I've said a couple of times that I'll be posting more content here
and I'm trying my best to do that. The good news is that I'm taking an English
class right now and we're asked to write stuff there. So, I'll be posting most
of the stuff that I've written there and have them published here.
On our second activity we were told to write a memoir. The topic that I chose here was a very easy one for me
not only because I already wrote something similar when I was trying to work on my
second book but because being a memory athlete, it just felt right doing a
memoir about memory sports. Also, ever since I wrote and published MAUTAK: Howto Supercharge Your Memory, I've always felt the need to re-do that book
because I felt that it was rushed and if you ever read that, you'd notice it too.
I wasn’t able to have someone else to proof-read the whole thing. So when my grandma
read it, it was as if she was transported back in time and started correcting every
word on it. You can see that being a teacher was still so ingrained in her that
she had that book littered with corrections from cover to cover. If I ever do a
re-print or second edition, I’ll definitely use that one and credit her as the
editor.
Neurons on the Ready
It is a cold and rainy day with gray overcast clouds. I am walking
under the rain because I never thought about bringing an umbrella, I thought it
was going to be summer here, and I guess this was a typical summer in UK. My
shoes are now soaking wet from walking over shallow puddles. I can now feel my
cold shriveled toes squishing in my soaked socks. It’s a good thing that I’m
now sitting alone at this huge desk that can fit three more with some elbow
room to spare. I can also spare anyone from the stench later on. I’m in a
conference room inside a posh glass building overlooking the Paddington Station
in the London CBD. Even with an assembly of a number people, photographers,
cameramen, arbiters, and some spectators, the room is dead silent. I can
probably hear a pin drop with a deafening thud. I can hear every click of
cameras as they snap pictures and record videos. I can sense every rustle of
cloth as other anxiously waiting people squirm on their seats as they try to
get ready. I’m trying desperately to calm my nerves as I hold a deck of cards
in my hand. My heart is pounding so fast that it felt almost like a jackhammer
is pounding on my chest. I am shaking so much that I might have set off the
seismograph to the nines. I can feel every muscle in my body quivering. My
hands are trembling. It doesn’t help that the room is too cold for tropical man
like me. I try to calm myself. I breathe in. Exhale. Shake my arms. Squeeze my
fists. I close my eyes, waiting for the signal. The countdown has begun. Neurons
on the ready…
I have always been immersed in physical activities. I’ve been
dabbling in sports since I was a little kid in grade school. I like
competition. I ran around the schoolyard in a race against my mates. I ran as
fast as I could but couldn’t beat the fastest kid. I did a bit of Karate once
during a summer in the 90's but the other kids beat my ass and it didn't help either that he
was also the instructor’s black belt son. I played basketball, a lot of basketball.
I’d even go to school so early in the morning to just play basketball with my
best friends in High School. I even told my school counselor that I wanted to
be like Michael Jordan when I grow up. I was even in the high school varsity
team back then, nope, not basketball, but volleyball. I was too short to be in
the basketball team, the same with the volleyball team for that matter, but
they’re the only one who’ll accept me. But it didn’t matter to me, I just
wanted to compete. I learned to skateboard in my down time. I taught myself how
to swim. I tried so many things but I never amount to anything in them. In all
those sports, I never came anywhere near an elite status. I knew how to play
but I was never really that good. I wasn’t even considered the best, not even
among my friends. It’s safe to say I never won anything of note.
 |
| Hanging out before the start of the competition drying my wet
shoes and jeans, with the view of Central London at the back.
|
That is until I discovered Memory Sports. It’s not actually a
sport, in the truest sense of the word, but it is a competition, a competition
where the participants try to memorize as many random bits of information as
they can in a given amount of time. You don’t need to be as tall as the
mountain nor as fast as cheetah to compete, which is a wonderful thing to me,
given that I’m not that exactly physically imposing. But you do need to have
the proper mental gifts, a big brain, so to speak. At least, that’s what I
thought.
I’ve always considered myself to have a good memory. But it’s
nothing exceptional. It’s not like those people featured on documentaries
or on TV, who can remember huge amounts of information, remember hundreds of
books, or rattle off random trivia. I’m certainly not like that. I am no Rain
Man. My grandfather even had Alzheimer’s and I might have it in my genes too, for
all I know.
Alzheimer’s disease is a terrible affliction to be had. It is not
an ordinary senility that leaves you wondering where you put your stuff; those
are more likely normal occurrences that happen all the time to normal, healthy
individuals. But with this disease, you tend to lose your most recent memories
first. You are then robbed of your personality. You would be like sleeping
beauty that awoke from her thousand years of slumber. You would be reliving a
life you once had and it will leave you struggling to connect your old memories
with a reality that you alone can remember. That is how I remember my grandpa
Rex. He was a virile man back in the days, an avid tennis player. He was a
wrestler for some collegiate team in some university Chicago at one time. He
could grip a man’s arm and probably rip it apart while trying to take his
opponents to the mat. That’s what he was probably remembering while he was
crushing my arms while he was sitting on his wheelchair when I made the mistake
of getting close to him. He might have thought he was in wrestling match and
didn’t recognize me. Good thing someone saw us and saved me from a visit with
the orthopedist. I didn’t want to remember him like that. But that’s all the
memory I had of him. I don’t want to be remembered liked that by my grandkids
as well. It is a terrible disease that I don’t want to wish on anyone else, nor
do I want to have one. But it is probably already in me. I just do not know
right now.
That is why I got enamored with Memory Sports. Aside from it being
a form of competition that pits your skills against another person, it is a
competition that is a purely mental endeavor. It’s almost like you are
competing against yourself. You don’t rely on physical gifts but you rely
mostly on your efforts in training and preparation. The winners in this
competition are made in the training room. We just come on competition day to
show each other where we are now on our skills and how much effort we put in
training. Another thing that keeps me wanting to participate in this
competitive memorization is the possibility of it being a tool that will delay
the onset of Alzheimer’s. I know that it is a hereditary disease and that it I
may or may not have the genes for it, but I also know that prevention is better
than the cure. It may not keep me from having the disease; it may possibly push
back its occurrence. At least, that is my hope.
 |
2010 UK Open International Memory Championship
Right: 1 min. 20 secs. on speed cards (silver) Left: Me with the big ass table & the Japanese TV crew at the back.
|
Neurons on the ready… Go! Finally, the signal that we have been waiting for is blasted through the speakers. Now the race begins. I quickly opened my eyes from deep concentration and glanced at the cards in my hands. I flip through all of them as fast as my shaky hands can muster. A normal untrained person my only see numbers and letters in these cards. But not us, we are mnemonists, trained in the Arts of Memory. In this art named after the goddess Mnemosyne, we do not merely look at texts and numbers, these bland and static information comes alive in our minds. To us, these are lively characters from a cacophony of pre-memorized images that are a part of a scene that we imagine happening right before our very eyes. If only we had the technology to visualize these images and scenes, we’d have an opus worthy of an Oscar. As I reached the last pair of cards, I slammed the timer down as fast as I could. One minute and twenty seconds. Not a bad time for a rookie. It is also good enough to get me a silver medal, my very first ever in international competition.
Before I learned these memory techniques, mnemonic devices, I
never knew that it is possible to train your memory. To change your brain and
make the best of what you are given. I realized that some are not born with
exceptional minds, talents, or skills, but they were a product of their
efforts, of pure hard work. I realized that intelligence might not just be a
stroke of luck that you either have or don’t have, but it is a result of heaps
of effort and dedication in learning. We can’t really be sure of what we have
in our genes but we can definitely measure the effort in our work.
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