Have been busy lately with preparing for invited talks and preparing exams. Much to the point of having sleep disorders and exhaustion. But often I asked to what results? Only to receive flak and displeasure? I guess I should take the lesson of life in not expecting anything from others and do things to my own self-satisfaction. Even in this, one gets criticisms for being exclusive or 'syok sendiri' (full of oneself). So no matter what one does, there will always be somebody who torments you with their words. I guess some might say, I'm a grumpy old man. Thus my preference of self-isolation, away from most people, interacting only minimally until I retire.
I certainly have a lot in my mind and when I face competing priorities, two factors come to my mind: (i) the number of people affected by the task; (ii) the impact or importance of the task itself. For instance, recently when I had a presentation I need to complete for Comdata conference and I had classes to prepare, I had to forego the latter as the talk involves my commitment to an external community or persons, while our classes can be postponed to a different time. I did finish the presentation (but not completely to my satisfaction) and gave the talk. My talk was probably out of place with most of the other talks are on computational physics (mainly atomic and nuclear physics). I had to rush my talk towards the end and went overtime for an extra five minutes to come to some conclusion (the talk was only half-an-hour). Hence, I felt I could do better.
Well, I had another chance of going through the talk at our departmental seminar (see picture for an unofficial version of the poster).
While slightly better prepared, I still think I could have done better (see the recorded video link below and tell me what you think). Perhaps my slight disappointment was with the turnout which is roughly about twenty and many of these are our usual regular group meeting attendees and some people I know from outside (including Dr. Yap from UTM who was there showing support). That means not many from the department came. I guess many are not interested in the talk but my bigger fear is whether people are actually boycotting (which I really wanted to know the reason why, so that I can be better but not bitter). Please do know whatever stories people tell about me, there is always another side of the story. It does seem sometimes that people from outside are probably more appreciative on the theoretical work that we do but this is probably just apparently so since the ones that have shown appreciation are those who are working in fields closer to ours. In any case, this grumpy old man will be retiring soon and I sincerely wish my younger theoretical physics colleagues will not have to face what I have gone through.
Below is the link to the video of my talk at the departmental seminar (most probably my last talk at the department). Have tried to make the talk mostly qualitative to make it accessible.
On a brighter side, recently Dr. Bahari Idrus from UKM came to visit me and brought along copies of the book main authored by out jointly supervised PhD student Dr. Siti Munirah (congrats to her). Here are some pics.
I still have another upcoming invited talk at the Topical Meeting of Photonics 2021. My agreement to give the talk is mainly having to respond positively to invitation of friends. I am still clueless about what to talk on, despite that there is a track on quantum information. Will be nice to make connections to the main topic of conference and to something that we do in the group. Hopefully some ideas will come soon in this weekend.
Will continue with my isolation mode and I am in the nomadic period due to our house renovations. Here is a short video clip made by my other half on my sons' rooms (not completed yet particularly the washroom). Note: the video is taken during Maghrib time and hence there was the call to prayer through the phone.
Here is our cat officiating the room with a balcony.
Here is a picture of the budget hotel where we are staying temporarily.
So, it is almost a week since Kwek gave his talk at the department. The attendance is around 30 (including my own students and acquaintances from other universities). I was hoping for more, but I have 'given up' on convincing our locals - they can come or not come as they wish. In any case, I have put up the talk on YouTube for people to watch. Below is the video:
Have invited Kwek several times to UPM, since I was with ITMA and then later INSPEM. Have pushed for certain quantum initiatives in UPM but so far with very little success. We have our own small theory group but I was hoping it will get bigger while I am still with UPM. Now, I will leave this 'task' to my younger colleagues.
In our informal discussions before and after the talk, Kwek has offered to set up some joint journal club. I told him, I personally would love that, but I mentioned that his group is much more advanced than us and was worried it may not work out well. In the past, I would probably get scolded for my frank admission and may be accused of not putting up a 'good image'. For me, pride or image is not the goal but it is (genuine) scientific progress. In fact, if one looks at the many well-known international researchers that I have invited over, the intent is essentially to learn. If there is any collaboration that come out of these, it will be a bonus. Whatever collaborations that arise should be organic and are of mutual interest, though this will put the burden on us to buck up and be equal in terms of scientific skills and ideas. Most of the time, however, we will be more of the recipient end. As such, I am always grateful to Kwek, Twareque Ali and others who are more than willing to help us and sympathetic with our efforts and goals. For now, it will have to be the younger generation to continue whatever we have done.
