Ibby’s Blog

With our long-standing and well respected MP Richard Caborn retiring, the process of selecting a suitable successor was well under way. When exactly Big Gordan will call the election, if he can ever bottle it, we didn’t know, nevertheless the Sheffield Labour Party decided to send search guards to succeed a man who has been a MP for Sheffield Central for the last 24 years. Great achievement, I hope he gets shifted to the House of Lords and continues his good work. I hadn’t realised how complex and involved the process was until I attended last night’s nomination meeting at my local central branch. I was pretty sure the meeting was at 7.30pm, but when I got there, I was politely reminded by the Chair that I was late by 25 mins. Oh no! The meeting had already started at 7.00pm. Horrible consequence of this was that I was barred from taking part in the nomination as the process had already begun, so (sigh) I had the pleasure to observe instead which wasn’t any fun.  My frustration did ease a little bit when my preferred candidate got nominated by the group, so all in all my vote wouldn’t have made much difference anyways. The rest of the evening was occupied by our branch AGM, in which I volunteered to help with coordinating our campaign in the all-important forth coming local election. The power balance in the Council is on the knife edge between us and Lib Dems, so we must win the Sheffield Central, a message unapologetically alarmed by the Chair. I even got elected as a CLP delegate for the next year which involves meeting up with the constituency MP now and then for a cuppa and a bit of chit chat. Ah, isn’t democracy wonderful?

Hello 2008!!!!! ’tis a big year for me, need to sort me sein out and get my arse moving on my phd, and indeed, with life. One of my (many) new year’s rezzies was that I’ll be blogging atleast once a week.. to give some insight into my wild and whacky life. Coming soon… 

Can we please have the drums rolling, the red carpet out and my pom pom girls (yes, including you Ramsay) dancing about… because I am back! The great northern prince of the highest ‘bubble’ universe!  There is such concept as bubble universe….no its not a universe full of farts! Go and check it out! Lazy Sods!

OK it’s been awhile since I last blogged (about 2 months according to Andrew’s punch card statistics), a lot of things has happened since and I can’t, in the words of the PM, be ‘bovvered’ to write about them all. OK first thing first, I’ve just arrived from the Midland Graduate School 2007 which was held in the tacky City of Nottingham. Yes, every City apart from Sheffield is tacky in my warped view.  

Even though the City itself might have been tacky; the University (in particular the CS department) was very impressive and beautiful. Overall, I really enjoyed the whole MGS event. I was commuting everyday which was not only tiring but also it meant that I missed out on the social side of the event… which Andrew thought was the most useful bit! Nevertheless, I benefited from some really interesting lectures given by some outstanding personalities of Computer Science.

 I thoroughly enjoyed Category Theory given by Neil Ghani, what a fantastic lecturer he is, he delivered a set of breath-taking lectures (plus 1 due to my big gob) which truly (no punch intended) transformed a very abstract/arcane field of category theory into something which was easily understood by amateurs and the like. It never hit me so hard the power and beauty of category theory, its intrinsically everywhere! Even in my head!  I liked it so much I dragged Andrew to the main library as soon as I came back to find the classic book on Category Theory called ‘Categories for the working Mathematician’ by Saunders Mac Lane, a leading category theorist. Good job Andrew’s German was still just about clicking, the old dusty book was titled in German! ‘ Die Grundlehren Der Mathematischen Wissenschaften in Einzeldarstellungen’, and it was a nightmare to find it. Anyway, back to the MGS thing.

 I thought the lectures on Concurrency Theory delivered by the star Colin Stirling were bit too basic which was a shame really because I went there to purely further my knowledge of concurrency theory which I did not TBH.  The Algorithmic Problem Solving lectures were wicked too. It was so bloody interesting; it reminded me of the work of the famous George Polya and Edward De Bono in the field of Mathematical thinking which I read much of during my youth. I think I enjoy the problem solving side of Mathematics more than anything else.

