I'm Back Again (for the Nth time)

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Finally got it!

Alright! I don't know how many times I've already said I'll be doing this more frequently and more consistently, so just add this to that number. 2014 has passed without a single post from me, I think over a year lay off would be a nice time to come back. If you are wondering what kept me from doing this, you'll have to wonder some more because I don't exactly sure why. Let's just say I was pre-occupied with other stuff, primarily with memory training and competitions. Since my last post, I finally gained my Grand Master of Memory title went I went to the World Memory Championships in London, UK last December 2013. That's pretty much all that was notable in my performance then other than my personal bests in Names and Faces and Hour Numbers. If I do not care much about competing I'd rest my laurels with that and be content to walk around telling people I'm a GM. But I'm not into that. I'd love to compete as much as possible if the opportunity is there.

WMC 2013 Awarding Ceremonies

And speaking about opportunity, the great mind behind Extreme Memory Tournament has opened the event to the public. Anyone now has a chance to compete in this year's XMT. If any of you are interested in taking this opportunity to travel to San Diego to compete against the World's Extreme Mnemonists, head on over to the XMT training site and register to get your chance to qualify. If you are reading this, as of this writing, there is still time to qualify bu there are only two days left before the first qualifying event wraps up.

Big Ben at Night

Speaking of XMT, I was able to qualify in the inaugural tournament last year by the strength of my performance in the Philippine Memory Championship 2013. My score at that time pushed me high enough in the rankings to be considered among the Top 16 qualifiers. But I ultimately failed to advance to the next round as my performance was utterly horrendous. I can't stop shaking and shivering even though it wasn't really that particularly cold. I was so nervous that I got called out for distracting my competitor. My heart was racing every time I step on to the stage for the head to head match ups. I need to find a way to minimize that so I can perform better. Interestingly enough, I was in the same exact state when I'm doing my qualifying attempts for this year's XMT. I had 14 straight perfect scores with decent times before I made my first attempt and till managed to fail my first attempt and added 10 seconds to my average time. After getting a perfect score on my second one, I was able to do almost 50% on my practice runs while hitting my personal best with the XMT Software. But still failed the following two attempts. With my final attempt, I decided to just go all in and do as fast as I can, thinking that I already had an ok score and botched the previous two so bad that made me just go and throw caution to the wind. Good thing I have been running for a couple months now because my heart is just pounding so hard from the tension that I felt I might just double over. Then boom! I got it. It wasn't going to break the world record or anything but I'm so glad I had it. There was a sudden relief that I felt after finishing. I felt so tired as well. I started around midnight and didn't even realized it was almost 6 in the morning.

Screen cap from my grainy video of XMT card attempts

But there are still four events more to go. And I don't even know how many are trying to qualify since up to now, none of us are submitting their scores. Out of the five that is currently listed, only 2 are legitimate qualifiers. The other three are either already in the top 8 or is the organizer. It seems like people are waiting for each other to show their cards. So, I guess I'll wait till Saturday afternoon to submit mine though. Haha! I don't want to wait till the last hour to submit mine in the off chance that we may lose our internet connection again and risk forfeiting my scores. I won't forgive myself if that happens. Again, if anyone of you reading this wants to get in on XMT, now is your chance. With only just two people qualifying plus me and my namesake, sort of, Johannes Zhou from Germany who are submitting, that leaves us with plenty of room to spare for qualifiers.

XMT leaderboard as of January 3, 2015. Still lots of room for qualifiers.

So, what else have I been doing? I've listening to most of Joe Rogan's podcasts. It's a terrific way to while away your time. It gets you to learn a variety of stuff as well. I liked it so much that I even had to stop in the middle of this post for 45 minutes just listen to his year in review. And speaking of Rogan, UFC 182 is on this Saturday night already. The build for the main event fight between Jon 'Bones' Jones and Daniel Cormier has been ridonkulous! Many will be tuning in for MMA's Ali-Frazier fight.

Anyway, the year is very young and there'll be many more days to post stuff. So I'll just leave it here for now and save some topics for later.

If you got through here, good job! You don't have the attention of a badly trained pitbull. But they're adorable though.

Aaand as usual you can follow me here:

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Memory Training 2013: Crowdfunding, Diet and Exercise, and Learning Norwegian.

Quick post! I believe I haven't greeted you guys a happy new year yet, so, to anyone reading this, Happy New Year! (Come on, it's still January!)

So, what does the new year have in store for me? New hope, new start, and a new season of memory competitions. 

