July Trip to India

After my failure to get to India for APCWQIS 2018 (as invited speaker and international committee member - now the website no longer bears my name), I was a bit nervous for the planned July trip to India. Santo Banerjee (research fellow) and me have been planning to collaborate with universities in India. This time Santo helped me and told me what to do with respect to getting the visa. Finally, after renewing my passport, made an online visa application and picked up my passport just a few days after.

The other matter that was a bit complicated is the fact at the time, the institute was in a phase of restructuring itself and plenty of discussions were ongoing among my younger colleagues (and still is). The planned symposium required some quick decisions from us and the institute is in no shape to say yes or no. Due to the urgency, we (as founding members of MICEMS and agreed upon by Prof. Rondoni) decided to use MICEMS as a vehicle to move on and hence the following symposium "International Symposium on Recent Trends in Mathematical Sciences" (see pic of brochure below). But let me fast forward to what happened at the end of our trip. I've found out that VIT is already about to have an MoU with UPM (led by Faculty of Engineering, I think) and the institute (after restructuring issue is settled) will be able to collaborate with VIT under the proposed MoU. For everyone's info, VIT has already MoUs signed with UM and UTM (if I heard correctly). Even UPNM is about to have an MoU with VIT, most probably brokered by Dr. Nur Aisyah (former student of the institute) with the aid of Santo. I applaud her for such initiatives and showed genuine interest in contributing to her university and more importantly in developing knowledge and the research there. We need young, dynamic (and sometimes selfless) people to move. During the event, I already saw them discussing with Sayan Mukherjee (a collaborator of Santo).

Let me get back to the India trip. As the trip was around the corner, I worked harder to learn fundamentals of dynamical systems and form my personal perspective, some of which are already connected with my earlier work on quantum theory on hyperbolic surfaces (punctured surfaces, I used to call them). Perhaps due to exhaustion, my body's defense was probably not at its best and I caught flu and coughing just a few days before the trip. I quickly took a bunch of medicine so that it will not grow worse. I wasn't really in my best form for the trip (and worse, I did not quite finish my slides before the trip). I felt slightly better when I was about to fly to India. My family had breakfast at Papparich in the airport.

In the flight, I actually chose an aisle seat knowing that I was not well and may need to go to the washroom frequently. Unfortunately, an elderly man took my seat and he offered his seat in the middle for exchange. Out of respect for an elder person, I did so. The flight took around four hours and I was feeling very tired. At Chennai airport, saw that the immigration over there is quite strict; there was a landing card that I had to fill in requiring the contact number of the host in India but I could not remember it (the detail was in my laptop, if it was necessary since I had to use that information for the visa application before). I was queried about the matter and I told the immigration officer that I have forgotten but told him it should be the contact number of the Mathematics Department in Thiruvalluvar University. Fortunately, he was satisfied with the answer. After the immigration check and getting my baggage, I was happy to see Dr. Sivaraj again, waiting in person for me at the arrival exit of the Chennai airport. There was a car waiting for us to go to VIT Guest House about 120km away. The journey took around two hours because it was mostly on a normal road (quite narrow) apart from one stretch of a two-lane highway. At the guest house, I met Santo and Syed Hasibul Hassan Chowdhury (ex post-doc and student of Prof. Twareque Ali) and we had a late lunch. In the late evening, I completed my presentation slides.

The next day was the conference. Before the conference starts, there was some tree-planting function with their Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Anand A. Samuel. We (Santo and me) were considered guests of honour (first time doing this). We were told that we should in the (near) future return to VIT and visit the growing tree that will now bear our names. Interesting idea.

