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.
Update: A day after, I left another WhatsApp group that had somebody commenting rather insensitively on the doctors' plight. This time, it was an alumni group; my other half even resented the remarks and was surprised such 'educated' group can have such remarks. I do not know personally those who made the insensitive comments in both groups and hence rather not get involved in arguing with them. Egos tend to get in the way usually unless we know each other and where we are coming from. The easiest option is to leave the group (though for the surau group, I felt a bit sad to leave it) and have my peace of mind.
Palatao is a word invented to refer to those who thinks they know everything and made comments in the social media that are often negative and false. It has now been included in the urban dictionary (just like the word koyak).
I normally tend to ignore posts made by such people in this category unless the matter is personally directed to me or in some cases on matters directly related to things I'm deeply concerned with. Some posts propagate stereotypes, divisiveness and some even caused gross injustice. The last one troubles me most, as any sane person should. Normally, when I come across such people, I will try to distance myself and let them drown in their own foolishness. I do pray that such people should not be given any critical responsible roles since they are incapable of thinking about others.
Yesterday happens to be one such instance and it happen right in my local surau community. The post can be seen below, conversation between two persons in the local whatsapp group. The comment made against doctors are really disappointing, insensitive and I'm pretty sure that the person is not aware of the current predicament that doctors are facing. The whatsapp group should only be concerned about matters pertaining to the surau. In the past, there are individuals who stir up heated discussions by posting political issues in the whatsapp group but they tend to get warned by the admin of the group. If they need to discuss on matters not pertaining to the surau, they can create a different group to do so. I do not know the persons who made these remarks but I certainly do not want to mix with such persons and thus I left the group. I hope the admin of the surau whatsapp group will take note of the displeasure of others when such comments are allowed.
I was told that another person left after I did. Later some doctors in the group tried to explain what is going on but I heard that the person did not apologise or retract his comments. I sincerely hope that he will eat his words one day.
Yesterday, we have surpassed the one million mark for active Covid-19 cases and there is no signs of it easing down.
The only comfort one has is that we have ramped up our vaccination rate. One should also remember that those who have been infected also will have natural antibodies. These will be the two sources in our race to attain herd immunity (thought to be achievable after 60-70% of the population vaccinated). On the other hand, one has the mutations of the virus to factor in, particularly if the infections are not contained globally. There is no guarantee of new surge of infections in the future. In fact, having vaccinated does not mean one will not get infected. In fact, there are cases I know personally who got vaccinated fully, got infected thereafter, though the symptoms are milder. According to MOH, they categorised the infections as in the table below.
The vaccinated cases I know above rarely goes beyond Stage 3. Thus, one should not be too comfortable, even after vaccination. I, for one, have not gone out for weeks now, relying on foodpanda and my sons for some groceries or banking matters. For more information about our current situation, the articles below should be helpful:
As a Muslim, I see the current pandemic as a 'bala' (calamity). Now, to some this is probably a forgone conclusion, but I still see people's reactions and actions in the socmed sphere, as if it is not. The two articles above should give the signal that our problems are far from over and not to mention about the economic gloom that arises from the pandemic. I sincerely hope that some miracles will happen to get us out of the pandemic (called it divine intervention or human ingenuity or whatever). Let us do our part by staying home and limit our movement as much as we can. Let us not complain about boredom of being at home, when there are others who are working hard to ensure our health system not to collapse. When my son join the lab that helped do the Covid testing, he got the evening shift to work beginning from 3pm until 12 midnight, reaching home at about 1 a.m. with only one day leave (usually Sunday). Yesterday however, he was still working and has today as a replacement leave. The frontliner doctors and nurses will have probably much worse working hours. So when there is a viralled video, that some people are dancing joyfully at some official function, I find it to be really upsetting. Please do this at your personal time at home and not in public. We should be thinking and helping out how to get out from our current gloom, contributing in whatever capacities we have. My prayer is that we will always be guided in our actions.