Getting Crowdfunded

Many of you already know that I wasn't able to go to London to compete at the 2012 World Memory Championship due insufficient funds. I could always point my fingers and say this guy, or that guy, was to blame for it but it ultimately boils down to me. I didn't plan for the possibility of those in charge of getting me to London, to have other priorities, making all my time and effort in memory training here in the Philippines to seem to be for naught. I had to learn that lesson the hard way. Now, to make up for that monumental blunder, I was thinking of putting up a crowdfunding campaign at Indiegogo, to shore up my funds as early as possible. It could be something like "Help me break a World Record!" campaign. What do you think? Anyways, I'll let you know if I'll push through with it.

Memory Sports Nutrition 

In order to compete in the highest levels of this sport, it is not enough to just focus on an athlete’s memory skills. Much like what most of the professional athletes are doing, we also need to have specific training regimen that not only enhances our skills but also our bodies.

About two years ago, I wrote the quoted paragraph above in an article for Florian Delle's Memory Sports website. It was about Memory Sports Nutrition that was supposed to be a series of articles about exploring the possible Diet and Nutrition program for Memory Athletes. Sadly, I wasn't able to get it past the first article due to having different priorities back then. But I plan on continuing what I started there here in my blog. So, expect more of this topic in this space. 

Exercise: Low Fat, High Memory

As I mentioned previously, for us to overhaul of our memories, we also need to take care of our bodies. It has been proven that physical exercise have beneficial effects on our memory. It forces our brain to generate new cells and keeps bloodflow to the brain patent and unobstructed. Something that will make our brains better. In my case though, I have been regularly going to the gym for the past couple of years to rid myself of Hypercholesterolemia I acquired from decreased physical activity and unmoderated diet. It is a bit odd to some, since I hardly look like someone who has high cholesterol. But all those long hours of sitting while I was reviewing  to become a nurse, then training and competing in memory sports took a toll on me. I was even already prescribed by a couple of doctors to take statins but it is something that has an effect on our memory, so, I'm holding up on that one, at least after I re-do my bloodwork this month. I'll see first if my diet and training regimen worked. I'll have more on this later on.

Jeg vil gjerne studere Norsk

Yep, you read that right. I want to study Norwegian. Since I started with my memory training, I've been wanting to use my new found memory skills in learning a new language. I've tried learning Mandarin when I went to Guangzhou, China to compete at the World Memory Championships. But the time constraint with training my memory for the World Championship and knowing that I have no further use for it beyond my trip there, I decided to freeze that project. But now, I think I found the perfect language for me. I have the motivation to learn this because I know in my head that learning Norsk or Bokmal will definitely have a purpose for me. And I think that motivation and a venue to apply those new skills is essential in learning a new language. The exciting part for me is knowing how long I can learn this. I've seen claims of needing an hour, 22 hours, to as long as 2-3 months to learn a new language. So, we'll see how long I will be able to do this and you guys can read here how I'd fare, as I'll be blogging it all through out my experience. Lykke til meg!  

Artsy Fartsy

This is another project that I'd like to fit in my time and do more of it this year. I've been drawing since god knows when but it is something I haven't done in a long while. Although I've been involved in Arts, like in Nursing and in my Memory Training, I haven't formally trained in it. Except for the lone Art class that we had in high school (I'm wondering what happened to those peices that we did that was too big to take home). What I've been doing a lot is Photography and Digital Art mainly because it is much quicker and less taxing (cause my hands hurt when I draw). But seeing that it is an area I'd like to learn more or re-learn to do, I'll throw something in from time to time.  

Well, this turned out to be longer than I expected, I hope you enjoyed this year's first blog entry! 

UPDATE: I just learned how to add Twitter buttons! So, please follow me at 

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World Memory Championship 2012 Results: Johannes Mallow New World Champion, Philippine Memory Team gets Bronze

This post should’ve seen the light of day more than a week ago but I’ve been bogged down by holiday festivities (Merry Christmas!). And before I get my hands blown at the coming holiday (Happy New Year!), I better have this out now. Since everyone pretty much knew already what went down in the WMCs over ten days ago, I’ll just mostly do a roundup of what people have posted regarding their experience during the three days of rigorous competition. The competition almost concluded as I predicted in my preview posts with only the odd performance by the Chinese Team and having England and Wales as separate countries that made it turn out the way it did.

WMC 2012 Results from Memocamp.com

For starters, here are the official results from the WMC Statistics Website and for a quick glance of the whole event, look here. And for a more firsthand feel of the events, the always entertaining write up by Ben can be found here. Nelson Dellis who ended up 7th overall also has his take on his performance in his website.

And the New World Memory Champion.. Johannes Mallow!

As everyone and their dog expected, the 2012 World Memory Championship concluded with Johannes Mallow of Germany emerging as the new World Memory Champion. But it didn’t finish though without a heart stopping showdown in the final event, the Speed Cards, to decide who will have the right to be called the Sharpest Memory in the World. With only 332 championship points separating the eventual champion from his compatriot, Simon Reinhard would have needed to repeat this kind of performance to get a chance of winning the title. He needed to log in less than 24.75 seconds to be exact.   