With me about to retire, I will probably have to reinvent myself to take up new things or join other places if they are interested. I have given what I can to the university, even if these are considered small to others. My plea is to let me retire in peace without too much trouble. In particular, translating literally a Malay saying, not to put sand in my rice bowl. I have tried to be a good worker in whatever organization I'm in. Having been in some managerial position before, I know how unpleasant things can be, with all the office politics. For those who don't quite like me, I will be leaving soon and for now, let us not cross path too much.
On personal matters, my house is still being renovated and I'm shuttling between a budget hotel and home. Things have been difficult for us but I hope this is for our better future. We have also helped buy a new car for my son since the car he was using, is getting too old for frequent travels to KLIA where he is working. He works six days a week and usually at odd hours and so he need a reliable piece of transport.
My youngest has also gotten his driving license recently; he is all grown up now. After his Covid-disrupted SPM, he is still waiting to be admitted to a university or college. There is still a long way ahead and with my retirement soon, I hope I can still support his studies until he gets a comfortable enough job. Last Monday, we had a small birthday celebration for my eldest.
He deserved the celebration as he helped look after the house during renovation together with my youngest) and endured all the noisy and dusty environment (not really healthy but we have the budget hotel rooms if he wants to get away for a while).
On another discomforting matter, my brother-in-law has been readmitted to the hospital due to long covid symptoms. So far, he is coping and I hope he stays strong.
Finally, may Allah help me in building a better future.
Another week has gone by. We have started teaching last week with me handling three hours (1+2) worth of lectures on Monday. For the first hour, there seems to be hiccups in the Faculty's wi-fi and I was disconnected twice from the class without me knowing, until the student(s) notify me through the phone. So for the next two-hour lecture, I decided to use my Yes mobile broadband to make sure the class went uninterrupted. On Wednesday, tried back with the Faculty's wi-fi and it was working fine. The same for Thursday. So I hope it will continue that way. This coming Monday, we were just told on late Friday that the campus will have the staff in full force. I hope the wi-fi will still be good; will experiment with the first lecture at 10 a.m. I am actually fine with going to campus (I think most of us are tired anyway staying at home); as I have said I enjoy working but with the right environment. As I discussed with my colleague, we are passionate with our work but things can change if the conditions get too rigid and I hope the administration should understand this human nature.
In a way, we need to come to terms with living with the virus in the community by proceeding with our lives with caution. In the past, we heard people lost their loved ones to Covid-19. Today, we still have new deaths but the numbers are smaller, perhaps due to the vaccination. Recently, just received the shocking news that one of my house-mates in Adelaide, Khir Abd Jalil, had succumbed to Covid-19 late evening on Thursday last week. I received the news rather late i.e. after reading the message of Dato' Suhaizan (another house mate during matriculation days) early Friday morning. I tend to go to bed early these days due to my tired physical conditions and so was not browsing the social media that much. Was unaware of what's happening. After getting the message, checked his FB page and saw his colleague mentioning the sad news. May Allah forgive him and bless him with jannah. Here is a pic of me with him (without glasses).
Just after this news, we have also received news that our brother-in-law was Covid-19 positive despite him being fully vaccinated, but so far he is ok. More recently, a school-mate was admitted as a Stage-5 patient;May Allah help him. Thus, we still need to be careful despite the opening of many economic sectors and state borders.
Renovations update: Currently they have started working on the kitchen and room downstairs, while the room upstairs are still in the plastering stages and not completed yet. Thus, most of our things had to be moved to our living room, making things a little bit unbearable. This is today's pics:
See the video below taken by my other half (like a horror movie with a soundtrack).
I have booked an extra hotel room (see below) for my sons to stay (on and off), to get away from the renovation when they want.
Been staying in the hotel and have not been to my home since the weekend. Missed my cats. Here's Fifi who normally sleeps with me.
She has to be sent to the clinic yesterday since she was not well.
I guess the other cats are also stressful with the current conditions of the house. Here's Lofa playing with the noise in the background.
