Presently, I'm going through ups and downs of pain from my frozen shoulder. I would like to really say that I'm not faking it. A question appears though in my mind whether I'm finding excuses psychologically, given the challenging duties of today. In any case, I'm the kind of person who doesn't like to sit idle and if I have the chance to stay away and work on stuff, I will do so. I don't go lepaking (it is in Oxford dictionary) or have extended teh tarik breaks but instead I will always bring something to read as my friends and family may attest to.
Last night was probably one of the peak times of pain from the frozen shoulder. The pain seems to be radiating from the shoulder to shoulder blades and to the neck. Took up pain killer (plus other meds) last night and just go to sleep. This is my second time of having frozen shoulder. The last time was in April 2015 and the shoulder affected is my right shoulder. Being right-handed, I experienced crippling pain each time there is a reflex action from my right hand. Did physio-therapy at one private hospital but it was so painful (each time after the session, I felt so exhausted trying to withstand the pain) that I stopped doing so (instead did mild exercises at home).
Now with the present left frozen shoulder, I am more or less decided not to go for physiotherapy at the hospital and suffice to do it at home. However I also noticed that I'm experiencing discomfort and sometime pain under the shoulder blade. My other half told me that it might be the interconnected bunch of nerves there (see here). Besides that, I also noticed a weakening of my left arm. I can't remember whether I experienced the same the last time. In any case, if they persist, I might just have to see a specialist this Friday on the matter, just to reassure that there is nothing serious.
Serious or not, this pain has started to affect my work. The following are some of the common things that I could not do:
Wearing a t-shirt or baju Melayu - taking it off is very painful to do.
Tucking in my shirt and adjusting pants.
Fitting a belt to my pants.
Reaching for something in the left pocket of pants.
Lifting my left arm vertically.
Reaching the back with my left arm.
Prostration in a limited arm space (in jemaah prayers).
Any form of stretching that also stretchers the left part of body e.g. for touch 'n' go at tolls.
Prolonged holding of the steering wheel with left hand. It will tense up quickly and eventually pain.
Sleep properly; the tendency to wake up when experiencing pain.
Focus to work where there is constant discomfort or pain; worse when it is a throbbing pain.
As I said, last night was pretty bad. Even after taking the pain killers, I was restless and could not put myself to sleep. But finally I got tired and just dozed off. Hopefully from today, it will get better.
Haven't posted anything here for awhile. I have been busy, with me still managing pain from my frozen shoulder. I got it some weeks before the trip to Philippines and was hoping it to go away (or at least the pain lessened) before the trip. The pain did not subside until now, but let me retell the story of my trip to Philippines.
The idea of going to Philippines was mooted by Prof. Jinky Bornales during the visit of her delegation to UPM way back in March (see photos here). Immediately after her return, I received an invitation letter from Prof. Marc Nolan P. Confessor to a conference their Physical Society (Samahang Pisika Ng Visayas At Mindanao) is organizing. Now, that's quick and to which I also responded swiftly by booking an air ticket to Manila and on their part from Manila to Dumaguete City where the conference is held.
Just a few days before my flight there, learned about the typhoons Sarika and Haima that may hit Philippines. As usual, there is safety concern (particularly from my family) about me flying there. I tracked updates on the typhoon Haima (nearer to my date of light) which eventually developed into a super typhoon category 5. It did land on Philippines but it was in the north, causing severe damage (see here). Later after the conference, I found out from some of the organizers about their traumatic experience of severe storms and floods.
I flew to Manila on 19 October and the flight was delayed but smooth. At the airport, Christine (official attache of MSU-IIT in Manila) was waiting for me and we drove to pick up Prof. Bornales who was there in Manila to present some proposals. Later, we drove to the hotel through quite a sticky Manila traffic. I was put up at Cherry Blossom Hotel which is nearby the MSU-IIT's office in Manila. It was right in the middle of a shopping area. After freshening up, we walked to a nearby restaurant to have a (salad) dinner.
