Friday, June 25, 2021

Yesterday was a busy day for me. Beginning early at 8am, a meeting was set up for me to evaluate an industrial training student, Muhammad Nabil who was stationed at the Medical Radiation Monitoring Section (Bahagian Kawalselia Radiasi Perubatan - BKRP) of the Ministry of Health, Malaysia. Not sure when was the last time I did this, but I remembered going to USIM for a similar thing. So, I wasn't sure how the meeting should go and I will just improvise as it goes along. Introduce myself to the officers at BKRP, Syarul Iman and Mohd Reduan and they too introduced themselves. I asked the student to go ahead with his presentation since time is limited. This was followed by Q&A and I also invited the officers to give their thoughts. Finally I thanked the officers for letting our students have the learning opportunity there. Below is a pic.

The reason there was a rush for the above morning meeting is that I am scheduled to get my second dose of Covid-19 vaccination later that morning. So right after that session, my son drove me to the teaching hospital of UPM. The place for vaccination was different from the first one. This time one does not need to queue in a line but rather we simply register ourselves at a counter to get our number, later to be called in the designated ward (different from the first).

After the second dose is administered, our MySejahtera app was updated and we were given the electronic certification of the vaccination (see pic below).

Back home, had my lunch and rested a little before beginning the next task of the day i.e. hosting the Physics Departmental Seminar. This time, I invited  a guest from Universiti Malaya, Dr. Norhasliza Yusof to give the talk.

It was on an intriguing subject of nuclear astrophysics, particularly on stellar evolution, which I know very little about. Met virtually her local supervisor, Prof. Hasan Abu Kassim, a long-time friend whom I have not seen for quite some time. We discuss a bit before the seminar, the frustrations of our local theoretical physicists and his soon-to-be retirement.

The talk with the Q&A went on for more an hour and a half. The recording of the talk can be found below.

Immediately after the seminar, I rested since my arm where the shot was administered, hurt a little bit. This morning was a bit feverish and so I just slept the whole way through. Right now, I'm struggling to be alert with the hope to do some work.

I posted about my vaccination on social media with my pics below.

Apparently, somebody got offended by this post (I knew the person was referring to my post since unlike the post of others, I simply said "Alhamdulillah, done" - not exaggerating about the vaccination). I was upset on reading it but after awhile I have a sense of pity for the person. The person is probably frustrated of not yet being vaccinated but so was I before I got my appointment and so too of many others. My immediate thoughts, thereafter, is that one should not allow social media to dictate too much our life. Just simply scroll past most of the posts on social media and just take note what one is interested in. If there is a need, just unfollow or worse, unfriend. Most social media posts are rants that are not worth to ponder on too much. These days, I use social media merely to record significant events of my life and to put some interesting items that I hope to refer to later. In particular, would like to post only on nice and useful things. And I suggest others do the same; flood the social media with better posts than just rants.

Imperfect (Like Everyone)

Have been going through ups and downs lately. I wanted to do so much but my ageing body and mind do not seem to be cooperating. A great part of me wants to stop pushing for things and wishes to be left alone. I have already had my good share of humiliation and negativities in the past and these contribute a lot to my pessimism. Like everyone else, I'm not perfect and there is no real need for anyone to raise this. Imperfect but not dumb. The desires of progress and self-improvement are still burning within but perhaps the fuel is about to diminish.

When it comes to theoretical physics, I still wish that it is firmly established in UPM and I do believe that both physics and mathematics will stand to benefit from having a good theoretical physics group. As such, there is a need to grow the theoretical physics group larger for sustainability (in my humble opinion). Despite what people think, doing research in theoretical physics is difficult and in these days, one is faced with great difficulty in complying with the publication rate set by administrators without regard to the field and even to the subfields one is in. One remark that I had heard from the past is just change fields, which is not really helpful. Theoretical physics tradition needs to be strengthened and not destroyed at the mercy of individuals who do not like it.