After the tree-planting function, there is an inauguration ceremony for the symposium that had speeches by the Dean of School of Advanced Sciences (Prof. Mary Sarai), the Head of Department of Mathematics (Prof. B. Rushi Kumar), myself, Santo (highly respected by members of VIT) and the Vice-Chancellor. In my short speech, I mention that besides that mathematics being difficult, to get mathematical scientists to collaborate is also difficult. Most mathematicians tend to brood alone and think of their research problems independently, very unlike other scientists who may have the need to share equipments or corroborating data (say from different parts of the sky). Thus the symposium addresses this difficulty by allowing mathematical scientists to interact and know about the research progress of others. I wasn't sure that my speech augurs well with others as they tend to say good things about mathematical research and the need to make it accessible to public. In any case, it is my honest thoughts on the matter.

After the speeches, there was donning of sari scarves for the speakers and committee members. Unfortunately there was no photos for us (me and Santo) for this. Here are pics of Sanjay Mukherjee and Nur Aisyaf Abd Fataf.

The other part of the ceremony is taking turns lighting up the lantern.

Here is part of the audience and the group photo:

Right after the inauguration they gave a framed picture of me giving the speech. That was quick!

Next was the break; we had ours in a room and the participants in open space. Immediately after the break, was my talk and it had to be cut short since the inauguration and break took up a longer time than expected. There were no questions asked from my talk but I was approached by Sanjay after the talk that he would like to have my slides, which I was happy to do so. I told him, most of the materials are pretty standard apart from my personal perspective of the field and our own work on the thrice-punctured hyperbolic sphere, which was included in the talk. I appreciated the interest and kind gesture by him.

There was another talk after mine and then we break for lunch. After lunch, I had to excuse myself to rest, feeling really unwell. Immediately after my talk, I was already coughing badly and had to excuse myself a few times so as not to disturb the talk. Even during the inauguration ceremony, I had to take many cough drops to ensure I will not cough during the ceremony (sitting at the front with the Vice-Chancellor). I am pretty sure that my blood sugar spiked that day. I also skipped the social visit to the Golden Temple (was said to be wholly coated with real gold). Sivaraj in fact, came to my room to make sure if I want to skip the social trip and I said I needed as my fever went high. He must have been disappointed. Later after the social trip, he came again to make sure if I was alright and even offered to call an ambulance to bring me to their medical centre. I declined and just wanted to rest. Due to the fever, I had to skip the whole event the next day despite that I wanted to listen to some of the talks. I was frustrated then, thinking that I might have disappoint the organizers.

I made sure I get enough rest that day and took my meds. This is because the next day was the Thiruvalluvar University event. For the talk, I updated the slides of a talk that I have given in Istanbul with more points. I also thought that the audience will be more mathematically inclined and decided for a different type of talk.

However during our travel to the university, I was told that there will be more students (including undergraduate) than staff and was asked to tone down the technicalities. I was told that the university is named after a famous poet and philosopher Thiruvalluvar. The students of the university tend to be from nearby regional districts. The event is a one-day event and was conducted in a hall (resembling a school hall that was separated from other buildings). There was again another inauguration ceremony with their vice-chancellor Prof. Thamarai Selvi Soma Sundaram giving a (good) speech. After the inauguration, I gave my talk which again had to shorten it due to some technical glitch in the beginning. Later we were given a good authentic Indian briyani lunch served on banana leaves, provided by Prof. R. Vijayaragavan (who also drove us to the university and back).

The event continued after lunch. Due to being tired (and full too) and the warm conditions, I had intermittent dozing off moments. There was a closing session and Syed gave a speech on behalf of us. It was later after the closing, that Dr. M. Chitra and one PhD student approached me saying that they appreciated my talk. Felt good about it.

The next day was mostly on administrative matters when Sivaraj brought us to their International Office and we met with Prof. Dr. Ghalib, Assistant Director of VIT International Relations. It is from him that I knew about VIT MoU's with Malaysian universities including forthcoming one with UPM. They are very forward-lookinf and dynamic. I mention about taff and student exchange to which both our institutions will be interested in.

Later in the afternoon, Sivaraj helped us to get a room in the library so that me and Syed can discuss some research matters.