I took a few days off surrounding Eid-ul-Adha to rest and take my mind off work. The latter seemed impossible. I keep getting reminders for example of my editorial tasks of our journal, of which I had already made my intentions of leaving the position before. There are many other unsettled matters too. I really wish I have some time off to really pursue what I am really interested in before the new semester starts. To this too, I'm pushing all my postgraduate students to finish off their studies if possible within this year since I will be retiring next year. What happens after retirement, I am not sure. Situations seem to push me to look for another job then. Certainly my scientific ambitions have yet to be fulfilled. Some of the things I wish to pursue have been given to my present and past students but there are still open problems yet to be solved. I hope for some miracles to happen at this very late stage of life.
Things are not looking bright these days. The Covid-19 infections do not seem to show any signs of easing. Below is the current numbers given yesterday.
On the social media, things are rife with rants and divisive issues; the latest being the squabble between religious public figures, which is really embarrassing because it only displays our immaturity (no matter which side one is on). If not for some beneficial aspects of the social media, I would probably have turned it off. People tend to be very judgmental and easily siding with their own circles of influence, amplifying differences, rather than finding solutions. Perhaps they have not realised that we are facing a much bigger crisis at hand. Found the pic below that is suitable in describing the situation.
On the brighter side, my eldest son Khairuddin and my youngest Izzuddin just got their first shot of Covid-19 vaccination. Apart from the usual sore on the arm, they seem to be reacting ok. Hopefully all my sons will receive their second dose soon. This will put some worry off. Currently we are hearing reports of infections of the delta-variant of the virus in Rembau, which is really worrying.
I really hope there are happier news ahead but things are really looking gloomy.
Today is Eidul-Adha that signifies sacrifice. I once have tweeted that there are differences between sacrifices and struggles. This thought has always humbled me since most of the times, I feel that I'm just struggling, rather than making sacrifices. Few days before today's Eid, I have been watching videos of reverts of their journey to Islam. Do note that I am most grateful of being born Muslim but it also meant deprived of the search for truth. So by watching these videos, I hope to learn something what I have missed. All I can say I'm humbled and probably put in perspectives the struggles that I have been through.
Today is another Eid-ul Adha that we spend under Movement Control Order (MCO) and so it was pretty uneventful. I kept myself away from work as much as possible. I wanted to be there for the family and I wanted to rest. Unfortunately, my son, Ihsan had to go to work today because all the lab testings for Covid-19 are non-stop. Currently he is still under training and he is actually commuting to Shah Alam until the end of the month. Thereafter he will be stationed at KLIA. So, I thought I take the opportunity of taking a group photo while we are all here at home. Here they are.
The day is about to end. Tomorrow, I am still on leave but I will begin to look at work tomorrow, insyaAllah.
In a previous post, I wrote about the declining health of Lily. She could barely walked just the night before and my other half tended to her, giving her glucose and laid sheets of flattened box and newspaper for her to lie down. Just yesterday morning, right after the Special Relativity & Classical Field Theory final exam, my son Izhar told us that Lily has left us. I immediately called my other half telling her about the news as she was at work. She came back home at noon in order to say a final goodbye to Lily and thereafter made a burial for Lily in our backyard.
Lily was my other half's favourite cat. She often slept in our room and would wait for my other half to come upstairs to be with her. It is only in the past few weeks that she tend to shy away from us. We knew much earlier that she had kidney failure. She lost a lot of weight and then we decided to get her checked up at a local vet. Knowing about her kidney problems, we bought her special cat food for the failing kidney and there was a slight improvement. Overall, however, one can see that her health declined considerably. Here is a video of Lily when we gave her wet food to help her regain strength: that was her last wetfood meal.
Here are some pics of the last moments with her.
My son Izhar made a video of Lily for my other half.
Sometime on Wednesday, I saw an email on Majlis Gemilang Putra and was simply curious on the recipients of awards in this ceremony. The awards are given to staff showing excellence and its pretty difficult to get on this list (I was not expecting anything). Apparently my name was on the list for Anugerah Bakti Putra (see below). This is given to those who has been in UPM service for more than 30 years.