To aspiring young theoretical physicists, do not get easily fooled by the glamour of having to understand the technically difficult subject matter. We may 'glow' locally but the real test is how well established are us in the international arena. I recalled how Prof. Lamberto Rondoni was saying how difficult it is to be truly recognised at the international level even in a single technical subfield. Realise this and one is immediately humbled. To get international recognition, either one has a long tradition of (consistently) producing research output at an international level or once in a blue moon, bright ideas may come and are acceptable by majority of theorists. Having said this, ideas don't grow on trees; they require a significant amount of experience and technical prowess to realise them. Don't dismiss unconventional ideas too quickly but on the cautious side, do look at consistency of crackpot signals produced (see Baez's index). Usually, real crackpots tend to be easily detected upon examination of their understanding of recent technical knowledge.

Finally, above everything, ego does not go well in the pursuit of theoretical knowledge. Some amount of humility and self-doubt will serve as counter-check to the growing ego. In the end, what matters are the good deeds that we produce during such pursuit. These, we will bring to the next life.

Not to sound sermonious, these are things that I try to observe and practice myself. Tried my best and the rest is for Allah to decide. 

In the end, it is our family that will miss us most when we are gone, while working organizations will move on with or without us. Alhamdulillah, yesterday my family put up a nice surprise for me to celebrate father's day. Below is a pic (excuse the sarong and the informality). We simply gathered late yesterday afternoon in front of the TV and had an ice-cream cake for evening tea.

The Talk for ICAAMM 2021

All last week, my mind was occupied with the preparation of the talk I need to give at ICAAMM 2021 hosted Biruni University. Before that, I was still figuring out what to talk on - I had a few ideas in mind. However, I wanted to talk on something new and kept searching for ideas. When the organizers asked for my abstract, I settled with something I was comfortable with, namely, quantization. I had given a similar talk way back in 2012 in IIUM's conference ICAST. I thought I will just update the talk with more materials and recent developments. In this way, I already had some basic slides that I could use. During the preparation all last week, I changed a few times on how I should organize the talk but the main core is still to highlight the different philosophy of two main schools of quantization i.e. geometric quantization and deformation quantization. The initial idea was ambitious but with only 40 minutes given, I have to settle with a simpler talk.

The bulk of contributions to the conference seems to be coming from the community of researchers in fractional calculus, a topic I knew very little about. So in a way, my talk is slightly at odds with the rest. Another invited speaker who was supposed to talk on quantum stuff even change his topic to a different one, I guess, to fit the different audience. I carried with my own quantization talk, regardless. My talk was on Saturday (10.40 Istanbul time and 3.40 pm locally). Below are pics at the beginning of my talk (courtesy of Prof. Aydin Secer). They did a recording of the talk (not sure where it will be published) and there was also FB live (possibly still available on FB).

The talk went OK, I guess, but there were several things on my mind that I did not get quite to say in the talk (as usual). Below is a pic of the closing ceremony with all the invited speakers.

I attended most of the invited talks apart from the late evening ones on the first day, which includes Prof. Maslina Darus and Prof. Adem Kilicman (the other Malaysian representatives). Sorry guys, I was just too tired. I guess it is the age factor. I get tired easily these days and will easily fall asleep (in spite of me wishing to do more work).

It is certainly an honour to be invited to give talks and the invitation has always come from outside. Perhaps, within my work place, not much interest goes into what I do. I hope that will change after say another decade because I don't think one can ignore theoretical physics or quantum sciences for a physics department. The more we ignore, the more difficult for us to catch up in these very technical areas. Anyway, I have put in quite a bit of work to make my talks of some international and respectable level (I think). 

Received First Dose

As reported in this post, got my appointment for my first dose of vaccination earlier this week. In a way, it was unexpected, mainly because I'm living in a different state from my workplace. I registered at MySejahtera using my home address but somehow the place where I will get my vaccination is at the Teaching Hospital of the university (see pic below). So I guess the university must have somehow did a different registration and cross-referenced my details with my own registration in MySejahtera, for which I thank you.

On Tuesday, I received a call from the hospital to confirm on my appointment. There were some forms, sent through e-mail, for which I need to fill on the day of the vaccination. Fearing to drive alone (thinking of side-effects) all the way from Seremban to the hospital (situated near the campus), I applied for interstate travel for me and my second son from the local police station.