Despite being tired, woke myself at 3 am in order to get breakfast at 4 am so that we can beat the traffic to the airport. At Manila airport, I met some of Prof. Bornales' friends who were also travelling to Dumaguete City for the conference. The flight was only an hour and at Dumaguete City airport we were picked up by some staff of the conference organizer. We were all put up at the Bethel Guest House, a Christian hotel. This hotel is situated right in front of a beach (see below) - despite so, I didn't have time to walk along the beach though.
We then rushed to the Conference venue just in time for the plenary session. The first talk I listened to was from Prof. Maria Victoria Carpio-Bernido on "SHS STEM Research Initiatives: Plans and Prospects".
First let me mention that I first met Prof. M.V. Carpio-Bernido together with her husband Prof. Christopher Bernido, way back in 1997 in a conference organised by Prof. S.C. Lim who was with UKM then. I knew them both as mathematical physicists who worked with path integrals. Little did I know what else they do. They were initially based in University of the Philippines, Diliman with the National Institute of Physics there. But they then moved to a remote place in Jagna, Bohol in a way to prove a point that they believe in with respect to scientific progress, regradless of how remote one can be. Their tale had me inspired. They founded Central Visayan Institute Foundation (CVIF) and work with schoolchildren and form also a Research Centre for Theoretical Physics. You can read about them here (see video here). In her talk, she spoke about the progress of the CVIF Dynamic Learning Program where schoolchildren are given more room to do activity-based scientific exploration than the usual school program. One of the striking things being mentioned that this program imposes strictly no homework rule. One can read about this program in the slides of their talks given elsewhere here and here. She also lamented the case of Philippine universities not making it to the world universities ranks in comparison to the other South East Asian countries. I can see that from responses to her talk that they are very serious about making holistic progress of science in the country.
The other four plenary talks that I attended that morning were:
Dr. Rommel G. Bacabac (Univ. of San Carlos, Cebu City), "Teacher's Guide for General Physics I"
Prof. Ludwig Streit (Universidade de Madeira, Portugal), "Complexity, Acceleration, Globalization - A Challenge for Democracy"
Prof. Josef Froelich (Innovation Systems Tech Gate Vienna, Austria), "Increasing Dynamics and Complexity of Socio-Technical Systems:New Scientific Methods and Tools Are Needed"
Dr. Micheal Francis Ian G. Vega II (National Institute of Physics, Univ. of the Philipines, Quezon City), "Einstein and the Music of the Spheres"
The first talk is on the changes they have made to upper secondary school curriculum in a way the transition to university-level physics is easier (at least that is how I understood it). Prof. Streit's talk is based on his paper in Interdisciplinary Studies of Complex Systems. The gist is about the impact of information technology and globalization in our socio-economic systems, which has become highly non-trivial. The call is to study them as complex systems with all the known tools.
Continuing on the same theme is Prof. Josef Froelich on the need of new tools to analyse complex systems - this includes complex networks. Prof Frolich is in fact a student of Prof. Streit.
I have limited interactions with Prof. Froelich since he left for another meeting the next day nd his invitation I believe fits the purpose of Prof. Bornales' office involvement in innovation centres. Prof. Streit, on the other hand, I get to know him better as the conference went along. In fact, Prof. Streit has been there in Philippines several times as visiting professor. The next speaker was Dr. M.F.I.G. Vega II who spoke about gravitational waves. He gave a very lucid lecture and probably got the attention of the school kids there. It is from his talk that I thought I should change my own slides to include more introductory things.
The rest of the afternoon was parallel sessions. I was accompanied by Jingle B. Magallanes since lunch time. I was asked to attend the materials science session and had thus a glimpse of what they do there. The session I was in seems very much be applications in medical sciences. Here is a photo of me having lunch in the Siliman University's gym with Dr. Pawel Sokolowski (from Poland), Prof. Rosario Reserva, Prof. Jinky Bornales and Prof. Josef Froelich. Note: the gym used to be a hangar.
During the night we had the banquet dinner of the conference at the same place. I was seated with Prof. Jinky Bornales, Dr. Pawel Sokolowski, Prof. Christopher Bernido and Prof. Maria Victoria Carpio-Bernido.
