MRI, 10th PM and New Furry Member

Last Tuesday, took an emergency leave for an MRI appointment. This is for my follow-up appointment with the S2 clinic next Monday(?). In an earlier post, I have mentioned about (constant) back pain and even difficulty in walking at times. Have seen the doctor in S2 clinic and was told to get an x-ray of my back before coming for the next appointment. My other half told me to get an MRI for better visual of my back predicament. Got the MRI done at KPJ hospital in Seremban. Initially I took leave for this MRI appointment but it seems I got the date wrong (took leave on next Tuesday, which is the wrong day and hence the emergency leave). Twelve years ago, I had already took an MRI at the same hospital and I remembered they used to inject me with a dye. This time round, they did not. The pic is not clear as the one I did last or maybe I just do not know how to look.

The report said that I had a mild disc bulge indenting thecal sac at two different places (used to be only at one location).They also found Tarlov cyst in the sacral region (we knew about this in the previous examination). I have no idea how serious this is but I guess I'll know in my next appointment.

In my last post, I have also mentioned that we had a hung parliament for our election results. There were a lot of unease with two coalitions claiming that they had enough support from other parties. The King suggested for a unity government between the two coalitions but one coalition refused to do so. Finally the King had to intervene and call for another coalition (which had less seats) to join the unity government and also a meeting of rulers to decide the Prime Minister of the new government. So today, it was decided that Anwar Ibrahim would be our tenth Prime Minister. To many, this is a relief since we worry a state of disorder. The next step is to form the cabinet, which is going to be difficult with all the different parties but it is hoped that the politicians will take note of the unity spirit that the King suggests as we have yet to come out from the pandemic-economic crisis.

As I cancelled the next Tuesday and took leave on Monday instead for the next clinic appointment, the new Prime Minister declared that Monday will be a public holiday (the general public were expecting so). Now I have to cancel again my leave on Monday.

Other matters: Yesterday I got my retiree card from KWAP. Surprisingly they had included my Associate Professor title on the card. By right, I should not be using the title once I leave the university because it is an academic post of the university.

Finally, this evening my other half brought home a new cat as the previous owner decided to give him away. The cat comes from the same family of Sally who died recently. The pic below shows the new cat and he is still fearful.

General Elections and the Talk

This weekend, Malaysia had its 15th General Election. The Friday last week was declared a public holiday to allow voters to go back home to their respective voting places. All my sons came back home to vote in Seremban. Never liked politics that much since they tend to cause much division in our society, but vote we must. To lighten up that Friday morning, caught our neighbour cat on our balcony and posted a pic on FB saying that the cat is campaigning for a seat (on the green chairs)

That Friday night, my son took us for dinner at Nasi Arab Damsyik in Senawang. Unfortunately they only had chicken that night, which is a letdown since I don't eat chicken. My other half bought me pizza instead to eat while they are having their meal.

Come Saturday was the election day and that morning it was raining. This time, there seems to be three major political coalitions to choose from (in the past, there was only two). I can imagine the situation where no one single coalition getting a simple majority. My kids had to cast their votes at a nearby school near our home. As we went out for breakfast (it was raining), we can already see cars lining up all the way to the school, which is about ten to fifteen minutes walk from our home.

Me and my other half had to vote at a different place. My other half had to go to work that morning and we will only vote after lunch. The first place we went to did not have our names, and we were told to go to another nearby polling station. Finally we casted our votes.

That evening, I was struggling to finish my slides. I was hoping to say a lot but in the end I didn't get to prepare the slides for the things that I wanted to say (which would touch upon entanglement and this year's Nobel Prize as I did in this post in Malay). Running out of time, I simply reuse some points from some previous presentations that I had. I was also distracted by the election results which came trickling in the night before. The whole talk can be seen here.

Back on the elections; just like I suspected, no single coalition had a simple majority and it was a case of a hung parliament. The king ordered leaders of the coalitions to reconcile their differences with other parties to form a stable government. We shall know tomorrow what has transpired and who will be our new Prime Minister. Whatever it is, most of us common folks want the new government to rebuild our economy after the pandemic that we went through. As I have said, have never liked the divisiveness that is caused by politics.