Thereafter, there was a barrage of congratulatory messages on the Department's WhatsApp group initially for those who got their excellence awards and those who have retired. I guessed then, nobody cared that my name also appeared in the list of awardees, particularly I have been away from the department for so long, to be with the institutes (ITMA then INSPEM). If the absence of mention was prolonged, it will confirm my paranoia view that I was less liked or being ignored. (Un)Fortunately, Prof. Sidek (who was also a recipient for Jasa Putra award), broke the silence and congratulated me in the WhatsApp group. Thereafter, got further congratulatory messages from the rest.
Would it matter if no one noticed? Being a social being, certainly yes as I felt that I've struggled to be accepted for the work that I do on theoretical physics, be at the physics department or the institutes (being a minority). I would have carried on regardless (like I used to anyway) because to me it is a sense of duty to put theoretical physics in place in UPM. Also, I would not want anyone else to have that feeling, so it is important to make this known. The burden was heavy and difficult and any ounce of encouragement would actually help.
So what was there during this long duration? I joined UPM in March 1985 after a brief stint of Diploma of Education at Maktab Perguruan Temenggung Ibrahim (a teachers' college) in Johor. I was on a Ministry of Education scholarship for my B.Sc. (Hons.) degree and was meant to be a teacher. However, I had my eyes on research and thus applied for a position in USM, UKM and UPM. The former two was because I knew there were theoretical physics pursued there. I'm not sure why I missed out UM but perhaps I thought there would be more chances elsewhere. The first offer was made by UPM, which I immediately grabbed the opportunity (slightly later came UKM's offer). So I was at the college only for a few days or probably a week or two (can't remember). I joined UPM as a tutor and was already teaching diploma courses and doing tutorials. I remembered being assigned to design a course on biophysics since I was placed in the lab of Dr. Salleh Harun. Despite having done Mathematical Biology with Prof. J. Mazumdar, I almost know nothing about putting up a course for biophysics. Was also designing experiments for the diploma program. At the same time, I searched for places to do a postgraduate degree. I applied for Part III of Mathematical Tripos at University of Cambridge for which I got the offer. There was a slight complication then because Part III just gave me a Certificate of Advanced Diploma (it was later recognised as a Masters degree in 2011) and there is the expectation for me to do PhD in Cambridge University itself.
So I went to Cambridge in September or October of 1987. I was pretty confident in the beginning given the mathematical physics courses I took in University of Adelaide. However the level of competition here was something else. Spent most of my nights awake, trying to stay on top of all the courses. By the time the results were out in 1988, I got the certificate successfully (some of my friends did not) but was not successful to be considered as a graduate student at DAMTP. I did get an offer to continue with Mark Warner at Cavendish. However, my research interest was elsewhere. Finally took up the offer at Durham University to work under Richard Ward - the other offer was with Ray Streater in King's College. So I moved to Durham in 1988 and did my PhD until December 1990.
Upon returning to UPM, I was told to move to Bintulu campus to teach diploma courses. I was made a fellow of the Second College in Bintulu. So I spent only around three semesters there, since I appealed to go back to the main campus for various reasons. I was back in the main campus in 1992 and got confirmed for the position in 1994. Before getting married in 1993, I was a fellow of the Sixth College. After my other half finished her housemanship, she was stationed in Seremban and we moved there. There was a brief period during which we stayed in Port Dickson since she was later transferred there. Situations forced us to move back to Seremban and been here ever since. I was asked to apply for Associate Professorship a few years after coming back to Serdang, and got the position in March 2000. I was also briefly the Faculty of Science webmaster in 1997-1998. Under the invitation of Prof. Makhdzir Mardan, I was made a fellow of the newly established Multimedia Institute in 1999 until 2002. In 2002, I joined ITMA as head of laboratory since I was asked to establish a new theoretical laboratory. I was also given the responsibility to head the Publications Committee there. The lab 'merged' with INSPEM in 2006 due to restructuring of the institutes. I took Head of Laboratory position again in INSPEM in 2007. In 2012, I was given the position of Deputy Director of INSPEM until my resignation in 2019. During that period, I was also the Editor-in-Chief of Malaysian Journal of Mathematical Sciences from 2015 to 2018. Now I'm back at the Department of Physics as a normal academic staff. My official retirement date will be in December 2022. All these years, I considered it as my mission to keep theoretical physics alive in UPM and I was hoping then to establish 'high-level mathematics' collaboration with mathematicians but this was harder than I thought. There were many things that I wished I could do but time (& space) is just not on my side.
