted it on the social media with the background music of Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.

I certainly things will get better for the Sarawakians because it is indeed unhealthy and hazardous.

On arrival, we took two airport cabs (pricey and was told by my other half about a swindle attempt). For me, I just want to get home quickly and rest, which is what we did. So we celebrate Independence Day rather uneventfully. To see how Independence Day is celebrated (without all the politics that you see in the social media and just pure enjoyment by normal people), you may want to watch this.

Waking up today to our financial reality and we are about to collect our cats. So, it will be ontok-ontok phase again.