One of my difficulties when travelling abroad is my restrictive diet. Being Muslim, of course I take halal food and most Muslims would go for seafood option as it is the easiest. I can't even do this since I don't take white meat i.e. chicken, fish and other seafood. Thus, my easiest option has been a vegetarian when travelling abroad. Sometimes to my embarrassment I had to explain my diet and my worry is always that it may cause unnecessary trouble for the organisers. Anyway the dinner was interesting because they had trivia (they had this also during the conference sessions before they start) and their own students performing. Perhaps a highlight of the dinner is that the Governer of Negros Oriental came down to meet us at dinner.
After dinner, struggled a bit to change and edit my slides.
The second day started off early with the following talks:
Dr. Mark Nolan P. Confesor (MSU-IIT), "Teaching Guide for General Physics 2 in the K12 Program: Content and Competencies"
Myself (INSPEM, UPM), "Symplectic Geometric Techniques for r-Qubit Systems"
Prof. Christopher Bernido (Research Centre for Theoretical Physics, Central Visayan Institute Foundation), "Feynman Paths and White Noise Analysis for Complex Systems with Memory"
Dr. Confesor is the SPVM President and he continues from where Dr. Bacabac left on the talk n the first day. For my own talk, I dwell a little bit on the basics of symplectic geometry expressed in a way I understand them and connects quickly with the idea of quantum states. That leaves me little time to talk about the results we (me and Dr. Saeid Molladavoudi) have produced and in the end I just had to gloss over them (was not satisfied with the way I did it - though should have explained more on the physics of it). Then I asked for some extended time for me to introduce UPM and INSPEM. The ones probbly that caught their eye most is the facts and figures of our undergraduates and postgraduates, which I got from this page. They were amazed by the number of our postgraduates (from interactions during lunch) and I told them it is the requirement of research university to have many postgraduate students. I also told our internationalization efforts from the institute, namely with EMS and MICEMS. After me, it was Prof. Bernido's talk on Feynman path integrals and how they can be used to model complex systems and in a way as technical as my talk (trying not to feel too bad)
For the parallel sessions, I attended the Complex Systems session and listened to a few talks in particular that of Prof. Streit on "Polymers and Random Walks", right after which I had to get some rest, feeling a bit fatigue.
In the evening, we had another social dinner in which there were games for the staff and speakers. Participated in the light ones - to be sporting - including karaoke session. There, they saw for the first time Prof. Streit and Prof. C. Bernido singing (see pics below).
I decided to go along with the singing particularly then I had just received the news of our budget and the budget cuts of the universities (said to myself, what the heck). I picked Hoobastank's "The Reason".
They were surprised by my choice. I guess they were expecting me picking an oldie with less rockish flavour. In another dinner the day after, I explained my music inclinations and again they were surprised by this fact. I told them, it also surprises many of my own local colleagues.
The next day was a half day with plenary session in the morning and social visit in the afternoon. The talks were:
Dr. Jan Mickelle V. Maratas (Blaise Pascal University/MSU-IIT), "Some Highlights From LHCb"
Dr. Stephane Monteil (Blaise Pascal University, France), "High Energy Physics: An Overview of the Field"
Dr. Pawel Sokolowski (Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland), "Liquid Feedstock Plasma Spraying as an Alternative for Conventional Powder Plasma Spraying"
The first two (see their pic - forefront - in the first picture of the social dinner) are high energy physicists, the earlier is actually the PhD student of the latter. Dr. Maratas spoke about CP violation and Dr. Monteil more generally on the big questions of high energy physics. I braved myself to put forward my questions to these speakers as I would like to know the latest development. Finally Dr. Sokolowski (praised to be one of the bright young scientist in Poland) spoke about his contributions in plasma spraying which has many applications.
In the afternoon, we were given a tour of the Siliman University. Some photos before the tour:
Around the campus:
The photo just above shows one of the earliest building of the Siliman University, which is just nearby a beach. While there is no photo, one of the most interesting place is their anthropology museum. We also stopped by the cultural village foe the island and had some traditional food there.
Finally on the way back, we saw the locals' preparations for the Buglasan Festival (see below). There were a lot of music and sows around the street (only saw a small early portion of it).
All in all, I must say there are many similarities between their conference and ours. We are very much tradition bound. They opened their sessions in the morning with (Christian) prayers and singing their national anthem just like we do in our official functions. They also give out certificates and tokens (and recited a standard text during the conference), which is good for documentation purposes.
