Frequenting JB and Funeral

Over the last week or so, we have went down to JB twice to visit my sister-in-law whose husband (Tn Hj. Shafie) was not well, who later passed away on Wednesday afternoon. Some weeks before that, we had gone to JB for his daughter's wedding.

It was near the end of the first week of July, we heard his health was deteriorating. He had experienced stroke before and had not quite recovered ever since. He fell down quite a few times before this but the last one on Friday, June 7th, had him being admitted into ICU. His blood pressure dropped quite low then and was on life support in ICU in KPJ hospital. We quickly booked the same hotel, Molek Garden Hotel and travelled to JB the next day (Saturday).

We arrived at KPJ hospital in JB sometime around 11 am and had to wait until 12 noon for the visiting hours. For the visit to ICU units, we can only come in pairs. Here we are waiting for our turns.

More of my in-laws came later in the afternoon.

By sometime in mid-afternoon, we were told that the condition of Hj. Shafie has improved, with no need for the life support system and that he will be transferred to the normal ward in the evening. In the evening, we went to the hospital again to see him in the normal ward. Following the news of improvement, most of us went back on the next day (Sunday). We spent a day in Segamat for some personal matters and returned to Seremban on Monday.

Later in the week, we were told that Hj. Shafie's health deteriorated and had lung infections. He was transferred back to the ICU ward. It was on Wednesday late afternoon, that we heard he had passed away. I quickly cancelled a meeting scheduled that evening and tried to book a hotel. Unfortunately, the usual hotel was fully booked and I had to look for another place. Without looking too much, I simply booked (and paid) Molek Regency, which I thought initially to be a hotel. After packing our stuff, we immediately took off to JB around 5pm since we were informed that the burial will take place after Isya'. I told both eldest son and my other half not to rush/speed on the highway. These days, I tend to feel more vulnerable when I'm on the road (perhaps being old). We stopped at Machap RnR for some rest and met my other in-laws there. We arrived at the Muslim cemetery at Mount Austin sometime after 9pm and the burial process was done but managed to be there for the do'a recital (prayers). The following is a pic (taken by another person)

After attending the funeral, we dropped by at the sister in law's place and thereafter went our for a meal with the other in-laws.

My other half decided to stay with my sister in law to comfort her, while we head off to Molek Regency which are really apartments. I communicated through WhatsApp with the owner of apartment (Mr. Sky) and asked my son in JB to pick up the key from the owner at the nearby Starbucks. Here are the views from the apartment (in the next morning).

The apartment has two rooms with the main room having its own bathroom/toilet attached. There is also a kitchen, which we did not use at all.

We stayed there for two nights with my other half joining us on the next night. There were shops/eateries nearby (including Starbucks) and thought that we could just cross over to the shops from the apartment. We were mistaken since the apartment has tight full security and we had to get out through the main gate to get to the shops.

The next day (Friday), we headed back to Seremban. After travelling much, my back ache seems worsening and so today I took Tramadol to help ease the pain (which also mean that I will be sleepy most of the day).

Reorganizing Complex Network Papers & A Zoo VIsit

Yesterday, I spent my time rearranging my collection of papers on complex networks and related topics. In my last post, I have already mentioned that the initial space for these papers are already filled up but I have still several papers on this topic lying around. So I decided to swap the space for high energy physics papers with that of complex networks. While doing this, I decided to arrange the complex network topics into some subtopics.

The largest pile seems to be on scientific collaboration network and related topics of citation network, scientometrics and papers from Research Policy journals. This is due to I had a student working on collaboration network before this while scientometrics and research policy papers was due to my involvement in management. I do think some of these can be useful in doing informed decision making but this is only done very cautiously. The pic below shows the collaboration network pile and the top paper sums up the subject.

The next largest pile of papers are the theoretical papers including mathematical papers of graph theory and statistics. This pile will go in front layer of the cabinet space since I am more interested in this.

Out of this collection, I separated out the papers of Tomasso Aste which had me interested in exploring complex networks. In actual fact, I initially wanted my students to explore this (but perhaps it was too difficult)

In fact, my first student on complex networks decided to work on stock correlation networks. Lumped together with this is corporate networks, finance & trading networks. These give the third largest pile. Other smaller piles are social & information networks, networks in condensed matter (which could easily merged in the theory papers), biological networks, geographical & transportation networks.