Early at 5.30 am (local time) the next day, Sivaraj personally came to see us off to go to Chennai airport for our flights home (together with Syed and Prof. M.K. Hassan). That was really thoughtful of him. Overall, I was happy with the trip (apart from my fever episodes) and am grateful for their generous local hospitality. I hope the next time they come visit us, our institute can reciprocate in a similar manner.

As I arrived home later in the evening, my other half and two sons had already left for Sungai Petani, Kedah for a wedding. Left behind are my youngest two sons and we had a pizza dinner.

Live Hard

It has been more than a month since I last posted in this blog. There were too many uncertainties and things beyond our control that one can't simply spend too much time worrying about such matters. Things just need to move. Another aspect is that there are tendencies that academic matters be marred by egoistic drives. Part of my silence is to disentangle such tendencies from my own actions. I am no longer concern about administrative leadership but will shift my attention to scientific leadership which is more critically needed. My own personal attitude has always been that I will contribute wherever I can and whenever or wherever I'm wanted. I've started to focus on matters that go beyond the institute and act on matters that I can have influence on. Think globally and act locally, as some would say. It is also a paradigm that one takes whenever one faces (mathematical) problems: either one generalises the problem (to gain wider perspective) or one looks for simpler problems (to solve problems incrementally) or both. In any case, I will keep giving ideas to help the institute to move on and will also proceed to ensure sustainable progress for theoretical physics in UPM.

One of the things I believe in, is not to be too comfortable with easy things. Wherever manageable, live life the hard way. It makes one appreciates better how hard other people work. In a way, such stance is also why I keep pursuing theoretical physics despite many instances of discouraging efforts by others. Living the hard way allows one to experience better what others have gone through. One of the 'silly' things (some say) that I did during my PhD years was to copy out-of-print books by hand (see the pic below). The purpose is three-fold: first, to have a personal copy of the book and second, to learn the contents while writing them out. It is well-known that you learn better by writing things down, a skill that seems to be eroded away due to habit of online-reading. Third, is to simply experience what the ancient scribes have done in the old days where they need to copy manuscripts to transmit the knowledge around (before printing press is available).

Recently, I was invited to give a talk at a symposium in VIT and Thiruvalluvar University in India. I had the freedom to choose any topic I want though was told to keep it to a level understandable by students. I could have taken an already prepared talk to make things easy for me. Instead I choose to talk on a topic that I'm still learning namely dynamical systems (for the talk at VIT; the talk at Thiruvalluvar was different). The prompt to study dynamical systems also arises from two challenges: one being personal, deemed by others for not being knowledgeable about the subject and another is to make (international) collaboration works. The pressure to have a good respectable talk on this new topic, both for beginners and experts, helped me learn the subject more speedily by focusing on core ideas. Part of the talk has been posted on my technical blog Ketchup Spills. I will continue to post on this blog on what I have learned or anything useful for my group. The blog posts are not essential for the academia (extra burden) and are not in any way counted for personal assessment. However I wish to continue to do so for my own betterment. I have resurrected the blog just before going to India (should have been concentrating then for my India presentation). Writing technical blogs are far more difficult than writing non-technical ones like this. There is a tremendous amount of fact-checking and much more demanding is to have a personal perspective of the blog materials. Thus, one expects a slower rate of posting to Ketchup Spills.

Also recently, we were made aware of suggestions of new levels of KPIs for the institute. Researchers of the institute are expected to perform better than those in the Faculties. Added to this, is now that the administrators (yes, people like me) of the institute are expected to perform better than the institute's members. Blanket KPIs irrespective of fields often do more harm than good and I have written many times, arguing for the case of mathematical sciences with statements by international experts and associations. I do not wish to repeat them and make me sound like a broken record. The higher KPI for the administrators of the institute is another thing that I felt is not very wise. While I'm game for higher (reasonable) targets (live hard, as I said earlier), I certainly do not want these KPIs diminish my chances of promotion or affect my bread-and-butter matters. As such, the perception will be that of threats and the natural reaction to threats are fight-or-flight. Certainly true leaders would not want such reactions from the staff but instead they should motivate us to work better. But perhaps they have thought these matters through and through and there is no better option? Personally for me, this would be a push-away factor from taking up administrative posts. So we will see how it goes.