On the day itself, we began our journey earlier fearing traffic jam due to police blockades or congestion at the hospital. However, the journey was smooth and we reached the hospital slightly before 10.20am. There were plenty of parking spaces then, perhaps due to the vaccination was meant only for the staff. I was asked to take the lift to the sixth floor and go to the EnT clinic. Inside there was already a short queue lined up for the vaccination.

With SOPs in place, the queue and all the necessary registration, it took almost an-hour wait before I got my first dose of vaccine. The vaccine we had was from Pfizer. After we had the shot, we were asked to record this in MySejahtera to show that we have completed our first dose (see pic).

The second dose will be administered about three weeks later; mine will be on 25th June. For colleagues who have yet to get their first dose, you need to bring your smart phones for all the records needed for MySejahtera; the forms printed (one on the declaration, needs two copies); and a pen to fill up details.

Side effects so far? The ones that are obvious are the soreness of the arm where the shots were made, and a headache (which I already have one slightly before coming). During the late evening, there was a sense of feeling feverish but this could be psychological. My other half gave me two paracetamol tablets to help relief the headache and she advised me not to take pain killers (not sure why). Until now, still having that arm soreness and slight prolonged headache. No fever so far.

Despite the headache, that afternoon I attended briefly a meeting and later joined a seminar in the institute given by a Malaysian data scientist working in Shell UK.

Picked up some useful resources from the talk (see below).

May End Post

 After the USM talk, my mind is now preoccupied with the (next) talk in Biruni Universit in Istanbul i.e. for the 9th International Conference on Applied Analysis and Mathematical Modelling. I was listed as one of the invited speakers representing Malaysia (along with Prof. Adem Kilicman and Prof. Maslina Darus). I have been to the same series of conference in 2018 but due to the pandemic, this conference will now be held online. So the last weekend and the few days beforehand I was thinking of what topic to give the talk on. I had already some ideas in mind, which is on quantization but I wasn't too sure about it. Finally I blurbed something to the organizers on "Quantization: Crossroads and Crossovers". I have been brewing some ideas about comparing geometric quantization with deformation quantization for some time like many others have done too, but I wish to focus on systems with external fields. Let's see how my preparation goes.

The other development from the time of 'Eid was the surprise email from a colleague Iftikhar Ahmed during my Durham PhD days. We continued correspondence thereafter, telling each other about our families and life in general. He did certainly remember my obsession with books (which he said would have bankrupted me). Here is a (younger) picture of him with his children (hope he doesn't mind me sharing it here).

Last Sunday, he send me a WhatAapp video showing him mowing his lawn. He certainly has a gorgeous lawn and it seems he has a large comfortable home.

Tonight, received another surprise. I have registered for Covid-19 vaccination on April 3rd (actually it was much earlier but somehow it did not register completely)  and have been waiting since for the date(s) for the vaccination. When there was an open call for Astra Zenica vaccine shots made available elsewhere and there was a rush for these, I felt a bit frustrated. Suddenly tonight, I received a notification that I will be getting my first shot on June 4th at UPM.

I was expecting to get a shot in Seremban itself since I have put my Seremban address during registration but this is fine and good. I would have to travel slightly further distance and probably the hassle of getting police permission to travel interstate during the strict MCO period. 

Mathematical Physics Talk for USM

Some time ago, I received an invitation from the organizers of USM Physics Coffee Talk. It was a pleasant surprise for me to be invited there. So all this week and parts of last week, I was gearing up and preparing for this talk. I shelve most other tasks to actually prepare for the talk including a proposal paper for the collaboration with UniMaP and UTM. I had to apologise for my minimal involvement in putting up the details of the proposal paper, delegating the tasks to my younger colleague Dr. Nurisya. Below is the poster prepared by the organizers:

They also had this put up introducing me as the speaker (not sure where they get this from).

For the last item under the experience box, I didn't quite remember what my involvement really is, but I guess it was minimal (to the point of forgetting). There were many other more significant events that I have taken up but of course, they are not recent. In any case, this is really a minor point.