Fast forward to today, my family decided to make a trip to our national zoo. My other half has been wanting to see the pandas (after watching them on tik-tok). The parents to these pandas have been returned to China (see this news article). I did not go with them since I was not in a joyous mood. Here are some pics.

The time of their visit did not coincide with the shows that was on tik-tok; instead the pics are just the pandas lazing around. The only show they get to see was the one with seals.

They did not quite get to see all parts of the zoo because it takes a lot of ground to cover (they were saying that I would be exhausted if I were to go with them).

Later in the evening, I saw my name appeared in a poster of this year's National Physics Conference. Technically, my name should appear without the Associate Professor title since I have retired from UPM (and hence no affiliation was given).

Eid-ul Adha and Paper Collection

Yesterday, we celebrated Eid-ul-Adha. We went to our local surau for our 'Eid prayers. After the 'Eid prayers, I had to take pain killers for my back pain since I can no longer stand it and I was already feverish. The current bad back episode was with for a few days already but I went on without any pain killers until yesterday. So, my plan for 'Eid visits with the family had to be cancelled and I rested for most of the day. My other half and the rest of the family proceeded without me to visit my sister-in-law in Bandar Tun Hussein Onn.

Since my 'Eid was rather uneventful, I will post on something different. Since end of last year, I have been busy rearranging my collection of papers. When my house was renovated more than a year ago, a lot of my papers was packed, bundled together (irrespective of the physics topics; I did some form of rearrangement while I had an attic before and thus there is some residual pre-arranged in the bundles). These were placed at my son's balcony (lacking of space within). Little by little I throw away some stuff away (mostly minutes of meetings and paperwork that I consider will no longer be of use). I planned a little about how to arrange the research papers. Those that fall under quantum topics, I decided to store them in the store at our balcony (attached to our room) and hence will be of easy access. Those that are in use and related ones, are kept in my room itself. Gradually, the whole store was filled up.

For other themes, I thought of using the top of the cabinets that I use to store the books. As such, they will be harder to access since it requires me to use a stair to reach them. 

Thus, the topics will have to be of less relevance to my current work. They are Complex Networks & Related Topics (including scientometrics), Relativity & Cosmology, High Energy Physics, and of course Mathematics. Complex Networks was one topic I tried to pursue while I was at INSPEM. The reason was that I find this area has wide applicability and is based on (purely) graph theory. But my real interest stems from a paper of Aste & collaborators on complex networks on hyperbolic surfaces, having done some research on hyperbolic geometry before this (quantum theory on punctured surfaces). I was curious to see other applications of hyperbolic geometry particularly real world applications. However the graph-theoretic aspects are harder to do research on and most students opt for applications of real networks. I gradually left the topic for others to explore as they can be computer labour intensive (not my real strength). Being the latest to be explored and had left it to focus more on quantum research, I thought I could fit the papers in the leftmost part of the cabinet (which is smaller and of one 'column' space). I was wrong (see pic below; note there are two layers, the visible front and the back).

The next category is Relativity & Cosmology. I had quite an interest in mathematical cosmology (less on the speculative topics) but this is not quite my specialization, despite my interest in geometric ideas. So when I had Hassan Amirhashchi as a PhD student and he insisted to do this in cosmology (my suggestion was more on quantum stuff), I told him then that we need to appoint an external supervisor who has expertise in the area (Prof. Anirudh Pradhan). My view is that one could try to explore new areas at MSc level but for PhD, one need a true sense of direction (normally comes with expertise). So during this time, I accumulated quite a large number of papers (including observational ones particularly one that points to accelerating cosmology and dark energy). Read also some alternative ideas on the back reaction due to inhomogeneities. This, too almost filled up the space allocated (see below).

The next category would be high energy physics but this was not filled up. I thought I had a lot of high energy physics papers including 'pre-arXiv preprints) accumulated during my PhD years. I must have either thrown some away or was left for my students to pick up during the move from the old theoretical physics at the ground floor (now used as a store). A possibility is now to swap this space with that of Complex Networks.

The final category is mathematics, which quickly filled up the allocated space. Have yet to figure on how to rearrange the spaces for Relativity & Cosmology. My other half has offered the upper cabinets in our room but let's see.

There are some leftover papers that I have yet to place systematically somewhere. This will need the second rearrangement when I am up to it. For now, I have plenty on my mind, even causing nightmares[ perhaps another post to tell) and will need to rest.