Like I have mentioned earlier, I tend not to read too much social media these days. Occasionally, there are some posts that are of interest, and some perhaps I have strong opinions on. Particularly those related to theoretical physics. After having gone through much, all I can say is that we have yet to build a strong theoretical physics tradition locally and as such it needs help rather than obstacles. What we need is not more constraints but more opportunities. Some posts triggered bad memories for which I will get turned off easily. We can talk so much about what we or other people want but unfortunately we do very little to help ease the work we are doing. Just this morning, I mention to my younger colleague that I have done what I can during my administrative years. I now prefer a quiet life, away from most things, and will not do much unless necessary. Currently, I was given the tasks of handling seminars at the department and some of these are posted in YouTube channel. For this week, I'm quite excited to have Kwek again, speaking now at the department. Hope my colleagues here will see how far has Singapore gone into quantum technologies. Recently an old boss messaged me about conversations held elsewhere on the wish for Malaysia to be in the quantum race. I told him we had a few initiatives trying to get quantum technologies but none has been successful. I guess, we can only dream at this stage. Anyway here is the poster of Kwek's talk to be held this Friday. I took leave so that I can use the hotel's wifi to conduct the seminar uninterrupted.
Our third son, Izhar has just went back to his college in IIUM yesterday, being a final year student. It was my other half and my eldest son who sent him off. Had to refrain from travelling too much as I am suffering from a bad episode of back pain. What has really triggered it, I'm not particularly sure but it was after my travel to work early last week. I was supposed to be in the office all five days a week but by Wednesday, it seems my back took a beating. Early Thursday morning, I was on pain killers and hence took emergency leave to rest for the next two days. The pain subsided but my right leg seems to be quite weak and my other half suggested to me take another MRI test. Let's see how this week goes.
Renovations update: Yesterday, the contractor stopped work to follow our request to please our neighbours and so far we have not received any further complains (but this may be due to the present work of only wiring and plastering). Here is a picture taken last Saturday.
Besides the kids' room, we will be retiling our own bedroom and removing the attic to be replaced by cabinets for my collection of papers and books. I was forced to throw some of the old papers I had (recycling them rather) and saving their electronic versions instead. A lot of sieving to be done. The work for the room downstairs (to be enlarged) and the kitchen (to reduce in size) has yet to start. So long way to go and our lives are pretty much disrupted at this point.
Today, I will start lecturing again and I'm teaching both Statistical Mechanics and Mathematical Methods in Physics for this semester. Last week, the new students came for their registration and we had online meeting with them (see pic below). I saw that I was not assigned as academic advisor to any of the new students, perhaps due to my retirement around the corner. We also had our new physics curriculum, which will have a new course on quantum information. Kudos to the curriculum committee.
Ok, back to work of preparing lectures (and I should also get some sleep).
I have been called with many labels. With some students and colleagues abroad, some call me professor and in the earlier days, I would explain to them I'm just an associate professor. Later, I've grown tired of explaining myself and let them be uncorrected. They could always look me up in official websites what my actual position is. For that matter, I'm fine being just called a lecturer or 'Dr.', like in this conference where I was invited to give a talk. In fact, later when I retire, I will no longer have the Associate Professorship; I will simply be a 'Dr.' by virtue of the PhD degree I have. Sometimes people have asked me, why I have not applied for professorship. I don't really know, I just feel I need to do more first. Perhaps I'll wait for some significant original scientific idea that I long for and that will never come. In any case, the current criteria for professorship is very demanding and to a certain extent I question myself of what I used to know as an academic professor.
Many of the labels that I got, however, are often derogatory, some I take seriously and would try to improve myself but some I find meaningless and merely attempts of discredit. Some would take me as a fool for not 'fighting' back but at times I felt it would be more foolish to do so. There is so much pretense today, putting up 'shows' (maybe I'm wrong), to the extent that I just want to do something different, Yesterday I discussed about my previous resignation from an administrative post with a colleague. I know some sniggered at this 'foolish' action but I took into account of my health conditions as well as the labels that had been thrown at me, indicating that I'm not wanted there. In retrospective, I recalled the hadith:
Abdur Rahman ibn Samurah reported: The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said to me, “O Abdur Rahman, do not ask for authority. If it is given to you at your request, you will be held fully responsible for it. If it is given to you without your request, you will be helped by Allah in it.”
Source: Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 6727, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 1652
Thus, I'm glad that I did it. For some exposition on this matter, I suggest to listen to Sheikh Omar Suleiman at https://yaqeeninstitute.org/omar-suleiman/hadith-4-to-seek-or-not-to-seek-leadership-40-hadiths-on-social-justice. The position was really not my concern. I still believe in the struggle of putting theoretical physics (and more very technical mathematical science at large) at UPM and in the country as a whole. This belief can be realised in many different ways and thus would like to take a different path. Hopefully, it will count as good deeds in the hereafter.