Apart from lectures and constantly being on the phone to my comrade Andrew back in the VT lab,  I spent most of my MGS breaks ‘fish spotting’ in the aquatic/pondy thing they have outside the department (yes… I know how sad!). Oh my Lord, I had to guard Peter Hofner… yes HIM!…from catching a fish or two for his lunch! No joke, he was serious about it ar’nall. Shame on him! These Germans…what are they bloody like? LOL. Nah, I enjoyed the company of all my German friends there in MGS, they’re all ace! Ich Liebe Deutsche.

I guess its back to serious stuff, I better get working on this paper which Mike has been banging on about. Its great to be back!

Here I was working for FREE for the department (officially refused to be paid even though I was offered money!), and trying my best to SELL this department to UCAS students so that we get a high intake (ahh… how nice of me!), but during the process of doing this, I got blocked and humiliated by a senior lecturer in front of other academics for leaving the door open for a room which had a very expensive projector in for 2 mins. It doesn’t stop there. He wouldn’t even listen to the fact that I wasn’t even the LAST person out of the room thus bear no responsibility of such allegation. I even apologised (“Sir, I am very sorry, this wont happen again”) which I didn’t had to but that unfortunately went to death ears. It’s not the fact that he was highly ignorant; he rudely interrupted an important conversation I was having with my panel examiner. He dramatised the whole event and even had the nerves to complain to other academics of such a trivial matter which he got completely wrong.  What a winkler you are Sir!

“Sure,” mused Ibby “Is 11am OK?”

“No,” replied Kirill “I can only make 9pm or later.”

“Oh, dear,” sighed Mike “9pm is much too early.  How about 2am?”

Richard screamed and ran out of the room.