Shawal 1440

So today is the 7th of Shawal, 1440. Muslims in Malaysia celebrated 'Eid-ul Fithri on Wednesday last week. This year round, we celebrated 'Eid initially at home, and is one of those rare years. More often than not, we tend to do this in my other half's hometown. The celebration at home is pretty simple; beginning with Eid prayers at Masjid Hussain in Seremban 2. This is followed by the mutual forgive-seeking salam between our family members and also photography sessions for memories. Below are the photos.

After having breakfast together, we went to Segamat to my sister-in-law's place and were there until the next day. For our travel back to Seremban, we were caught in a massive jam and it took us five  hours to reach home. It was only the next day that I get to see my sister and niece in KL, brother and sister-in-law in Kepong. At my eldest brother's house, I decided to take photos, in part to capture and admire his good book collection. I took one book out since I did not notice it before and they immediately gave it to me. See pics below.

I wish we had taken more at the other homes but somehow refrained out of respect. So one of the things I've learned this Shawal is that despite we think we had problems in life, others are facing much bigger tests and challenges. As my sister Zaizah mentioned in a message, greater people will be tested more severely. May Allah help us to face our challenges and live out our life in the best way we possibly could.

Reappointment

Yesterday was supposed to be my last day as Deputy Director of INSPEM according to the previous appointment. I had emptied the filing cabinets, bringing home papers and what's left are just things that are visible outside and those on and in my desk. However by noon, got the reappointment letter as Deputy Director and hence the other letter before it, applies i.e. will take up the duties of the Director until a new Director is appointed after the restructuring. As much as I wanted to leave, I have to put aside my personal wishes and problems and take up the role of a caretaker until the restructuring is settled. This is for the benefit of INSPEM. Earlier, I had wanted to focus more on science particularly graduating my students. This may now need adjustment. Given that I have only about three years of services left, hope to give a new push for theoretical physics with new plans. In the past, I had to put my theoretical physics interest to the background, so as not to give the impression I'm pursuing self-interest above the institute. In addition, I was at the service of previous directors and some theoretical physics proposals did get shot down by others as we are in the minority. Now if it seems that I'm pursuing my interest more, I hope people will understand it in the context that I have not much time left to do this anymore. I do not expect anyone else to fight for theoretical physics for us; we have to do it ourselves.

With the reappointment, I hope all of us in INSPEM will still be able to work together and support each other. My own idea of the institute is that we are servicing the researchers as well as providing opportunities and creating a conducive environment for research in mathematical sciences. Despite some criticisms thrown at us, we are not here to defend the status quo but in fact we want to go beyond it and do new things. I believe if we are judged fairly, some of the things we do in the past (so-called INSPEM 1.0) are indeed so. For the so-called new phase of INSPEM 2.0, we are indeed required by the university to have niche areas though personally I would not be too strict on this. If we ever had acquired wisdom from the scientific past, we know that many progress in science are interrelated and some are unpredictable. Identifying niche area should not stifle creativity but instead promote it. I know that by pursuing certain niche areas, we will risk losing members and researchers but I suggest we take stock of those presently who wants to contribute to the institute and build from there.

Another personal view is that I see pursuing the Ministry's HiCoE direction is only a short term goal and thus my earlier comment of not being too strict about it. Despite the advantage of obtaining more financial support from being a HiCoE, there is a longer term goal of being internationally reputable. This is enshrined in our own institute's vision and also that of the university. Our past activities have done this to a certain extent and we should build on this in a much more serious manner. The idea is to forge more longer sustainable and reciprocating international research collaborations beyond individual collaboration. We had already MICEMS at our doorsteps (actually we had a few more before) and personally I would like to keep this active. Individually one can only do so much but as an organization, we should be doing better. Presently at a more individual level, I have already a few international (and national) invitations and in the process of building others. But I will leave in a few more years and thus if these international relations are not pursued at the organization level, they may just end when I leave.