In the previous post, I spoke of granting me peace until my retirement. I already had unpleasant memories before and would not want to add more as it would make me bitter. This will not help me get salvation in the hereafter, which is ultimately what I want. May Allah ease the path for me.
Things have gone a little sour lately with things going haywire and I'm in a dark mood (be warned). Have moved into a budget hotel (Rivero Boutique Hotel) in Garden Homes to escape myself from the current renovations that we are doing to our house. The main reason I'm staying in the hotel is to ensure I can do online classes (or for that matter meetings) without noises from the renovation. Last week, for instance, I need to do my presentation at the QuEST group meeting, so I want this to be uninterrupted. I was a bit unsure about what I am going to speak on but I had the idea of just explaining the research program we are conducting or at least what I hoped to do (applying symplectic topology to quantum information). Scoured through numerous papers and that left me very little time to prepare the slides. I was disappointed with my own presentation, really but I did stumbled into something that I did not know before - the symmetric product of CP^1 can give you CP^n. The only problem here is the details and interpretation. Because of ill preparations, I did not record the talk (which I usually do) but I was at the hotel then during the presentation.
There were a couple of other things that upset me last week particularly on work matters. However, what really brought my mood down was the complain made by a particular fussy neighbour on our renovations yesterday. Yes, the noise can be disturbing but we were hoping that they would understand. How can there be renovations without any noise; I will certainly wait for the day when they can invent a silent drill and a clever technique of wall knock-downs without noise. We have tried to be good neighbours but sometimes this is not reciprocated. Certainly in this instance, we can't do much to please the neighbour. We need to proceed with the renovations to make sure that each of our child has a room for their own before I vanish from this earth. We have instructed the workers to stop work during the weekend (though this would delay further the work). Worse come to worst, I'll be happy to give my hotel room to that neighbour; I have already rented the room for a month. Here are some pics of the renovations.
Here is a pic of the hotel room I'm renting. It's not big but cosy and convenient enough. Next to the hotel is a 24-hour convenient KK store, which is really helpful. The neighbour can stay there, if they want.
This last option seems plausible now, given that I am required to be in office for the whole five days a week and hence there is little reason I need the hotel room (apart from getting some moments away from the renovations). I only knew about the matter only around 9.05am this morning and I had to rush to work after having breakfast with my other half (she took leave to oversee the problems raised yesterday). Going to work everyday is no problem for me; I'm not lazy. My preference to work from home earlier was that I felt I can use the time for travel (one and a half hour to and fro) for better purposes. Also, I have a back condition that led to a weakening right leg and long drives tend to put a lot of stress on my back (yes, I know, the late Stephen Hawking went to work despite his conditions; this was a remark once made to me). As I said really, I have no problem with going to work and I have been in management before to know the problems of absenteeism. But I think the reasoning used to select people for the 5-day week is rather unwise; we were told that those who had little publications will need to come to office all five days. Felt like a pariah these days. Never mind, its their judgment call and I won't pose any problem to their decision. Once, during the management at the institute, I had to deal with absenteeism. My intent then was to help educate the person and indirectly showed to him that he was doing less tasks than the rest of his peers. Instead of taking this positively, he brought his problems to the registrar of the university and we had a little meeting on this. Never mind, I no longer want to associate myself with the person and the rest who seems to be hostile to me. I want to be left in peace until I retire December next year. Those in power, please grant me at least this.
It's already October and I have yet plenty of things to do. Currently, I'm in a pretty much messed up state but essentially I'm making plans for the future of my absence. My home is currently undergoing some renovations to enlarge rooms for my children for them to stay comfortably in the future. I have sold off my house in Garden Homes and use the money for renovations and paying off some debts. Hopefully there will still be enough for some future savings.
Due to the renovations, our home is in a state of mess and essentially it will be noisy with all the drillings and what-nots. My apologies to our neighbours for all the inconveniences. My apologies to my students at these times as I juggle through some inconvenient times. I'm putting down here some pics to remember things by.
Have also considered arrangements with a budget hotel to move out when necessary. It is an expensive affair but it is for my family while I am still able to do it physically and financially. Hoepfully the future will be kinder to us.
I was also reminded by my niece that on this date, 24 years ago (October 2, 1997), my second eldest brother, Zainal Abidin left us rather suddenly (suspected of a heart attack). This is followed by my third eldest brother, Ahmad Tajuddin, on May 16 this year. My Allah grant them forgiveness and His Grace in the hereafter.