Happy New Year Everyone!! Welcome 2007! Bring it on Baby! OK how was Christmas and new years celebrations? Didn’t do much for crimbo and the New Year’s celebration wasn’t anything spectacular either, but never mind! 2006 has been, in retrospect, one of the best years of my life despite the initial crash fall of failing a core RTP module and breaking up with my child-hood friend Imran. Nothing gets me emotionally down but those two things did. If I am honest, I do miss Imran in many ways as he was one of my best mates for years. I bloody miss his free Shapla curries! No, I really enjoyed every minute of his good company, but even now,  I still have no regret we have broken all association with his family for whom…well the less said the better really. Let’s forget about the doom and gloom and remember the good times which there was plenty of. In all, I’ve achieved so many things, so many personal objectives and dreams which I thought I would never achieve but have in one year. I have re-unified with my mother after so many years of absence, this on its own makes this year the best year ever! Ahhh…I’ve been cared as a little boy but hey I also get chastised for being naughty with a whip on odd occasions In University life, it has been frantic to say the least. Boy I can say that again. We’ve really turned what was one of the dullest research groups (Verification and Testing) into one of the most exciting, vibrant and party research group in the whole university. How do I put it…it’s been mad full stop because I don’t know where to begin. We’ve had so many changes with both personnel and the lab itself it’s simply unbelievable. We’ve had a really pleasant summer with many picnics and events organised by our commander and chief HM Hughes, which was matched by beautiful sunny summer weather. It was really sad to see Fran (one of our core VT Mafia member) leave and go back to Spain at the end of Xmas. Even though me and Fran had many interesting arguments in the subject of Britain’s superiority over Spain, he was really nice as a person and I, like many other VTers, will miss him dearly. HM Hughes believes he has a clear vision (after his laser eye surgery) for us for the forthcoming year, but we’ll wait and see on that. Events leading up to Crimbo was even madder with many spontaneous activities and lunches, and even less actual research work done. On that topic, I have finally handed in my transfer report (yes it was 3 months late… ha!), but I’m nervously waiting for feedbacks from my overlord – Dr Mike Stannett. Going back to summer, we offcourse had the bleeding World Cup! It was one of the best world cup in living memory for me, and boy did England under perform as usual. It still baffles me how on earth did France get to the world final and Italy (out of all teams) won the world cup! Argentina was the clear favourites and played some magical stuff but lost marginally to the host Germany in the quarter finals. Brazil was really woeful despite being the bookies favourite to win the prestigious golden cup. Back in the English League, my local team Sheffield United won historical promotion to the most overrated league in the world – the premiership. Because it has been on my child-hood dream to watch the premiership matches, because I live minutes away from the stadium and because I knew there was high chance of Sheffield United coming straight down again, I decided not to miss this golden opportunity of fulfilling my long awaited ambition and thus I bought a season ticket at the Kop end of Brammal Lane. I have seen the likes of Chelsea, Liverpool, Man Utd and Arsenal play under my noses. I will treasure those moments all my life. I still dream to become a famous footballer and have a footballer’s wife! Lol. One of my new year’s resolutions is to gain fitness and get back in playing the beautiful game with the local lads. Politically, I was heavily involved with the Labour party canvassing in the local election for the Sheffield Central Ward. In the process and through out the year, I have enjoyed meeting grass root political activists and many leading governmental ministers which includes the likes of David Miliband and Charles Clarke. After campaigning so hard, we marginally lost the election to…the Green Party!! We were bloody gutted! In positive note, the seating Lib Dem candidate was off-seated and they ended up coming third below Labour. But Nationally, Labour took a great thumping with the evil Tories gaining record numbers of councils and regions. People were fed-up with our war-monging and self-obsessed PM – Tony Blair. He’s desire to stamp his glory and make his mark in the History text books came to a disastrous end with him having to state his departure date shortly after the election. He’s arrogant decision to lead Britain into an illegal war with Iraq and Afghanistan under the supervision of his overlord GW Bush has fallen foul with hefty repercussions for him, Britain and the Labour Party both internally and externally. Anyways, we’re gearing up for another local election in 2007 and preparation for that are already under way and I reckon we’ll do this time because we’re fighting the Green Party. Despite having a dazzling year, the year ended rather distastefully with execution of Sadam Hussain taken place on the Islamic Eid day, an Islamic holly day after Hajj. I never liked Sadam for his brutal treatment of the Kurds and Shias, but he represented a symbol of resentment against the oppressive and imperialist West. He’s hanging was inevitable but to do it on the Eid day was simply a slap on all Muslims by the Americans who orchestrated the whole event. So much for justice, fair trails and human rights. They turned Sadam from a murderer to a martyr, and no doubt his spirit will haunt the invaders for time to come. I hope 2007 brings peace and justice for Iraq and Palestine but somehow I doubt this will happen. Have a great year everyone! Peace out!

Sorry I couldn’t/didn’t update my blog for the last three days, it’s been hectic to the say the least. Nevertheless, it’s been the three most loving/enjoying/fulfilling days of my blessed life; our family is once gain blessed to have our mother back after returning from Bangladesh. My good friend Andrew is proof-reading my report, thanks mate. Yesterday saw the beginning of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan which is where Muslims spend a month fasting and fulfilling one of the five pillars of Islam. This ramadhan, inshallah, will be the best and most blessed ramadhan, and already the atmosphere of love/excitement/togetherness within the muslim community is simply buzzing, this is something others cant appreciate without being involved. The past year (in Islamic calendar) saw Muslims all over the world renewing their faith like never before and fighting (both physically and intellectually) to defend the holy deen (faith) from the transgressors, again like never before. The main achievement in the past year has been the elimination of the defeatist mentality that was rampant across the Islamic ummah (body), Lebanon’s courageous victory against the Zionist state was the turning point to that.  They try to portray the Muslims as terrorists, evil, and uncivilised etc to fight and justify their imperialist war for their capitalist ambitions. But this has failed; the great British public know better and have shown great solidarity towards the Muslim community both here and around the world. Some elements of the Muslim community  forget the kind generosity of the British public; their kind heart has given homes and shelters to millions of Muslims across the globe, particularly when they needed the most such as the tsunami in Indonesia.  Thus, it’s high time for the Muslims, even amidst the oppression, injustice and transgression, to abolish the militant mentality and join the political process and lead by example. Islam didn’t spread by the sword but by the good example set by the past Muslims. The new generation of Muslims can’t afford to grow up hating the west. This would be a grave mistake as that would give the victory to the racial bigots who want to divide us. Our children must grow up respecting and understanding our host and neighbours, as their hospitality has made their home our home. Our children must grow up with education and knowledge, and not fill up the ghettos with no hope and future. Instead, let our children be the entrepreneur of the future, and bring justice for the poor and weak in a world which is obsessed with materialism and power.