Worrying Matters, Sally & Upcoming Talk

Two days ago, I was feeling rather down. Early morning, got a message from a professor friend, querying whether I have retired or am I still working. I replied in the latter. He rarely contacted me since I've withdrawn myself from administrative duties and made me wonder on this correspondence. The virtual chat turned to something I have been avoiding and the reason I have avoided most people nowadays. He made the remark that my juniors in the institute have got their professorship (and I don't). I simply replied God has blessed them as such. The mood went downhill when later in the afternoon, I was told about the missing assets that was under my name particularly not accepting the evidence that had been submitted. To think that most of these assets were not even used by me (bought during I was the head of lab at ITMA), I felt so frustrated, though I'm not blaming anyone but the record and implementation systems may need improvement (as well as I am who needs  to be careful in these matters). I don't expect things to be fair in this world, but I do wish that they are not so troubling. Yesterday, I was told that some of these problems can be solved and this cheered me up but there are still a few lost assets to be justified. 

I do consider myself to be best working outside the system, working for personal satisfaction beyond the glitter of titles and (financial) rewards of the system. I do have a personal opinion that certain matters that are trending right now, may backfire in the long run. Many matters appear transactional these days and management matters tend to have less empathy, devoid of humanly considerations. As things become more transactional, people work according to what benefits one (or the deciding party) the most. Academics who tend to be less vocal, appear to have more and more duties heaped upon them, sometimes in the name of continuous improvement. The rigid system in the end will rob the academics of their freedom and the ensuing creativity. This is the reason I consider working beyond the existing system, perhaps working with less rewards and more genuine scientific self-development. Not the thing I personally wanted (and what I've gathered, plenty of academics felt this way) but mere reacting to current situation. One looks for inward spiritual satisfaction, hoping that our deeds are rewarded in the hereafter. I find the following video inspires me a little and shared it on FB. I rarely do this openly and publicly for spiritual/religious matters, usually limiting myself to my own family. Indeed I have started internal family learning circles using WhatsApp as my family members are in different locations.

Turning to something else. Yesterday as I arrived home, I received the message from my other half that Sally, a cat we used to have temporarily before the original owner wants her, died that morning due to cancer. The pic below was taken just before we returned her (see also this FB post).

These are pics of Sally with the owner before she died.

This pic is when she died.

A certain sadness came over me as I remembered when she first came to our home, she was very fearful and shy. She finally came around to be close to me and stayed in our room. The above picture reminds me of my eventual final destination.

Moving to another topic. At the end of last week, I received an invitation to give an online talk for an Indonesian where I used to be part of its editorial board. Earlier this week, the organizer gave me the confirmation and send me this pic.

Initially, the invitation was for Saturday, 19 November, but I replied back that is when we go out for voting in the elections. Finally, they changed it to Sunday. When I received the pics, I was worried about the Professor title, my affiliation and even the pic. I told them that officially I am only an Associate Professor and that they should add Department of Physics to my affiliation. For the pic, this pic was taken when I was representing UPM to UMK's convocation. The robe I'm wearing is usually meant for vice-chancellors (of course, which I am not). The pic is really there in my FB pic collection and not me trying to impersonate some other person. Since this fact is not known too well, I just left it be and need be I can justify it. Hope I have enough time to prepare for this talk and that our voting processes will be swift.

A Day at the S2 Clinic

I've been complaining to my other half of my increasing back pain since the last few months. My back pain used to be episodic but now the pain seems to be there all the time. The only treatment seems to be physiotherapy or pain killers. I have avoided pain killers as much as I could since they tend to make me drowsy and I only take them during (long) weekends, so that I can stay alert while driving to work and back. Last weekend (which is a short one), took Tramadol on Friday night and the drowsiness lingers on few days after. With bad traffic on the highway, this can be dangerous. Finally, yesterday after all my complains, my other half took the trouble to contact her senior half who is working at the S2 public clinic and an appointment was made. I did not when precisely when the appointment until I came back home from office late yesterday. 

The appointment was in the afternoon. I was told that she was in meetings the whole morning. I understand doctors being so busy as my other half were in a public hospital before. Most of the time, however, people do not quite understand a doctor's work and often framed themselves are the main patients that doctors need to attend to. I have learned from my other half to see the doctors' point of view. So, I waited for the appointment and hoped I can get leave for that day.