I think I have said enough. let me just sum up with these: build traditions and this will outlast any change of leadership, our ambitions and ourselves.

Varia: Social Media and Nice Acronyms

Yesterday, it was my last lecture for Special Relativity class. I wasn't really satisfied how the class went and wished I have could prepare more but my mind was really elsewhere all this semester. Nevertheless, I was glad that I did something more than the last time I taught this course. Perhaps, if given a few more times teaching this course, I would come up with my own stable set of notes. After the class, we took some photos just for my keeping (see below).

I posted these on social media and seems to attract a lot of attention. I guess it was due to the young faces who are brave enough to take up such a technical subject.

My posts on the social media (FB) have been mainly on what I (or the group) do and what I think on some issues that I personally face. I would shy away from commenting unnecessarily particularly on controversial or viral issues. I don't intend to be a 'public intellectual' as some would like to be. However my postings are meant to be read by others especially close friends, students and staff. So is it attention seeking? Yes, in a restricted sense to a limited audience but I would be embarrassed to do anything more than that. I remembered a colleague of mine said to me that I should inform others of what I do so that people are informed but not for showing off. People are often repelled by the latter.  I have set up some private FB groups for students and staff if the postings are a bit sensitive or unsuitable for public display. I do open up public FB groups to announce some of our events and to show what we are interested in, say in Friends of QuEST.

QuEST is the acronym we made up for Quantum Explorations of Science and Technology. On FB, this is our private group and hence we set up Friends of QuEST for the public. It was originally named Qfizik, named after the website I hosted long ago between 1997 and 2015 before it went dead. One can go here to see some of the pages captured. Renaming it as QuEST is more eye-catching and perhaps symbolizes what we are trying to do. I was happy with this acronym but Quest has been used in other places (see here) like http://merlion-quests.neel.cnrs.fr/ (but we are earlier and theirs have an extra 's'). Before, QuEST itself we had EQuaLS, an acronym which I am pretty pleased with as well. The acronym is for Expository Quantum Lecture Series and as the name implies, it is meant for lecture events that we organized. Perhaps it also represents what we aspire to be, as equals to the many distinguished theorists out there. The event has unfortunately stopped due to lack of financial support and the loss of our mentor Prof. Syed Twareque Ali. In Goldin's memorial talk at Group 31 (available here), EQuaLS was mentioned. See also here for the obituary published in Journal of Geometry and Symmetry in Physics. So far, we never got the courage to do EQuaLS again and is very much a loss since our students and researchers had gained much from the presence of distinguished international speakers in EQuaLS.

Finally another acronym I'm pretty pleased to have made is MINDS for Mathematical Institute for Natural and Disruptive Sciences. It was one of the names suggested during our institute restructuring exercise but we never got to use it, but it would have been attractive for us. So far we are still retaining INSPEM. Perhaps MINDS can be realised elsewhere.

Putting up acronyms may sound trivial to some but to construct clever, memorable and meaningful ones are not easy. In some cases, the acronym may be undesirable e.g. PIG for Physics Interest Group. For the world of marketing, in fact, building up acronyms is indeed important - see "How to Build Acronyms That Spread Your Ideas Like Wildfire". In the end, what matters is what we actually do and the reputation that we build.

My Teacher, Szekeres

15 days to go. Today is Teacher's Day and I will post about teaching here. Trying as much to forget admin problems and worse, politics. I rather look elsewhere where the environment is more trust-building and genuine science development.

So the past week or so, been focusing on my course this semester which is on "Special Relativity and Classical Field Theory". This course has only been taught a few times; at best is three times but in recent period, only twice. It is an optional course and being theoretical, it is almost always not being offered since very seldom that students want to take the risk of taking the course. The course itself was designed years ago based on the courses that I took from Department of Mathematical Physics (now no longer exists) in University of Adelaide (see picture below) in 1983.