Here is a photo of my second eldest brother with my niece.
This is a picture of my third eldest brother at our last family gathering together.
We shall follow suit, certainly. This is the group photo.
Today, I have just updated my technical blog, Ketchup Spills. Hopefully I can do this more consistently, though I must say, I have to read a lot for each post. It is hoped that these posts will help others to learn mathematical physics as well.
It has been a while since I have blogged. Initially I wanted to see some changes first and get a few things out of the way before blogging. I don't think I can do so anytime soon and hence this post. Something also prompted me to do this post. I have been shying away from the public eye a bit and only do social media posts sparingly. No, I'm not sulking but I wanted to do things that I really want and that could have impacted my life better. I just want to be clear that it is not in my interest to take vengeful or sulking positions but I do want to be free from being constantly reminded of whatever past I had. As usual, I am already making plans of what I intend to do for my future. In some way, it also meant going through some difficult period to see some real changes and the age factor is a contributing factor.
Sometime ago I posted somewhere that reading is really like a travelling adventure, peering into the minds of others. As one travels, one occasionally stops, observing and taking notes of what is around. Thus reading to me is an involved thing. Perhaps this is why I tend to be slower in reading things but much more relevant is now I tend to tire easily given my age and physical ailments. Excuses aside, what have I been doing thus far? Well, I had a PhD thesis for me to examine and as I've said, I do look up carefully references (and beyond) to see the lines of thought culminating to the study and I compare this to what I have already known. Alhamdulillah, I have finished the task with the student passing her viva on the 14th September (congratulations!).
Currently, I'm reading my own student's draft of PhD thesis. Like always, I do tend to be critical wherever possible and to my student's horror, will always be slow. Either that or I simply gloss over. Certainly the latter is not preferable. Again, I do look up references and for one particular sentence and paragraph, I took up an excursion of reading up references for the Higgs phase in superconductivity (as it was mentioned in the thesis), not just on the surface but figuring what is precisely the group that was spontaneously broken in the case of superconductor. It also led me to read up something on colour superconductivity. All in all, it took me three to four days dwelling on that single paragraph. This might not be in the favour of the student but it certainly allowed me to do careful editing. I'm still not done with this yet but I guess I better speed up for the student's sake.
Besides this, I have my own reading to do. This upcoming semester, I will be teaching Statistical Mechanics and Mathematical Methods in Physics again. For the former, I have decided to take the easier reference book of Bowley and Sanchez called "Introductory Statistical Mechanics" instead of exploring new books. This was the easiest book I could find. A review of the book can be seen here; it seems to recommend the dual usage of Kittel and Kroemer with the reviewed book. So, I think I will have to dig up this book from my collection. Besides reading for teaching materials, I have revisited the following three books, which I had quite early in my collection for various intents:
I've read the first one more than the other two, because I wanted to understand better the functional analytic part of quantum theory (often neglected). Rereading it, stirred up nostalgic moments and re-realised how good the book is. Here is a fun drawing by Ikki Matsumoto in the foreword of the book.
Today is my other half's 55th birthday. The kids bought her an ice-cream cake from Baskin-Robbins.
Alhamdulillah, we have grown old together and am looking forward to my retirement soon (another year to go). May Allah grant us blessings in the life to come.
Today is Malaysia's independence day. My thoughts on independence is that true independence can be achieved by ridding oneself of temporary worldly desires (knowing how impossible this is, one settles for a sufficient amount of interdependence). As one gets older, there is very little pleasure that one gets from the world, knowing that one will leave it soon. My concern has gravitated to what else good deeds that I can do while I still breathe. I have to make peace with all the imperfections that I have while hoping to improve myself from day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. I hope that everyone else can also live with whatever imperfections that I have, too.
As part of my attempts to improve, I try to be conscious of the good things that I do. Made small good changes wherever I can and hopefully it will stay that way. Found apps made by Greentech Apps Foundation useful. I have recommended it to my other half and will also recommend to everyone else too. I have installed their apps for Al-Qur'an, Hadith and Hisnul Muslim on my phone.