We met the doctor slightly earlier than scheduled and she made some physical examinations on my back and legs. She made recommendations for an X-ray and other tests and asked us to bring whatever medical records regarding my back the next time (we have searched this in the store room). She also told me that having back pain that one can't get rid of can be depressing and tired. Indeed, I am always tired whenever coming back from work, particularly when my right leg has grown weaker and it gets strained after all the pressing of the accelerator and brakes. I normally go to sleep quite early due to this. At work, I had no place to lie on my back, to relieve some of the pain.

Finally she prescribed some pain-killers and ointment and gave me a medical leave for today (delighted, for otherwise I would have to take an emergency leave out of my remaining few days of leave that I have. I do hope this back problem gets better when I go for further tests and physiotherapy this coming 28th November.

Things Handwritten

In the past one or two weeks or so, I have been posting pics of what I have found during my spring cleaning (it is spring and summer all year long here) of the office as my retirement is just around the corner. The things that I have found is my handwritten notes for two courses that I have taught in my early years of teaching. The following pic is for Classical Mechanics.

There are two parts to this course: the first is simply Newtonian mechanics and the second being Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics. For Newtonian mechanics, I have already introduced index notation for matrices (tensors) and vectors as well as use of curvilinear coordinates. This helps differentiate the level of Newtonian mechanics in earlier courses.

My main course when I started teaching was quantum mechanics (QM). The following pic is my notes for QM (which I have already brought home quite earlier on).

At the time, there was another which handles more of the physics part, which is atomic & nuclear physics (later turned into atomic & molecular physics, I think). So the QM course focuses on the mathematical formalism.

Some observations are due here: 

1. They are both taught in Malay language. We only start to teach in English in 2004 as we open our undergraduate programmes to international students. I was told that students got surprised about me teaching in Malay. Perhaps, they pictured me as an anglophile. For me, no matter what language we are supposed to teach in, we must be good in the language itself to get the points across.
2. They are both handwritten. Note that in the 1990s, not everyone has a computer. I believe I bought my first computer only years later (a 386 running MS-DOS). I used to be computer-phobic. Even when my PhD supervisor asked whether I would like to do computational work or mathematical, I replied the latter. Also, I used to love writing notes with a fountain pen, following my PhD supervisor. As fountain pen and their ink becomes difficult to get, only then I turn to ball pens.

Indeed, earlier before my PhD (before seeing the beauty of the black fat ink), all my notes for my BSc and Part III courses are written with ball pen. I also uploaded the pics of the notes from these courses. Below is the pic for my BSc notes.

 The ones for Part III are shown below.

You probably see my notes for Part III are neater. This is because they have been rewritten from the scribbled notes taken during lectures. I need to do this because Part III is a tough course and I need to be my very best (though most are better than me especially those who have already taken Part I and II for their BSc - will return to this in a future post). A closer look here with my notes on supersymmetry and supergravity, taught by Paul Townsend.

By rewriting the notes, I will be able to understand better - writing out more details and in some cases, detailing out proofs (see the one in pencil). Even my Part III dissertation/essay (on Witten index) was all submitted in handwriting (see below).

I will say more on this when I blog about my Part III experience, God willing. My B.Sc. Thesis (on Minimal SU(5), Modifications and Related Topics) was also handwritten, but I could not find the copy I had at the moment.

Apart from these, I also did another crazy thing; I copied in handwriting some out-of-print books that I can find during my graduate days. Here's an example.

And also from today, I found Kostant's lecture notes (also copied in handwriting), which I have misplaced in some old file (alongside an instruction manual of a book project that never got realised - was waiting the contributions of others).

By copying them in handwriting, I get to read the 'books' and understand the main ideas. Besides, it also help me experience what the ancient scribes are doing. The file that Kostant's notes was placed in is a file containing our theoretical physics lab when it was first realised (including incomplete or unrealised projects).

I should also say that I found back my copy of John Stuart Dowker's rare lecture notes on Selected Topics in Topology and Quantum Field Theory. This was given to me directly from the author using snail mail on my request. It even had his scribbles on it.