The courses was taught by Peter Szekeres, a disciple of relativist Felix Pirani. He is the son of a famous mathematician George Szekeres. Peter Szekeres is perhaps best known for his Szekeres solution for inhomogeneous cosmology.

On teaching the Special Relativity and Classical Field Theory course, I do not have a stable set of notes (like I do for Quantum Mechanics). Thus I experiment around with what should be taught but the core of the course is what I have learned from Szekeres himself. So I build some sketchy notes, updated with new materials from books, particularly from Faraoni's Special Relativty book. There are other books of course that I read because my habit when teaching is not to follow a single book but collect the best ideas from several books strung together with my own logic or understanding. Now some may criticise this approach and also for not getting the most current book. I tend to differ from many on this, while I understand the need for current progress, I value very much tradition. Particularly for the subject of special relativity (foundational), there are not many new developments to go through unless one goes into general relativity. By sticking to the core of Szekeres' notes, I, more or less, pay tribute to one of my teachers in Adelaide. I will do so until I have my own set of ideas for the special relativity course - I can see a few different paths now (not yet realised).

Szekeres also taught me General Relativity in the Honours year. But there is one valuable lesson that I got from Szekeres before finishing my study in Adelaide. I was already thinking of doing research and I was attracted to a fashionable topic at the time i.e. supersymmetry and supergravity (a natural extension from my Honours project on Grand Unified Theories). When I told him of this interest, he was telling me that my personality (timid) don't quite fit such a competitive field. I took this as a challenge and immediately started reading Wess & Bagger and Van Nieuwenhuizen. My interest in this continued for a while until I found Witten's "Topological Tools in 10-Dimensional Physics" which blew me away. Note I was one of the early subscribers to International Journal of Modern Physics A, until I could no longer afford them. My dream then was to establish such high-powered theoretical physics in Malaysia (and a dream still) and Szekeres' challenge contributed to this. Hence, my thanks on this Teacher's Day.

Physiotherapy in Ramadhan.

We are about to enter the second week of Ramadhan. Trying my best to keep my spirits up. My last post sounded emotional but as an ordinary human being, I can't simply shut out the emotions but certainly I will not let them overpower my thinking faculty. Whether anyone believes whatever problems I'm facing are real or not, it does not really matter anymore. Perhaps someday I'll reveal publicly what I know simply for us to take lessons from or maybe they will just get buried with me. For now, I need to make my conditions better.

Yesterday, my other half suggested for me to go for physiotherapy for my back problems. There was a physiotherapy clinic just opened several months earlier, nearby our home and we decided to try this out. My earlier hesitation has always been the cost but my conditions has worsened since coming back from Italy. So finally she made an appointment for me at 4.30pm yesterday.

Being the first time there, the clinic has no records of what my ailments are. I started explaining my back problems and mentioned about my scoliosis, lower lumbar degeneration and slight protusion of the discs and muscle spasms. As the therapist (Jovi) tried to investigate what my ailment really is, she explained about structural problems and muscle problems. On examining my back, she mentioned I had a slight C-scoliosis. It is only after some physio treatment and exercises, that my present ailment is mostly due to piriformis syndrome due to my excessive sitting and weak back muscles.

Later that night, experienced some pain probably due to the reaction of the treatment. Thus rested for the rest of the night. Thus, my earlier plan of doing more (overdue) work had to be postponed. Had purchased a package at the clinic and will continue the treatment at least for a few more sessions. During the exercise, Jovi jokingly said that I need 100 more sessions. I laughed even though I'm in pain.

First Few Days of Ramadhan 1440

In Malaysia, 1st Ramadhan of 1440 Hijri calendar, began on Sunday night on May 5th. As usual we look forward to the Tarawih prayers. This time round, I was not that fit healthwise as I hoped for. My other half and I simply prayed at home while my sons went to the mosque. It is normal that the first week or so, there will be larger congregation than usual. We continued to do so the next day. Perhaps thinking of all that had happened in the last several months or so, some sadness descended on me on the second night and broke into tears to the surprise of my other half. Felt that my life after this will be short and am not sure I have done anything useful.