Having deepened my expertise in theoretical physics, I guess this would be a major area that I could put my good deeds in. It will not benefit the society at large but I know that it is needed here as the theoretical physics community in the country is a minority. As such, I see what I do as fardhu kifayah. Whatever difficulties that we go through in pursuing this field, I hope it can be counted as good deeds. One should also be cautioned with matters that could spoil the good deed nature of its acts. This is perhaps the most difficult because it involves the ego with all its failings. It is quite easy to associate one's ego with the capability of overcoming the technical difficulties that are there in theoretical physics and that its pursuit is that of fulfilling the ego. On this, I am reminding myself and othersof the slippery slopes or boundaries between praiseworthy knowledge and blameworthy knowledge as expounded by al-Ghazali. May we be guided always.
Have not updated the blog for so long, as my mind was occupied with many matters.
I believe most of those who knew me, will know that I am essentially an introvert, being quiet most of the time. Whenever there are loud voices or there are many voicing out their ideas or opinions in a meeting or discussion, I tend to be quiet, observing and only interjecting when necessary. But being quiet, can sometimes be misinterpreted as sometimes being dumb, lazy and at other times being dismissive. Those who do, may want to read the following article on introverts. The best thing is to ask the person involved; I, myself would normally answer what is on my mind.
In most WhatsApp groups, I do tend to be quiet, apart from my own family group. In some cases, one finds the usual small talks, ceremonial or congratulatory messages. In my own frank opinion, some of these could be avoided (particularly those using videos, pictures or stickers) as they could be easy considered as wasted (polluting?) bits - of course, I don't voice out these (as I said I will often just be quiet) since small talks are often considered as good social skills and can have their social advantages. More importantly, one should not be annoying or be the one who cause any form of displeasures.
A funny thing happened recently when I posted a query in my school alumni group. I stumbled onto a webinar advertisement that had an old school-mate in the picture, namely Prof. Roszaini Haniffa. I recalled having seen her profile before some years ago, being a professor in Islamic finance in UK. However I've lost the link and I wasn't sure it was really her. So when I saw the advertisement, I immediately asked my school-mates whether it was really her and they confirmed it. Perhaps due to my rare postings in the WhatsApp group, some might felt that I may be choosing 'professor friends' over others. But it is nothing like that at all; I, myself, am not a professor and some consider I am just an average academic that has little future. However I do look up to friends who are more successful than I am, particularly in academic circles, and she was one of them. I also wanted to confirm whether she was in the same class as I was, but then I did not proceed for fear of more misunderstanding. Later, I was told that the late Prof. Mashitah (from UMP - see here) wanted to get Prof. Roszaini back to Malaysia but unfortunately she didn't get that opportunity. Here is a picture shared by Akmar showing the late Prof. Mashitah (left) together with Prof. Roszaini (right).
From this alumni WhatsApp group, I also knew that another friend, Marzuki Ismail, is now a professor in Universiti Malaysia Terengganu. I am happy for him. He was in UPM before as a radiation officer, assisting our own Prof. Yusof in the Physics Department. We rarely talk to each other at the time apart from usual corridor conversations and I think he left sometime during when I joined the institutes.
Thus, we had to dry the book with the aid of a table fan near the tv. Our cat (not sure which), being curious, decided to investigate the damp cover of the book and the result is shown below. Double tragedy.
Almost stayed up the whole night just to open carefully the wet pages one by one so that they don't stick together. It worked but the affected pages are all wrinkled.
Been listening to a lot of online lectures lately on both religion and science. Got hooked with the online live discussions of Stephen Wolfram with different guests. They are pretty intense and can go on for hours. Here is a useful one about managing life.
Last week, we received a shocking news of the passing of a friend and colleague at INSPEM, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mohd Bakri Adam. He was the former Head of Laboratory of Statistics and Computing Services before the institute restructures internally and the laboratory becomes a service division. He was one of the approachable heads of laboratory that I can discuss with. His passing was really sudden that it caught most of us off-guard. I was in my bed, woken up by messages in the mobile phone at around 1 a.m. The news that I got was that he collapsed while he was doing some gardening work. He will be missed and many of his former students went online, leaving saddening condolatory remarks.