When I showed the first pic of the quantum papers store, someone made the remark that I should be storing these papers in the cloud. This was indeed the suggestion of my sons and some 'unread' papers have been stored electronically. It would have been the wish of my other half and the family to throw most of these away but somehow I resisted that. Mathematical papers are best read in hard copy where one can scribble on them, and brought anywhere for reading. You can of course do these too with electronic files on the mobile phone, but the experience is different (limited). I will start to throw them away once I have decide that I have no use for them, not even for reference (and most probably this is when I give up on science but that time has not come as yet).

Follow-Up At Ara Damansara MC

Yesterday, my other half went for another follow-up at Ara Damansara Medical Centre. It was pushed a day earlier than it was scheduled perhaps due to the incoming 'Eid holiday. This time around, my youngest son came along (back for a week long 'Eid holiday) while my eldest stayed home due to some other commitments.

We went to Ara Damansara the day before as usual and stayed at Z Hotel. My other half herself drove there while I helped look at the directions. Had myself do the self-check in at the hotel's kiosk (usually it was my eldest son doing it). There were step-by-step instructions; seemed easy but need getting used to the slots and stuff. One needs to have the booking number in hand; not sure what happens if one does not have it.

We mainly got ourselves a rest that night. Initially, my third son intended to join us at the hotel and have dinner together, but unfortunately he was busy that evening. Finally we just had dinner at the nearby mamak restaurant.

We went early to the medical centre the next morning, hoping to have breakfast at the usual cafe at the basement. It seems the canteen operators had its staff reduced and there were less food there, perhaps preparing for the 'Eid holiday. So we went to the posh cafe (slightly expensive) in the lobby instead and had 'light' breakfast there.

On seeing the doctor, my other half explained her conditions. Since the first & second follow-ups, it was already the case that part of the turbinate had fell from its position in the nose. Given that my other half has started to pray normally with the usual prostration, she complained about some discomfort and sometimes slight pain during prostration. My other half asked if it's ok to remove the fallen turbinate. The doctor replied that this would require another minor surgery and this has to be done at another later time. For now, the doctor (after checking the nose), he advised her to apply nasal spray to reduce cyst development in the nose. My guess then, we will have a few more future visits here (initially, we hope that this would be our last). The next appointment will be on 25 July.

Back home, I had to get myself rested as I was developing a headache (still having it), while the rest of the family went out to get something to eat. Also, my other half has been complaining my youngest son's hair (to her seems untidy) and thus, he went for a hair rebonding. His pic before:

His pic after:

The Wedding in JB

Last weekend, we were in JB for a wedding of my other half's niece. Apart from our youngest who will soon be facing his exams, all of us were there in JB. My other half ensure that all of us to be there for the wedding since this would be the last wedding for my sister in law, Kak Chik (her youngest child, Najwa passed away due to a brain tumor). Also her husband Tn Hj Shafie has not been well recently; fell down a couple of times. 

Ihsan (our second son), who was already in JB intended to go back home in Seremban a few days before this wedding. Unfortunately, he had food poisoning the day before and cancelled this plan. So it was good also that we get to see Ihsan in this trip to JB, We started our trip on Friday with my other half driving all the way. My eldest was down with bad fever some days before the trip and I was already suffering from back pain for quite some time (had to take up Tramadol). However, I was willing to drive for some relatively short distance if she got tired but this did not happen. We arrived at the Molek Garden Hotel sometime late afternoon. Ihsan came later in the evening to meet us before going back to work. That evening too, my other half went to her sister's place in Taman Molek.

The next day (Saturday) was the big day. We went to Bizmilla Grand Hall quite early, thinking of giving a helping hand but it seems everything was taken care of. So here are some photos.

That night, we also take the opportunity to go to my other half's (wealthy) nephew.

The next day, we checked out from the hotel and began our journey home.

We decided to stop over in Kulai to meet some relatives.

This time, my son Izhar was driving the car all the way to Ayer Keroh where he then hitched a ride to KL with my sister in law.

We reached quite late due to the usual weekend traffic congestion.

On Monday, we went to send our Chevrolet Malibu for service and check-up. It took the whole day (more than six hours), much due to the needed checks. One of the headlamp needs to be replaced (costing more than three hundred ringgit). Again, we arrived quite late at home and was very tired.