Breaking the Trifecta

Front row from left: Top 3 - Jonas Von Essen,
New World Champ Johannes Mallow, Runner-up Simon Reinhard
Back row from left: 7th Nelson Dellis, 6th Ben Pridmore,
5th Christian Schaefer 

Swedish Mnemostar Jonas Von Essen’s meteoric rise in the memory sports world continued as he cracked through the German domination on the podium. Following up on his second place finish at the Swedish Open, JVE capped his performance this year with a Bronze medal finish in his WMC debut, the highest rank by a rookie in their first ever World Championship competition. It is a feat shared only by former World Champions Andi Bell and Dr. Gunther Karsten. Not a shabby
 group to be part of, which means we could expect greater things to come from this guy given the company he’s in. For those who are wondering, it took three years before Andi won his first World Championship and Dr. Karsten did it in nine. Wang Feng was 5^th in his first WMC but became the World Champ the following year then defended his title once before retiring this year. It was the highest turnaround from any of the past world champions. We’ll see how Jonas will fare compare to them.

Even though the Germans didn’t complete the sweep at the medal standings in the Individual Championships, they still had four out of the top ten with Boris Konrad and Christian Schaefer finishing 4^th and 5^th respectively.

New World Record

Of the three events that I thought would be broken, only one was made in this year’s World Memory Championship. It was the Abstract Image event that was broken by Johannes Mallow and Simon Reinhard with 434 and 427 points respectively. The previous record was 396 points held by Simon Reinhard at the South German Memory Championship 2012. Another record was almost broken by Johannes when he tied Wang Feng’s five minute random numbers record of 500 digits. When I said that the Spoken Numbers might also be broken, it turned out that Mark Anthony Castaneda only managed to memorize 193 digits but it was enough for him to snag the Philippine’s first ever Gold medal! Yipee! (Technically, the first was Jamyla’s Gold Medal finish at the Hour Cards event in the Kid’s category, but I subscribe to the One Record/No Categories idea with rankings).

Better Than Expected

Bronze Medal: Team Philippines

As it turns out, the Chinese Team had an odd performance. Their representatives’ scores ranged from 4000-5600 points at their National Championships this year but they ended up way below that mark when their highest ranked athlete only had 2994 points at this year’s WMCs. It is noted that their National Tournament have the same events as the WMCs and having their performance dip by a thousand seems quite puzzling to me. But what the heck, that and coupled with having England and Wales as separate countries meant that my country eventually was fighting for the Silver Medal against Sweden! It was much better than what I projected of finishing around 4^th – 6^th. If it weren’t for that phenomenal performance by Jonas von Essen and some unfortunate circumstances that barred me from competing, we could have ended much higher. But hey, we did get to medal. I’ll just leave it at that.

Having said that, there was this comment at Ben’s blog that questions the validity of the competitions, stating that there should be an asterisk in the results as the World Champion didn’t compete; and none of the better athletes from China weren’t there. Much like what happened last year when the Germans decided to sit out in protest. But what can we do? Wang Feng decided to retire and the Chinese Team decided to let the kids have their turn, which I think is better for their long term success. These things happen all the time in any competition. We can’t always get to have all the best athletes compete with each other all the time.

New GMs…. and Double GMs?

Grand Masters of Memory 2012

Congratulations to the new Grand Masters of Memory, well done! To those who don’t know, you get to be a Grand Master when you achieved these three norms in any competition, 1000 random digits, 10 decks of cards, and under two minutes in speed cards. It doesn’t have to occur all at once. And these six people were able to complete the three norms for the first time this year:   

Chiwawa Chan
Erwin Balines
Jonas von Essen
Marwin Wallonius
Mattias Ribbing
Nelson Charles Dellis
Yudi Lesmana

And these current GMs were able to perform at a Grand Master level again:

Ben Pridmore
Boris Nikolai Konrad
Johannes Mallow
Simon Reinhard
Mark Anthony Pascual Castaneda
Ola Kåre Risa

Which makes them Double GMs? Nah, some of these guys would have been triple, quadruple, or whatever number of times GMs, as they did it multiple times already. That’s why I like Ben’s idea of a Double GM better. 2000 random numbers, 20 decks, and under a minute, you double the effort for a GM norm, something that only Wang Feng, Liu Su, Simon Reinhard and Johannes Mallow were able to do. For a further reading on the history and background of the Grand Master Title, I highly recommend you to read that link to Ben’s blog. It is worth the click.

That’s it for now, I’ll be posting some other time, if I still have my fingers with me. Happy New Year!

UPDATE: I just learned how to add Twitter buttons! So, please follow me at

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