The day thereafter, I just had to strengthen my will to go to work. Taught the Special Relativity class and helped prepare the students for their second test (held yesterday). Tried my best to stay positive but it seems to be a difficult week. There were matters happening that seems to test my patience and had me on the defensive. Can't explain the burden that I'm carrying. At present, I just wish that May 31st will come soon as I have grown very tired. I wanted a quieter and less stressful life.

I pray that the following few weeks of Ramadhan will be better for me and make me the better person I want to be.

The Weak Leader

Ramadhan is just around the corner and I'm not sure what I am feeling right now. It is already May and by end of the month, my term as Deputy Director will end. Part of me wants to carry on fighting and struggling but the aged part of me just felt tired after all the struggles. Felt that I have lost on the one hand and felt that I'm unwanted on another. Whatever it is, I will take this as a humility lesson that will help me to be better, wiser and stronger. Those who felt that they have 'won', I wish them all the best.

I am very much aware of all the criticisms leveled against me all these years: being volatile, being unprofessional, second-rate mathematician, weak leader, some of which can be dentrimental to my career. However, I will take all of these for me to learn though I may not necessarily agree with all these accusations. Most of the time, whatever role I'm taking, it is almost accidental. I did not campaign for them. As a Deputy, even when I hold different opinions with the director, I have always carried out the wishes of the leader of the institute as agreed in our meetings. During the double stint of me as acting director, it is always my belief to carry out the important traditions made by the previous directors. For instance, I have resisted the reduction of management meetings particularly during the transition period. Nevertheless, I have my own vision of what I wanted the institute to be. Most of the time I have to go for less due to practical constraints. If ever there is leadership in what I do, I tend to practice it differently. I consider research institute is where creativity thrives, always on the look out for something different but yet keeping the main traditions grounded. I do not consider rigidity in management gels well with the creative environment we would like to build, thus I may practice flexibility wherever possible. When it comes to 'managing' people, I believe in the institute as a learning organization whose members are mature and emphasise learning. Thus, I like to give trust to people to do what they think best but they must learn when the handled matter doesn't work out. Sometimes this is seen to be 'weak' by some. Note that I have 'scolded' staff before (not frequently though) but I quickly try to forget such incidents and cherish the trust being built and the teamwork developed. I may not agree with something and I would leave hints just for people to take up, think about it and understand. I try my best to lead by example wherever I can but as a human, I am limited and I'm not infallible.

I tried to understand the psyche of my staff wherever I can, so that I can give the best reaction to arising problems the way I know how. Certainly handling staff is difficult, and way more stressful than solving mathematical problems. This is why in management meeting, I joked about knowing the psychology profile of the staff and colleagues. In fact knowing human interactions is one of the identified important skills that the future worker should have. I even do evaluate my own personality. I have attended the Wisdom Leadership Workshop that the university had conducted for us in 2013. Most parts of the workshop, I enjoyed them because I was learning new things that I have not known before. I took the MBTI test and was classed as INTJ which means Introvert, iNtuitive,Thinking and Judging (I actually thought I was INTP with judging replaced by perceiving). The test was quite detailed but one can do an online test to see what type of personality that one has. Mine was given here.

So I guess that is weak leadership for you and I 'enjoyed' being the weak leader I am. Late this afternoon, my other half had told me, just leave after 31 May. Be the regular guy I was and need not take up any important roles in the future. My close colleagues are also telling me the same thing. But there is still one leadership role that I yearn for - scientific leadership. There is plenty more for me to do for theoretical physics in UPM and perhaps I will just focus on that.

Finally to the staff, keep learning and hope you will have a better leader to move forward.

Do We Deserve An Institute

*I've given this post a provocative title just to jolt our minds but please read on.