One of my bad habits when preparing talks is that I tend to brood more than I should, looking up all possible perspectives and references, and usually ending up less time for me to prepare the slides. For this talk, for instance, I was doing my last two slides just about forty minutes before the talk. What happened was, I searched my collection of books and papers for the preparation of the talk, two of which are my own notes from Prof. Herbert Green's lectures and the conference proceedings of an international conference of quantum physics that was organized in Kuala Lumpur in 1997. For Prof. Green's notes, I know I had them in the attic hidden under piles of papers; so finding it seems impossible and I gave up just the day before. I wanted to show to the audience the kind of topics that was covered in the lectures (some of which I have forgotten). For the proceedings, I knew it was not in the attic and I probably misplaced it in one of the rooms. Just three hours before the talk, I made one last search in the room of my eldest son and there it was. I quickly scanned the cover and the first page of Cecile deWitt-Morette's contribution to the proceedings (see below). I also wanted to find the group photo but I just could not find it. We had so many luminaries in the conference: von Klitzing (Nobel laureate), 't Hooft (at the time, yet to receive his Nobel prize), Paul Townsend (my own invitation), Charles Bennett, Bryce deWitt, R.J. Baxter, John Klauder, Pavel Exner and many more.

The page above was not quite the page I intended to show (I completely forgotten what I have read). There was the sentence "Somewhat awed by what I had unthinkingly offered I began gathering material on quantum physics as seen by mathematicians, and recollecting the role of mathematics in my life as a physicist" in the above but this does not give the impact I wanted. The real sentence that I wanted was on the next page: 

"As I was pondering the rich and multifaceted interactions between Mathematics and Quantum Physics, a student of mine, Alexander Wurm, brought me a mathematics dictionary which includes a synoptic table of physics disciplines and mathematics theories. Very interesting, but again too rich a fare: the whole of mathematics is relevant to Quantum Physics."

The last sentence was the thing I wanted to highlight to the audience - the broad spectrum of mathematics that one needs to cover for quantum theory. If Cecile deWitt-Morette was overwhelmed with the scope she needs to cover for the talk at the conference, then I would be very much more overwhelmed with the task of explaining mathematical physics. The only difference here is my audience is a student audience (mostly) and not expert researcher audience. This is also the reason why I had only two slides that contain equations in them.

I was actually hoping to do more. The plan is to have another short section just after the (Un)Resonable Effectiveness slide to talk about the history of relativity and history of quantum theory; this would be the section on the growth of physics with the help of maths (as suggested by the organizers in the title of the talk). There, I would mention Grossmann helped Einstein with tensor calculus and differential geometry; and Born and Jordan helped Heisenberg with matrix mechanics. Having said matrix mechanics, I was also supposed to mention that Prof. H.S. Green (being a disciple of Born) had a book on Matrix Methods in Quantum Mechanics, which was given praises by some  experts. It is also interesting that Cecile deWitt-Morette mentioned in her article that "All throughout my life, I have a needed a mathematician friend willing to tutor me 'as needed' " - a thing that I have always wished that I could have.

Now, I have this section called "Standards" where I would just review (selected) mathematical ideas behind the basic theoretical subjects of physics. (Note: if I had more time, I would put up section dividers before starting a new section, but then I need to finish the real content first.) Thereafter, I really wanted to do a "Beyond" section, where I would delve into some of my research interests: contextuality in quantum foundations and complex networks using graph theory, entanglement geometry via group actions on complex projective spaces and symplectic topology, quantum chaos and even Langlands program via modular forms plus categorical quantum mechanics and topos quantum theory. However these would have taken me more (infinite) time to prepare.

Overall, I was not satisfied with my own talk - I wished I could have said more. As it is, it may appear to be of a mumbo-jumbo to some. I really wanted to get some feedback about my talk but then again, why do I have to put more stress on my own self. I have my own recording of the talk, which is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99qHg5Pxr0w. The audio during Q&A is not good - perhaps the organizer will have a better video later.

The Day My Brother Ahmad Tajuddin Left Us

Yesterday, my brother Ahmad Tajuddin left us. I was writing this post, thinking that he has shown some improvements in his health. Before reading the message from my sister Noraini to our family WhatsApp group, I was discussing with my younger colleague about our proposal in collaboration with UniMaP and UTM. At the time, I was feeling a little tense, thinking about three tasks I need to do: the proposal, the preparation for my talk in USM and my courses. Almost immediately thereafter, I read the message telling the family that my brother has passed away due to a sudden heart attack. My heart sank and my eyes began to swell with tears. I immediately messaged the family, asking for any documents from the hospital. This is needed for us to ask permission for inter-state travel. It took awhile for us to get these documents as they require the signature of my late brother's family member. Thanks to my other sister Zaizah (who was there at the hospital helping out), we finally got the documents around noon. Before getting the documents, I applied for leave for the next day (Monday) in case there are delays in making arrangement for the funeral. I also cancelled the morning class because I knew I won't be in the right state of mind to teach and excused myself from the meeting that night to discuss the proposal.