The week before last also has seen flurry of activities surrounding International Fundamental Science Congress 2021 (IFSC 2021) organized by the Faculty. When this congress was first proposed years ago, I was rather sceptical because congress events that I knew at international level have thousands of participants and is usually organized by big associations or organizations related to the subject matter. For example, the International Congress of Mathematicians is held every four years by the International Mathematical Union, rotated between different countries. Once, INSPEM members (unfortunately I did not go) was invited to go to the one in Seoul in 2014. The director then had the grand idea of bringing the congress to Malaysia but it did not materialise and I am also of the opinion that our country has yet to contribute to mathematics significantly to be considered as a host. Locally, I had the opportunity of being part of the Advanced Technology Congress which is organized by ITMA every two years in the past. The congress itself consists of several conferences (usually associated to the themes of the laboratories in ITMA). Theoretical Studies Laboratory (TSL) in ITMA, for instance, was the organizer of Conference of Advances in Theoretical Sciences (CATS). Even this, I felt it was ambitious and our conference was the smallest due to our smaller number in researchers. Back to IFSC, the congress event itself was actually held this week and it ended yesterday. It ran better than I had expected particularly it had international partners (from Thailand and Indonesia) and as such it is moving in the right direction for the concept of a congress. Having said that, one must be cautious in not letting the number of conference or congress events proliferate too much particularly when the supporting community revolves around the same collection of people. These events are not meant for meeting the KPI of a particular department/laboratory or faculty/institute, making these units visible, but they are meant to serve a community of researchers/practitioners. Thus having too many will simply exhaust the community and spread the scientific contributions too thin. Anyway, IFSC had a good crowd and it went rather well. When the main committee asked me to find one invited speaker in theoretical physics, I invited Jesni. I was at his talk yesterday but I had to leave early because I was chairing another parallel session right after his talk. Below are some pics.
Yesterday, was also our 28th anniversary, though both of us were working. After work, we decided to celebrate a little. We bought an ice cream cake from the local Bakers Cottage outlet. Here is a pic for our small celebration, together with our kids.
In local politics, we had a 'change' in government last week when some withdrew the support for the 8th Prime Minister Tan Sri Dato' Mahiaddin Yassin. The King had stepped in and called for a PM nomination from both sides of political divide. It was then decided that Dato' Sri Ismail Yaacob has the bigger support and he was sworn in as the ninth prime minister last Saturday. Today he announced his 'new' cabinet line-up, which is pretty much the same as the previous one with some permutations. Let's hope this 'new' government will work better than the 'last one'. Meanwhile our Covid-19 new infection number is still raging above 20K modulo fluctuations during the weekend (when there were less testings). I actually am interested in the number of new deaths (indicating some failure of the health system). Yesterday was in fact the highest number of new infections and the highest number of new deaths (see pic below).
I still think that we need a change of strategy. While the increased rate of vaccination is very much desired, there is still a need to contain the spread of the disease for at least the mere need of ensuring the health system will not collapse. All the containment will ensure that unwanted mutations will be less probable. Let us pray that it will not get any worse.
Today is the new Hijri year 1443. I would like to discuss a topic that has troubled me for many years, namely research tradition and publications.
The week before last, I attended two talks on publishing. I normally treat these talks as purely motivational rather than content-driven as most of the information is available somewhere on the web (in fact there are guide books available) if one cares to find them. As such the talks are probably suited for those who are at the beginning of academic career. My worry is actually more on the values that these talks may carry (do note whatever I will say below equally applies to my own self). Good publications come from good science and not the other way round. Many times in the past, I have mentioned about Goodhart's law, which states that "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". This is because that once we are given a numerical target (considered as measure of quality), people tend to game the system to achieve such numbers without direct reference to the intended quality itself. Thus, their meanings get lost. For measure of scientific productivity, the number of publications has been always the easy target irrespective of what their contents are and hence manipulable. Even the number of citations (and hence h-index) can be manipulated. To correct this, one could eliminate self-citations (see Schreiber) or complement it with s-index which is an index of self-citations (see Kacem, Flatt & Meyer) but I would go further. Eliminate as well citations from our co-authors as well and that will lead to a much reliable number whose citations come from other authors (not within our influence). Removing self-citations can in fact reduce the index from 13 to 46% (see Schreiber). The only problem with this is that the index calculation is actually time-consuming.