Ever since I'm back home from Turin, had developed a bad cough that disrupts my sleep for almost a week now. I have also decided not to go on with my early retirement idea and will work until my retirement age of 60. This is much due to financial commitments and putting food on the table for the family. If possible, I would like to work until I'm 70 since my thinking faculty is still reliable though my physique has gone weaker. On the problems of the institute, I try not to think about it too much and leave this to the younger heads of laboratory. I think they will handle it well with incoming support from the industries. The new institute that they hope to pursue is very much different from the INSPEM that we know and I hope they succeed. I knew Dr. Rezal had the industry support for a cryptology institute even before the current restructuring exercise; the former director (Rezal's father) Prof. Dato' Kamel had told me of the idea during the transition period of the incoming second INSPEM director. I told him at the time that such intention may make INSPEM weaker and pleaded then for it not to happen. Anyway, I will play a minimal role from now on but will still support this new initiative in the hope that there is room for quantum information science to grow within the context of information security. Another aspect I would like to see developed in this new institute is data science for which my interest in this is complex networks and topological data analysis. Thus, my younger theorist colleagues may want to consider to be part of this new institute with this possible venture of these areas. It is however their choice but I would say having industries supporting the institute would be the main attraction. Another thing I need to say theoretical physics at the department will still be in the minority and may not receive much attention for some time. In fact recently I found out a junior physics lecturer started to discourage my own student to pursue theoretical physics and I find this very disappointing.

Another thing that I find encouraging coming out from this restructuring exercise that there is a possible cultural transition from simply R&D to L&D especially for our research officers. You will probably heard of L&D from Mah Kam Lin's talk in our 'Topics in Data Science' event. L&D is life and death alluding to the survival of businesses (note: L&D can also mean learning & development and I don't mean this). Below is an interview with Mah Kam Lin where she mentioned L&D.



Prof. Kuru told me that she has a physics background. The reason this was highlighted is perhaps due to some perception that looks down on physicists (and I'm not trying to project a superior image of physicists).

With all the focus in management problems recently, I also got to be interested in how our scientific thinking can help us understand human problems better. This leads me to another person with philosophy training grounded in physics, namely Dave Snowden. I have been watching quite a few of his videos. Here is one that gets up close with his ideas:



Here is another which is more technical (but conceptual) that may has relevance to our situation today:



Going back to the institute; I hope given that INSPEM is more or less closing down, we should draw lessons from the whole affair. Do note that the institute is closing down not due to its performance but more on the redundancy perception (rightly or wrongly) with the Maths Department. And there is of course politics. I hope those who are pursuing the new institute will take heed of these lessons. INSPEM will certainly be missed. Deep in my heart, however, I hope that sometime in the (far) future, there will be another opportunity of setting up a research institute that encourages fundamental and foundational research, exploring sophisticated abstract technical ideas, charting new territories of mathematical sciences. And when given such opportunity, a good question for ourselves is "Do we deserve such an institute?"

A (Bad) Dream

After getting back from Turin, I experienced a severe bad back and cough. By the time I get to KLIA (no name change yet), I was feverish and I had to lie down at the airport to get some strength back. So most of the Sunday, I stayed in bed resting, trying to get my body back to normal; sleeping and waking up at odd hours.

At one stage, I woke myself up to a bad dream. I just came back from a long trip abroad. As I walked into the office, I found everything misplaced, including the stairs! Tried to make sense of the situation (in the dream), I managed myself to get into the office and saw many strangers there. I yelled "What is going on here?" Somehow I understood these strangers are simply moving agents trying to pack up things due to the closure of the institute. I felt terribly frustrated about this as no one consulted me on the matter. Then I woke up.

I hope this will not happen when I go to work this Tuesday. Today, I'm taking leave to help lessen my back pain. But I guess from the dream, the pain is much less from the pain of losing INSPEM (even if I'm not really wanted there). Yes, all the years spent there and ended up with nothing.