Finally, I am attracted with the idea of having school children to be part of the conference (with their own specialised sessions) as a way of attracting students to physics (and other sciences). Here is a pic of me with students during the closing session (there were others before that, that I didn't get the chance to have copies).
Before flying back home to Kuala Lumpur the next morning, had breakfast with Prof. Streit, Prof. Bornales and Dr. Confesor. We talked about possible cooperation. The flight to Manila was just before 9am and reached Manila airport about an hour later. Finally boarded the flight back to KLIA at 3.30 pm and reached home at about 7 pm.
Once I have attended a workshop by Kevin Downing who told us, despite what we think of university rankings, we will not be able to ignore them simply because of public opinion is centred around them. Thus, the involvement of our universities in the rankings. My own views on the matter have always been not to ignore them but cautiously use them for our own progress. The rankings are after all one-dimensional projections (hence allowing ordering in mathematical sense) and are not designed to capture the total worth of an organization. I don't really pay attention to the individual ranking number too much but the magnitude of the number will probably signify similar class of universities.
First and foremost, there are probably more than 30,000 universities in the whole world, most of which are unranked. Now ranked universities are probably in the magnitude of one or two thousand. The number of ranked universities could also vary from year to year and thus this may spoil temporal rank comparison.
Next, there are many different university rankings, each with different ranking criteria. Kevin mentioned the big three:
The latter two actually began together in 2004 but they went separate ways in 2009 for which QS decided to use Scopus database while THE uses Thomson-Reuters database. I follow at least another ranking for cross check namely
Centre for World University Rankings (CWUR), which is based in Jeddah and began in 2012.
QS & THE rankings involve academic peer review while ARWU and CWUR claim they are purely data-based. With different criteria and input dataset, certainly the rankings they produced will be different and it is interesting to see the way they differ. On the surface, I would prefer those without the peer review, which tends to be subjective.
Our local universities seem to have favoured the QS rankings and perhaps prepared well according to their criteria. Hence better performance for our local universities. This is our recent QS rankings:
Universiti Malaya - ranked 133
Universiti Putra Malaysia - ranked 270
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia - ranked 288
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia - ranked 302
Universiti Sains Malaysia - ranked 330
UPM made a substantial leap of 61 spots (from 331st position) bringing it to within top 300 but I consider we made the same leap as UTM (from 303rd position). Next came the QS ranking of Top 50 universities under 50:
All these improvements are very much welcomed. One can see our university staff committed in helping the university to improve but much more meaningful is the research culture and the science we build that have improved over the years.
Having these results, we should not go over our heads with such improvement and achievements. Once we accept rankings, we should accept them even if we are not doing good. If we pick and choose, it may not reflect us that well. Just several days after all these good news, THES came out with their rankings and they gave
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
Universiti Putra Malaysia
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
Universiti Teknologi Petronas
all ranked within 601-800 category. Universiti Malaya seems conspicuously missing from it (I do not know why) and we noticed Universiti Teknologi Petronas is placed within the same rank as the other research universities. When I first highlighted these results, I guess some are unhappy. But as I said, if one accepts QS ranking, one ought not ignore the other rankings on what they say. The very least we need to see is what they have analysed, why are the ranking results different and in what way can we improve from them. In any case, I find the ranking is consistent with the other rankings. For the CWUR 2016 rankings, we have the following list:
Universiti Malaya - ranked 539
Universiti Sains Malaysia - ranked 694
Universiti Putra Malaysia - ranked 832
Note that CWUR has not been highlighted in any of our media probably due to it being lesser known. It is interesting however to see the score for UPM for which we scored well in the patent criterion, and this further supports the Reuters top innovative ranking results. Now for the ARWU ranking, UPM didn't get to be ranked but the following universities are ranked as 401-500:
Universiti Malaya
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
UPM has at least been ranked 151-200 in 2015 for the Mathematics subject ranking. We are looking forward to the 2016 subject ranking, whether we are able to maintain this ranking. Note that both CWUR and ARWU rankings are harder. ARWU ranking for instance, considers alumni of the university that wins the Nobel Prize and Fields Medal as one of the criteria.