On printing the documents, we immediately went to the police station to get the permission letter to travel to Selangor/Kuala Lumpur where the funeral will be. Once we got the letter, we (with my eldest son and my other half) head off immediately to the mosque (Masjid Muhsinin) where the funeral prayers will be. The prayers was conducted after half past two, after which we went to the burial place in Kampung Bohol (quite a distance away from the mosque). Around half past three, my brother rested in his final resting place. My eldest son helped to lower the body to the grave as I have a bad back condition to do so.

This is a picture that Prof. Norihan send me (I forgotten to ask her who made the picture) saying condolences.

My late brother Tajuddin is the one who helped get a position in UPM and I am most grateful for this. After coming back from Bintulu campus, I stayed in his place (Mardi quarters) before applying for fellowship in the Sixth College. My regret is not being able to go to his son's funeral (at the time my other half is getting her first vaccination shot) and he must have been disappointed. The second regret when he came out from his coma, I did not get the chance to see him before he left us. May Allah grant him His Forgiveness and Mercy on his soul.

Darker Days Ahead

Update: My brother Ahmad Tajuddin has just passed away this morning.

Yes, we have gone past the 'Eid celebration, a celebration with a sombre atmosphere. Just a few days before 'Eid, we read the news of the aggression against worshippers in al-Aqsa mosque. Al-Aqsa mosque is considered a holy site to the Muslims and such news sank heavy in the hearts of many Muslims. Perceptions differ dependent on what one reads (the choice is yours) but whatever happens there is of concern to Muslims in general. As a consequence, a new crisis erupted and it should be a concern for everyone. It certainly defies logic how some would prefer such escalation or even worse, armageddon. I guess, they do not know what are they wishing for - perhaps it is in the same mould as suicidal thoughts but only this is much worse as it affects many others.

The other reason for the sombre atmosphere is the third wave of Covid-19 infections. Beginning from the Sabah state elections, things have grown worse to the point of our ICU capacities in a few places have become saturated. We just had our daily record death of 44 yesterday and if we are not careful, it may just get worse. Due to worsening situation, the government have announced the third country-wide lockdown though economic activities are allowed to run with stringent SOPs. Interstate and interdistrict travels are prohibited apart from emergency cases and certain allowed activities. As such, many are saddened that 'Eid celebrations are only held in one's own house, but personally, this should be our least concern. There is the longer-term concern of how well we are going to fare economically during the difficult times. There is a call for a paradigm shift by health professionals say e.g. in the article here as Covid-19 is here to stay for a considerable period of time.

On a more positive side, my brother Ahmad Tajuddin has been transferred from UMMC to Columbia-Asia Hospital (private hospital) in Shah Alam by his family. So far, from the video that was sent to us, there seems to be positive development from the response that my brother give to the doctor's question. I sincerely hope that he can get better real soon. The special treatment that he gets there will probably costs a fortune.

May Allah help and guide us in the challenging days ahead.

Eid-ul-Fithri 1442

Today is the day we celebrate 'Eid-ul-Fithri marking the fasting month of Ramadhan. Unlike last year (where our second son, Ihsan was working in Pulau Indah and could not be home due to MCO), we have all the family members together for this 'Eid. Alas, my youngest son, who has started working in the nearby McDonalds, was having his morning shift today (clocking in at 7am). Thus, for the morning, we were missing Izzuddin.

We began the morning by performing 'Eid prayers at home together. After the prayers, we started taking family photos and thereafter, we had our breakfast (traditionally, we should do this before the prayers). Below are the morning photos.

My youngest came back from work around 3.30pm. Then we started our second photo session (see below).

For dinner, we ordered pizza just to change our meal menu. Else in the day, I listened to talks online to get some ideas for my USM talk.