So yesterday, I got my certificate for Bakti Putra award (see below). Alhamdulillah, I am most grateful for this award and thanking UPM for the trust and opportunity.
Yesterday, my other half was worried about my sons. My second son, Ihsan, has started to undergo training with a testing laboratory for screening possible Covid-19 patients for more than a week now. My third son, Izhar, also began his industrial training in Bangi after getting the permit letter to travel to work. Both need to use cars to travel to their respective places. Luckily I'm still working at home and my other half used my Chevrolet Malibu to go to work while her car was used by Ihsan to travel to PJ for training. Izhar borrowed Ihsan's car (used to be my blue Chevrolet Aveo car) to go to Bangi. It will be his first time to drive a long distance. Hence the slight worry.
The other worry is that Ihsan had his first shot of vaccine on Saturday. On Sunday, he was feverish and on Monday he had to take medical leave to recover from the side effects. So he was probably weakened but duty calls to help out at a testing centre. Izhar had his vaccine shot more than a week earlier at the Shah Alam vaccine centre and today we received the news that the vaccine centre had 200 worker-volunteers were Covid-19 positive. So far he did not show any symptoms and we asked to take precautions and follow the SOPs. Below is a picture of Ihsan in his PPE suit.
Yesterday was also the day that Malaysia hit the 10,000th mark for new infections (see figure below). The Health D-G also predicted that the worse is yet to come with the delta-variant of the virus and we can't imagine how that will turn out to be. The hospitals in Lembah Klang and Negeri Sembilan are already working at full capacity or more, pushing non-Covid-19 patients to private hospitals. Somehow, something is not right given that despite the enhanced movement control order, some factories are allowed to work at full capacity and generally there is confusion on the SOPs. Investors have already indicated that they might pull out from the country causing even further damage to the economy. I do hope that the government will hasten to drive all these issues. The only encouraging news we had so far is that our vaccination rate has been ramped up in recent weeks. A recent news that more vaccination supplies will come in for Lembah Klang and Negeri Sembilan that are severely affected. I hope my two other sons will get their vaccination appointment soon, as they are at risk with my other half and Ihsan working as frontliners.
Perhaps another worry of my other half is that her favourite cat, Lily has gone really weak due to kidney failure (known much earlier). Right now, Lily is oozing blood out of her mouth and can barely walk. She needs to be regularly cleaned. Below is my other half tending to her.
Lily is pretty old, we had her probably more than ten years (equivalent human age of 60+) and she's the oldest. We hope that she will not suffer too much. Our other cats that are not quite as old are Boboi (see video drinking water),
Yaya (the only existing cat that we bought)
and Melli, the cat we adopted from the wildlife park in Gambang; she has occasional problems of seizures.
The rest (not shown here) are Fifi (the younger sister of Lily), and Koko (the partially blind cat we rescued from a drain). Of course, the youngest, we have the playful Lofa.
Feeling slightly down at the moment. A few events triggered memories of how what one did (how small that may be) goes unappreciated and at its worst, ridiculed. I thought I put these down for those who wish to understand me. It is for these reasons, that I wish to stay away from people, particularly certain individuals, to prevent me recalling bad memories.
Let me take several years back down the road, when I was a young lecturer joining a workshop on university publications. It was a brainstorming session and it was supposed to welcome ideas. I took a shot at it. Despite my naivety, I did my homework and was already familiar with the Chicago Style Manual, and knew the importance of setting standards on problematic matters. At the time, I was already thinking about how to standardise the names of Asian authors that do not quite fit the given name-surname mold used mostly in the West. The idea was brushed off and I realised quickly that when you are 'nobody' in the eyes of others, one's contribution is not worth considering. So, in many ways, it made me becoming more cautious to contribute ideas, particularly with people who are not within my circle. Since 'it was unimportant', I simply adopt the Western mould and named myself as H. Zainuddin in publications. Years later, I was 'ridiculed' in a book of an emeritus professor for adopting this Western name style, making me as an Anglophile. I'm not trying to make issues out of this because I rather focus more on the larger picture, but one gets annoyed, right?