As I said earlier, I would rather look at these rankings as tools. One ought to be careful of how we think about them. If top rankings are being made into ultimate goals, they can lead to undesirable and unethical behaviour; ends justify the means mode. The ultimate goals should be those of more noble and intrinsic nature.
We had already seen one academic scandal earlier where local academics duplicated and manipulate images from their experiments to be sent as three different papers:
Why is this happening is simply because of the terrible pressure that an academic experiencing today to the extent that some resort to manipulative means and worse, deceit to achieve their key performance indicators and at times unnatural demands. Part of these are indeed fueled by the university's desire to achieve better rankings. One should really reflect the kind of academic ethos that we are trying to build. Let's try to keep good academic ideals while trying to achieve better rankings. The rankings are not permanent, but the science we do is.
Today is the birthday of my other half, Rosnah Mustapa. We are now both in our 5-series. Let me just retell a little bit about how I met her.
I did not know her before coming back from my PhD studies. Right after a week, registering myself at UPM on 8 December 1990, I was asked to go to the Bintulu campus. There I met Dr. Mansor Ismail (now professor) who is married to a doctor graduate from Universiti Malaya. His wife introduced me to her and we talked a few times over the phone, met once face-to-face. Finally my family went over to see her family and we got married on 26 August 1993. That's how simple it was, no fancy romances. Here are some pics of our wedding ceremony at Tabung Haji.
Actually we don't make a fuss of our birthdays too much but we celebrate whenever we can. So tonight, I brought her out to dinner with my youngest (the rest of the kids are in the colleges and boarding school). Here are some pics.
Today is my late father, Zainuddin Udin's birthday. He would be 92 today (18 September 1924). Thanks to my sister who reminded us.
Here is a picture of him while he was young.
This was way before I was born. My fond memories of him was how he would like to keep everything is in order in the house. He would do the dust cleaning despite that he has severe asthma. I remembered the day he would travel all the way from Batu Gajah with his Lambretta scooter (we didn't have a car) to fetch me at the boarding school at Bukit Mertajam whith is roughly 165km away. By the end of the trip he would have a severe asthma attack. The sacrifice of my loving father. This is of course when it was my early days at the boarding school, noting that I had never left home all the years before that. Later, I learned how to take the train from Bukit Mertajam to Batu Gajah and back.
I was never at home that much since the boarding school days. Right after school, I was sent to Adelaide for Matriculation and B.Sc. (Hons.) degree. After coming back, I was in a teacher's college (Maktab Perguruan Sri Temenggung Ibrahim) briefly since I was on Ministry of Education scholarship but then the contract got transferred to UPM which I joined way back in 1985 as a tutor. After about a year, I went to UK first to Cambridge (Part III of Mathematical Tripos) then to Durham for PhD. So I missed being around him at home. When I went to UK, I had this photo of him and mum's in my wallet until now.
These were taken, I believe, sometime before they perform their haj. While I was in UK, I didn't know that my father's health deteriorated (he had heart problems, high blood pressure and diabetes). I went back home from UK on 1st November 1990. On touching down, my family rushed us to the hospital to meet my dad. He saw me and I can't quite remember whether we spoke to each other. The next day, we received the call that he had passed away (2 November 1990).
While I'm very much grateful being able to see him in time, I sincerely wished that I could spent more time with him. The best thing I can do for both my parents is now to include them in my doa after my prayers:
Today is Malaysia day. Let us renew our commitment to make our country a better place in whatever capacity that we have.
The day before, I had a hospital appointment for an angiogram procedure in Serdang Hospital. Prior to this, I had already done a CT angiogram in a private hospital that indicated partial blockages in the left and right main arteries (30-40%) and the left anterior descending artery had 75% blockage (see here for explanation). In another earlier appointment at Serdang Hospital, I was told by Dr. Asri that CT angiogram normally overestimate the numbers and to be sure, one should do the normal coronary angiography. This involves insertion of wires through the arteries to the heart. I was told that the procedure had risks of about 1 in 1000 and further insertion of stent will further increase the risk to 1 in 100. We were given the option to consider the procedure and at the time, we just wanted to be sure.