After all these posts, someone commented to me how neat they were (after they are rewritten). I did not think much about my handwriting all this while. I do remember some of my teachers had commented the same. I remembered an incident during my primary school (Year 3 or 4, I believe), a teacher (Mr. Perumal) had asked me to help out after school in writing things without telling my parents. As soon as I reached home, my mum sprinkled rice on me out of some local traditions of avoiding misfortunes. Also, my handwriting does not quite correlate with my art abilities (I can draw but not that well). Perhaps, it was the early handwriting training in our early years of primary school (now these exercises seems to be transferred to kindergartens). The other thing that I do remember is that we were taught cursive writing, which I think they are no longer taught (at least not that I know of) and cursive writing has become obscure. Today, writing are much replaced by hitting keys on the keyboards and that makes handwriting become more of a lost art. I do wish that it can be resurrected voluntarily by the students themselves - not added as a further burden to the existing already heavy schoolwork.

Eldest Son's Birthday

Yesterday was my eldest son's birthday. In a way, if I had a lot of leaves, I would probably stayed home yesterday. Unfortunately, I don't. In fact, both me and my other half was working yesterday. So, we planned to have our dinner outside (most days, we will have our dinner at home). Indeed, we will find any special occasion to celebrate and we often celebrate our birthdays at least with a special birthday cake. As soon as i got home yesterday, I went to the local Bakers Cottage store to get a black forest cake and they had a combo offer at the time, so I took that.

After Maghrib, we went out to have dinner at a nearby dining place to have something different than the usual. After dinner, back home, we took this picture of him with his gifts.

The bouquet of chocs was bought earlier by my other half, delivered to him during lunch.

He seemed happier than the usual days. I hope he continues to be so. At this age, I just wanted to see my family happy. I have been focusing too much on work before this and right now, I'm feeling very vulnerable and hope that I will not go so soon.

As I took photos of my eldest, I also took photos of my other half with the cats, Boboi (with the nice looking fur patterns) and Meli (the cat we adopted from Gambang).

We did not eat the cake since we were already full from the dinner and just kept it in the fridge for tomorrow. Later that night, we got a call from our youngest, that he is having a fever at the time. He took a Covid test but it turned out negative. My other half advised to repeat the test again later. I pray that this is just a normal fever. The XBB variant is already here in Malaysia, and the rumour it is worse than the already widespread Omicron. I pray that we won't be hit much on this new wave.

53 Days Left

It is nearly two month since I've last blogged here, and I miss chronicling events of my life. Essentially I've paused doing so because of some events and I would not want anything I say here to be used against me (one can't be too careful). In fact, I tried to stay out of people's way since coming back to the department and perhaps make myself invisible to most people. I am not sulking nor am I giving up (far from it). I am just doing things differently irrespective of what is going on around me (in a way, giving what some want out of me). I have only 53 days left to be with the present university and I will be out of people's way. I've started cleaning up my office little by little and in the process, sieving through documents that I would be throwing away and realised that most of what we have done in the past meant very little as they were mostly considered as one-off events (though I would like to think of them as building the appropriate culture as we grow). There seems to be a tendency for people to change things as they felt they need to be seen doing something different. I remembered the time when I took up the duties from the past directors, I was careful not to break the tradition that has been established and I was then criticized for not showing enough leadership. When there was a call for change, I got criticized again for trying to do something different. Now, I have moved on, hoping to do things differently and independently. So my morning today, started off with my other half going for her (daily) exercise at S2 City Park, and then us having a good Mee Jawa breakfast.

With my retirement around the corner, I am bracing myself for days when my pension pay is half of what my current pay is. I probably need to get another job or at least, a part-time job as I still need to pay substantial amount of bills. My youngest is currently doing his diploma in Computer Science at UiTM, Jasin and I hope he continues to do his B.Sc. I have to support his education at least for a number of years to go.

Just a week ago (during the Deepavali weekend), we brought him out for brunch in Melaka.

My third son has just finished his Computer Engineering studies at IIUM some months ago and has started working in Cheras in a computer company. He has conveyed to me his intention to continue with postgraduate studies (had a verbal offer from a potential supervisor). He had in fact presented a paper at ICSIMA 2022 from a work he did in his final year project.