All last week and perhaps the week before, the focus was on final exam questions moderation. I saw some of my thoughts of good practices of writing exam questions have been adopted, but today it went beyond what I did by including standardization of fonts, margins and detailed categorization of questions. My thoughts of the good practice was not really targeted for standardization - the educational intent is far more creative outstripping the standards that caged them. I have no issues in following all these standardizations though I do feel the emphasis might be misplaced. For instance, I know that these exam questions will not be published in a way that they'll need uniformity as one finds in a published book. But, hey this is just a small opinion of mine.
Another concern when I was at the institute is how little attention was given to our activities but I brushed these feelings aside, thinking that mathematics tend to be abstract and it is usually difficult for a layperson to appreciate the things that (pure/theoretical) mathematicians do. However there was this thing that happened to me involving university publicity of institute's events, that got me curious until today. There were two major articles that appeared in the university newspaper that had my pics cropped off. I was really wondering why; I'm not good looking or I'm an embarrassment or what? Sometime last week, I saw the photographer had got her promotion, which is good for her. But the news had awakened up my earlier mentioned curiosity and I really wished I know what the answer is.
Once my junior colleagues mentioned that they know that I was not taken seriously by some. Again, I do not intend to create a fuss out of this because my focus is on progress, rather than who should take credit for whatever happened. Yesterday, received some messages about our university's journals Pertanika are listed under ESCI, which is good and should be applauded. Our Malaysian Journal of Mathematical Sciences had already been inside the ESCI list since at least 2015 or possibly earlier. There was not much fanfare of the matter then. In fact, when MJMS received the CREAM award in 2017, very few took notice about it. In fact one senior staff brushed it off saying that the award was given to encourage our newbie journal. For me, that is fine, as long it was not meant to be discriminatory. As I said, I was aware about how little attention was given to our institute then.
There are many other events I could recall as scarred memories. For me, now, it does not really matter. All I want was progress and if I had helped contribute to this in any small way, my only wish is that it will help me in the hereafter. Once again, I wished to be left alone, so that my intentions are left pure.
Continuing from my previous post, on matters of decreased quality of livelihood due to Covid-19 pandemic. Unlike when we first encountered the Covid-19 March last year (not much was known about the virus and how to prevent its spread), we have now gained more than a year of experience to cope with this pandemic. Scientificwise, some of this experiential knowledge is perhaps summarized in this article by Nature, "COVID research: a year of scientific milestones". But yet, our problems are from over - the pandemic still rages on with new strains of the virus appearing (the latest being the lambda-variant - see also here). It is good that Malaysia has beefed up the vaccination rate (ignoring all the political and economic setbacks) as it seems there is a race against mutation rate of the virus if people kept getting infected at large (see Nature's article: "The coronavirus is mutating - does it matter?"). Even with vaccination, Covid-19 infection is still possible (the symptoms being milder) - near personal experience of my other half when one of her (vaccinated) staff was Covid-19 positive (infected from elsewhere). Due to this, the clinic was closed all last week and my other half had her two swab tests at closed intervals; the second one was due to the infected staff. All returned test results are thankfully negative and my other half had his pink wrist-band (signalling the need for self-quarantine) removed end of last week. Having to inspect patients, the risks will still be there for my other half and hence the family. At home, my concerns are with the kids previously all unvaccinated. Luckily, two of them got their appointments late last week due to work and were given their first dose. My eldest and youngest have yet to get their appointments.
As for me who is working at home, my work problems are only mere deadlines. Thank God, I've completed all the final exam questions now and have submitted the marks for continuous assessment of the two courses I'm teaching last weekend. This only provides only a small breathing space, as I have many other duties to finish off - reports, paper editing, thesis reading. One meeting last week reminded us of our duties and also of assets under our name. In some way, several years back, I have stopped buying things under research grants, apart from one instance, to get a computer fro students to work on (sharing among a few). These days, we are not allowed to buy computers or even printer toners. For theorists, these are mainly our equipment and consumables - but now we can only use the grant for students and travel (which is now absent). I hope those decision makers will consider all these constraints before blames are put on us (yet again). All these are now under our own personal expenses (no, I'm not complaining but merely trying to paint the real picture). Recently, my Mathematica subscription has ended and I had to forego renewing since I have just too many commitments. Due to all the online teaching I had to subscribe some services to aid my teaching. Earlier in the year, had to disappoint my sons wishing for new computers but instead they had their old computers repaired. Felt bad. My son who was registered for a MSc degree in UPM, also has decided not to continue his studies given the current MCOs and the inability to get lab work done. He is now working in a private lab, doing the lab testings for Covid-19.