Now, no accusations of manipulations or specific claims are being made here but merely raising the complications that can arise. It is also not in my nature (or anyone reasonable) to go around and finding faults of others nor do I want to make excuses for my own shortcomings. Naturally, every academic has his or her own yearning and ideals for achieving scientific progress but without delving into details, gross injustice can occur and may be dentrimental to scientific progress itself. One can't deny that administrators/managers tend to take the easy option of making blanket KPIs across different disciplines and a researcher in a discipline with slower paper production rate will be at a disadvantage. During a Q&A session with the speaker, I raised the concern for local theoretical physics researchers who are not able to be on par with researchers in some fields who can produce around twenty papers a year (about two papers a month). Personally, I think this is mind boggling; research ideas often take time to develop, mature and worked out completely (and some might not even get published). Having too many publications a year may also raise suspicions of not adhering to the Vancouver protocol of authorship. Retractionwatch has also highlighted such problems of prolific researchers (see also here). Being prolific is not the concern here but it is the variance across different fields and subfields (see e.g. here). One reaction I get during the Q&A is that someone knew a theorist who used experimentalist data of others to produce 70 papers (unsure whether this is for a year or spanned over several years). I know not of the name mentioned in this response and certainly the said author is not within the subfield I am interested in. What then would be a sensible rate of publication for theoretical physics (again this depends on the subfields)? I could not find a study that actually shows a number for theoretical physics but if one identifies theoretical physics as part of mathematics, one could use this statement made by American Mathematical Society: average of two or fewer publications per year. In any case, I dislike the idea of making scientific publications as a kind of sports.
So how does one proceed given it is highly unlikely that there will be any change of policy in the near future? The speaker replied is to do more networking and do (genuine) collaborative work, which is sensible. The explosive growth of knowledge in every field requires researchers to work on harder scientific problems as time goes by and given the limited capacity of an individual researcher, it requires researchers to work together in working out solutions. This is reflected in the study made by Grossmann for mathematical research: an increase of collaborating authors from 28% in 1940s to 75% in 1990s. My own simplistic approach within our group into this expansion problem is to have reading groups and have members/students read different articles and have discussions. The bigger the group, the better (the reason why our group take up more students over the years). Whatever forthcoming collaborations there would be, will be natural if everyone keeps some overlapping interests. There was this suggestion that we should look into collaborating with experimentalists, probably look into some form of modeling work. If this can really be done, it would be good but it is often harder to realise. My own early experience after coming back from my PhD was indeed to consider theoretical condensed matter research (that led me to work on punctured surfaces). I essentially bought these two books of Fradkin and Goldenfeld in Seoul to get me going (see pic below) for which I started a reading group to study these books, but after a few attempts, people lost interest.
Perhaps the two books chosen above was not suited for experimentalists. I made another attempt to work with experimentalists when I first joined ITMA. I bought one of my most expensive books ever, namely that of Dagotto on CMR (after the two-volume elephant book), to work on theories of colossal magnetoresistance. I even had a student to work on related aspects of Jahn-Teller effect with some diagonalization problems. He later gave up, and that too, failed. Thereafter, I focus what I know best - mainly theories of more mathematical nature. Perhaps the other instance of collaboration with experimentalists, was to set up a quantum information lab in ITMA and then in the Physics Department more recently. The former got shelved due to the institute restructuring. The latter was also not successful as the intended funds (two different sources) was not forthcoming. So now, whatever idea of collaborating with the experimentalists will be on the shoulders of my junior colleagues, as I will be retiring. Even if I decided to continue work elsewhere after retirement, I will stick to my own theoretical interest.
There was another remark made by the speaker that I responded in the Q&A. This is about why did we join the university and I replied indeed why should we join the university rather coyly. I think we have our own reasons (besides 'makan gaji' - the lowest level of motivation) and ambitions when we joined the university. I for one, wanted to make a tradition of theoretical physics in UPM. There were others before me, of course, who did theoretical physics at UPM. Our first head of department, Dr. Osman Ese was a theoretical condensed matter physicist but he passed away due to stroke a few years after. One can see his publication here. Prof. Karen Badri made the remark that if he was alive, he would probably made the path for theoretical physics easier. The other was Dr. Zainul Abidin Hassan who works on the Hubbard model (see here). He opted for early retirement to focus on his business. Prof. Mohd Yusof Sulaiman (nuclear physics experimentalist and solar physics) also dabbled with theoretical nuclear physics with Prof. M.A.K. Lodhi when he was around. Right after me, was Dr. Chan Kar Tim, formerly working on cusp forms and now on density functional theory and complex networks, and also Dr. Nurisya Mohd Shah on mathematical physics. Next in line will be Umair Abdul Halim who is working on geometric quantum mechanics. I do hope they will carry on with strengthening the theoretical physics tradition in UPM. In fact one should establish more theoretical work in these pandemic times as people are finding hard to get back to their labs. Perhaps rather than the theorists looking over into the work of experimentalists as suggested in the Q&A, maybe the experimentalists should consider the theories in their respective fields to work on. Perhaps then, the collaboration will be easier.