He was probably the youngest at the conference (he took two days leave from work for this). Besides these, my other half has sold off her clinic to a younger doctor since the owner of the premises where her clinic was, put an age limit to occupy the building. Since there was already a buyer, she decided to sell the clinic then (and even so, there were many obstacles). Currently, she is freelancing to do locum (which means no steady income).

I keep my hopes open to get a job after retirement. I still wish to be able to continue with my research since there are still open questions in quantization and quantum foundations that I was investigating (not completely solved by my students). At some point, I do wish to return to quantum field theory - had a brief encounter with my student in thermal field theory. The very least that I want to do is to help others to do research. I've started blogging back at Acu Frekuensi (where I wrote about the recent Nobel Prize in Physics - republished at FizikKini) and also at Ketchup Spills (writing about surrounding issues about the recent claim that quantum theory has to be complex). These posts tend to be slightly technical since others can write better popular articles. There is indeed absence of such articles in our local science literature and explaining certain technical concepts may be valuable (though this may limit the readership). It also conveys the seriousness of the research beyond what is apparent from popular science articles and helps public to be aware the cumbersome work that was done or needs to be done. Abroad, this is often done by magazines of professional (physics or maths) societies. There is also absence of local technical blogs.  Perhaps this is the thing that I can do and make myself useful after my retirement (unfortunately, not the kind of thing our local universities look for but I'm more concern about the good deeds that I will bring to the hereafter). May Allah grant me the strength and help me with my future endeavours.

Viva, Reunion at a Wedding and Physics Seminar

Last Thursday morning, I had another viva session and this time I was an internal examiner. I went out early from home, thinking that I should be in campus earlier. But alas, before the Seremban RnR (northbound), there was a traffic jam due to an accident. So in the end, I arrived in campus at the usual time (slightly after 8am). The student who was having her viva was from our own group, Jessica Liang, a MSc student of my younger colleague Dr. Chan. Her work was essentially on the spectra of known network models (undirected and directed). It was an interesting work, well within the usual theme 'Can you hear the shape of a drum?', the drum now being the different network models. The work showed motifs influence the spectra much (something new that I have learned). Jessica defended her work well and below is a picture after her viva.

The field of complex networks was something I wanted the institute to explore on since there are many applications of it but my interest in it stemmed from my earlier interest of topology and hyperbolic geometry. I wasn't very successful in getting much interest and in pursuing the field as it is heavy on data mining and computing, which are not my strong forte. Had a few student projects in it and some went incomplete. One indeed was with Security Commission on collusion detection; I hope they are happy with what we have given them given our limited resources.

Come the weekend, my son who has just began work at a computing firm, went back home to get more of his things here. He seems to be doing alright from what I can see. There was something else that I looked forward to in the weekend, an invitation from an old school friend to attend his daughter's wedding. Many of my school-mates will be there and was hoping to meet them all. On Sunday, we had a good breakfast with the family at Restoran Kambing Terbang in Garden Homes; in the morning, they serve good roti canai etc. After breakfast, three of us (me & my other half and the youngest) headed off to Bahau for the wedding. There, met many of my school friends. Here are some pics:

It was nice to see them again after all those years. However, we could not stay long there (and miss the larger group photo) since my other half has a seminar that she wanted to attend and my son is going back to his place as well. So we were back home around 2-ish (was expecting a traffic jam but it wasn't that bad).

Today, thee is another seminar event at the Physics Department; it was meant to be under my watch. Luckily, the younger colleagues have taken care of everything, since I was out of the communication loop on the matter. So I met Prof. Han Sang-Wook, this time face-to-face. The last time, we organized a joint JBNU-UPM (virtual) seminar and was communicating with him. His talk was on "X-Ray Absorption Fine Structure and Atomic Short-Range Ordering in Materials" (the poster made had a little misspelling on his name, so I do not show it here). It was an interesting talk giving me the picture of how x-ray absorption spectra can be a probe for the local geometry of atoms in the material. Here are some pics.

Was told by the chairperson that Prof. Han will give a plenary talk at the MASS conference in Terengganu, followed by a visit to UMK in Kelantan.