Its been one of those days where time flew in super sonic speed, and gone before you know it. I did manage to get some work done, but not enough to my liking. I got a taxi in the morning thinking that I was getting late for my weekly meeting with my supervisor. However, only to find out that he would prefer me to carry on with my report, more importantly, this gave him the opportunity to look at my last week’s submission. I have decided to cancel my London trip in order to concentrate on my transfer report. Also, I had the beautiful German girl proof-reading for me again, and she has kindly volunteered to do more. Great! Meanwhile, Andrew is not only busy with his transfer report but also busy in reorganising the VT lab in preparation for the influx of new research students. Good luck to him! In news, the Home Secretary (Dr Reid) was urging the Muslims in the UK do more to combat extremism etc Even though I agree with him, I  likewise urge him to revise the Government’s foreign policies which are unjust, hypocritical and biased against the Muslims across the world. We Muslims must set an example and live in peace and harmony with our host and neighbours.  Thailand is going under a coup right at this moment as I update this blog. Even though that’s troubling for Thai democracy, it is nonetheless a new experience for me to watch how the army is rapidly taking control of the entire country and the government is just watching quite helplessly.

Today, with the help of Andrew and Frank, I’ve finally managed to bust the busta paradox and worked out how to lay out the pi semantics in the standard fashion as they do in the lit. papers. We didn’t need busta after all; Andrew’s simple macros did the trick (well nearly). I had a headache all afternoon even though I was entertained by the likes of Emmanual (who’s always dressed in slick fashion nowdays) and Andrew (who’s always encouraging me to have another cuppa with him to serve his addiction). I’ve got the dreaded derivation done of the GetElem process which took the best part of two pages. Yuck! Also, Andrew has kindly again proof-read me work, and warmly commented that the writing is getting better which is pleasing. He also created my DCS website within minutes. Seeing him in action in such lightning speed is amazing. Away from work and DCS, I went to see a friend in the evening, but because of the headache, I came home early to have a nap. I do feel little bit stressed out today but that wont help as I’ve got many things left to do with my transfer report. In the current affairs, the Lib. Dem are having their annual conference in Brighton. They seriously lack the leadership at the moment as Sir M Campbell (the current leader) doesn’t have the cutting edge and charm of a winning political leader like Tony Blair or  even David Cameron. The Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr Williams) is right in saying that kids now days have too much stress and pressure to perform in their childhood instead of having fun and enjoying their youth like the previous generations. Tomorrow is Tuesday which can only mean one thing – a meeting with my supervisor. I always dread meeting him beforehand but feel reified and satisfied when it’s finished and gone OK. I hope that’s the case tomorrow.

It’s been a slow day today; my room mate has arrived back from Manchester where he has been to the Man. Utd Vs Arsenal match. It baffles me how got a ticket so soon without any planning beforehand. It usually takes months to get a high priority match ticket at Old Trafford. I’m slightly pissed off that Liverpool have again lost to Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, we need some clinical finishers and fast. Mind you we’ve won so many cups, its about time some other clubs enjoyed a fraction of our success. I usually play football on Sundays with my local lads but not this week as I prefered to be in to carry on with me transfer report and moreover, to avoid injuries. The Pope has given an apology in person to the Muslims, but it’s not far enough in my view as this sort of mistake should never be made by a person of his position and stature.  I’m ploughing through my transfer report slowly but surely. Myself and Andrew are planning for some happy time after this transfer report, but we suspect things will get more hectic in the days and weeks to come.