What will be our (near) future looks like? Like everyone else, one is frustrated with the current politics and handling of the economy. I certainly think we need to think out of the box. Even in education, this is a good time for a rethink.
All last week, it was really hectic. It was the last week of the semester and I was struggling to finish my Advanced Quantum Mechanics course. We were also asked to prepare our final exam questions that week for moderation and for each course, we were asked to prepare for two sets. Of course, with all the struggles I had, I was nowhere near the needed target. Kept pushing though. I was not sleeping right and my sleep patterns were pretty messed up; partly because I work better during the early morning hours. So during normal working hours, I was experiencing some sort of sleep deprivation.
During some of these early morning hours, I had time to reflect on my own achievements thus far. I felt I had not done much despite all my push. I was overly sensitive on what people say, some of which triggered unpleasant memories. Let me say this outright; I have always tried to focus my thoughts to be future oriented since thinking about the past tend to make me more depress. But some events triggered memories. Here, I want to explain some of these. On my resignation as Deputy Director, it was not out of protest but my concern for my own health. I remembered somebody up in the higher management making the remark as if implying me 'fighting the university' or in the protest route. Sincerely that's not it. Some then might say my resignation may be considered selfish. I would rather say it's the opposite; I'm letting go because there were signals I was not wanted at the institute, top and bottom, left and right. So with me out of the way, it solves simultaneously the problems of me not being wanted and my own health concerns. Anyway, I'm revealing all these because I do not want myself to be misunderstood by friends. Like I have once remarked, I accept this all as fate and was trying my best to leave my past behind and move on. By doing so, I do tend to do things differently to cut off my past (which is again open to misinterpretation).
Another factor that was hitting me rather badly is this ongoing movement control order. Even though there are others whose lives are hit harder by the pandemic and the MCO, I think the deterioration of livelihood cuts across all spectrum of the society. I realised my monthly spending is actually higher (despite of the no-travel to work situation) during these times. Electricity and water bills will at least go up by 200%. If one truly stayed at home, one also finds that all the online food ordering costs are huge. Of course, one can save by cooking but since my other half is literally working (and only at home during late evenings) and me trying to save time, online food ordering was the best option. Note that all my kids are at home and I wanted to make sure that they are well-fed. For myself, I tend to eat just to make my hunger disappear. Another 'minor' thing: given my supply of medication has run out (earlier supplied by the university's health centre), now I have to get these on my own expenses.
The current swell of infection impacted a lot on all our lives. In the early days, I was following up the daily new cases but I knew this depends on how much testing was made (way back in the first MCO). Right now, I tend to follow the number of new deaths and the hospital capacity and my last check, it was not that good. On the livelihood part, the travel restriction impacted all businesses and clinics are not spared from this. My other half recently had to take a swab test because one of the patients coming to the clinic was Covid-19 positive. Luckily her test results was negative (known just last Friday). However yesterday evening, one of her staff was found to be positive, not because of exposure within the clinic, but due to a family member working in the factories where there was an outbreak. Now, the positive result is despite that all staff of the clinic were vaccinated much earlier on (Phase I). Due to this, my other half will go for another swab test today and the clinic has to close for at least ten days. I do hope that the factory where the source of the infection is, will also get the same treatment of temporary closure. Life may not seem fair but God willing, we will get by.
Also last week, I participated (virtually) in this conference on Logic, Quantum Computing and Artificial Intelligence. I was surprised to know that Xiamen University, Malaysia was one of the co-organizer. There were many familiar names in the conference that I have followed. Learned many new things there.