I must say, a few days before the procedure, I have fears of the thought of putting a wire right to the heart and the fact that it can cause complications. On the day, we left after Fajr from home since we were told to be there by 7.30 am. We dropped our second son at the university before going to the hospital. Despite being early, there were already many cars at the hospital but there were enough empty spots for us to park our car conveneiently.
I was the first to arrive at the angio daily care unit (before it was even open). Was asked to change my clothes to the ones given by the hospital. Was checked for blood pressure and ECG. Was told that the procedure will be done through the artery on my right wrist; if unsuccessful with that, will be done through the leg (which requires shaving between the legs there and then if you have not done them).
By about 10 am , I was ferried into the theatre and met Prof. Fazli who is handling the procedure. The procedure was not as painful as it sounds; the pain is mainly during the needle insertion in my right wrist for local anesthetics, no more painful than the one for IV. As the wire is inserted and I guess with the dye, there is a warm sensation in my right arm and some sense of discomfort. In the beginning, I thought I can feel the wire going to the heart but no such thing. There were a few TV monitors for which real-time images of the heart and arteries are displayed. I can only see them blurly since I was without my glasses. The whole procedure is only about half an hour. They bandaged my right wrist really tight causing some numbing discomfort but it was mainly to stop bleeding of the main artery. I was asked to rest for about two hours before I can be discharged. Update: A site showing images of the coronary arteries.
The results showed that the CT angio did overestimate the blockages. I had only minor diseased main arteries but the left descending arteries did show 30-40% blockages. I was already told by Prof. Fazli that they will not do angioplasty unless it reached the threshold value of 70%. I thanked him a few times for the procedure and the explanations and was in fact relief that it is over. So all I need now is medications and a healthy lifestyle (can't do much about the stress though). Later, my other half told me, if it is in a private hospital, they might have recommended angioplasty even if it is 40%. By 12.40, they opened up the bandage but still applying pressure to the wound. I was asked whether I wanted a week's leave and initially I had declined (thinking of work). They told me that I should avoid any heavy (physical) work including driving. Then I thought I should have the medical leave given that I drive all the way from Seremban to work. Finally after 1 pm, went home to Seremban.
I am now resting, trying not to overwork my arms. Then this morning, I heard the news of a well-known local religious scholar, Ustaz Harun Din had complications from angioplasty procedure in Stanford. Our prayers for him. Update: Just received the news that he had just passed away. Innalillahi wainna ilaihi raji'un. Al-Fatihah.
There is always an urge in me to defend the academics, not simply because I am one but because of the weight of responsibilities that they carry. The traditional responsibilities of research, teaching and supervision are more than enough to fill up (multiples of) the lifetime of an academic. In the contemporary setting of a modern academic, there are now further expectations of taking up duties on industrial relations, community engagements and even income generation. All these should be handled with care and wisdom. Thus, it saddens me when others are trying to put down the academics.
In the midst of the frenzy of duties and activities that the academics need to cover, it is sometimes a relief for us to return to the (comfort zone of) traditional setting and entertain our intellectual playfulness. We got to do this when Prof. Kalyan B. Sinha visited us at the institute. Earlier, I was surprised to receive his email stating his intent to visit the institute after he attends the Quantum Probability conference in Kuantan. He actually knew personally the late Prof. S. Twareque Ali and was saddened by his departure. After looking up his profile and research work, I was more than happy and honoured to invite him. So he was at the institute on 27-29 August 2016. We took the opportunity to organize a half-day seminar to coincide with his visit (see http://einspem.upm.edu.my/smp2016/). He gave very good introductory lectures on stochastic Schrodinger/Heisenberg dynamics and non-commutative geometry (his slides are available here). Further glimpse of his clear and lucid way of explaining technical materials can be found in his books here and here. Below are some pics of his visit:
At the end of his visit, I told him that I wish that I had known him earlier so that we could interact and possibly collaborate since there are overlaps of interests.
Talking about collaborations, my attitude has always been very open to invitations within constraints. I rarely decline and am usually honoured to work with good scientists. It is only if it's too distant away from my interest that I will excuse myself or the other party does not really want to collaborate or consider me of much too low a stature. In the latter, I tend to shy away from the person. Currently, I'm in the midst of making possible collaborations with a regulatory body to do complex networks research. The initiative came from Prof. Maman Djauhari, ex-fellow of the institute. The discussion had began last year but negotiations were only finalized recently, but Prof. Maman was already leaving the institute. In a small farewell function, he gave a speech (see pic below). It was during his speech that I learned that Prof. Maman took group theory classes by the legendary Alexander Grothendieck and also Jorga Ibrahim was his lecturer whom he held in high regards. I remember that we had the opportunity of inviting Prof. Jorga Ibrahim to deliver lectures on deforemation quantization in ITMA through the suggestion of Freddy Zen. It was a great honour to have him (and at that time with John Stillwell), way back in 2004.
Fast forward to this week, I found myself again concerned with how blanket expectations on academics, regardless of the field he or she is in. This can be bad particularly when mathematicians/theoreticians have always different research, publication and citation culture. Decision makers and managers must be made fully aware of these differences. Below, I give some links to some statements and studies being made on research culture of mathematics:
Much like the social scientists had fought against the use of metrics of hard sciences in their fields, mathematicians and theoreticians will do well united in highlighting the above.
One of the troubling things that I see today is our fractured society divided into many different categories of lines and it is utterly disappointing to see some individuals that further aggravate the situation. It is thus our responsibility to do our little parts to harmonise relations wherever we can. My earlier vulnerability led me to rethink many matters and motivate me further to do what I can in my little ways, rebonding relations. For instance, after 'Eid I decided to restart our family whatsapp group Keluarga Zainuddin Udin to ensure that we are constantly in touch with each other.
Yesterday, I had two wedding invitations and tried my best to go for it. One is from Prof. Azmi; the wedding is in Cyberjaya. There, I met Zul (our present head of department) and a very senior ex-UPM professor Ithnin Bujang, now retired.
I didn't get the chance to meet the rest of the Department's members since I had to go to the other wedding. For the readers, I have been away from the Department for about thirteen years now due to my appointment in the institutes (Institute of Advanced Technology and Institute for Mathematical Research). Due to commitments at the institute, I am rarely in the department and only if I'm free, I'll go to whatever functions are there in the Faculty.
The other invitation is from a senior of mine, Dato' Ahmad Sharifuddin Abdul Kadir in my Adelaide days and it was held in Dewan Banquet UPM. His wife, Datin Noormala was my school-mate in Daws Road High School (matriculation year) and later we shared several courses in Mathematics during our basic degree. Many of my colleagues (senior, same batch and junior) have grown to have successful careers, carrying titles like Dato' as the person above. One of them is my own house-mate during Matriculation year, Dato' Sri Suhaizan Wahid; he is actually younger than me. Another prominent one, which I read in the papers and was able to recognise him clearly (was on a trip to Sydney with him) is President/Chief Executive Officer of Petronas, Datuk Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin. With such luminaries, I must say, I was thinking twice of going or not. In normal circumstances, I tend to shy away from high-ranking officials, superiors etc. I tend to be more at ease for instance, with my own staff in comparison to say, the university officials. However I realise that I am going there to meet friends, rather than to be aware of our economic-social status. It has been over 35 years since I've met them. Thus, there I was with my family at the wedding and the first person I met was Meor, a senior whom I was close with (listening to music and things). They didn't recognise me at first (because I've grown wider). Here are then some photos taken at the wedding ceremony.
Dr. Hamid (also my senior) whom I met several times (as a patient and friend) at Seremban Columbia Hospital was also there too. I spend some time trying to meet everyone I could; missed a few since I didn't wait quite to the end. It was fun seeing them again.
During the night, another rebonding occasion with my sister-in-law's family having dinner while watching Dato' Lee Chong Wei in the Olympic badminton single final. He gave a good fight to his contender Chen Long. For me, what had me tingling me all over was to see Malaysians unite in supporting him regardless of race, religion or political side. Here is the pic:
Today, my other half went to see her own best friend whom she had not met for so many years, who was here in Seremban for a conference. Another rebonding occasion. After the meet, we went over to see our son at the boarding school, who will be facing his trial exams these coming weeks, as sign of support.
