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Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Kudos to Robert and Johann!

We held a small garage sale yesterday. We took advantage of the holiday so my cousins would be home from school and they could sell their own ware (the younger two - Jaymee and Luigi - sell cutesy items, while the eldest - Cheska/Tita Patch - sells brownies and pizza rolls that she makes herself). Chip and I got rid of old clothes and other clutter (although what we dragged out of boxes are but a small percentage of our overall clutter). Our friend Maf came over as well and hung out with us. Her husband Obet is coming home tonight from competing in the UK Open Memory Championships in London. We're very proud of him and his teammate JR. JR came in 9th and bagged a silver medal for speed cards (he was but two seconds behind the winner), while Obet came in 11th overall. That's very impressive showing for the two competition newbies. It was the first time for the Philippines to compete and our two representatives fared very well. I think they caused quite a stir over there for being new faces and for coming from the farthest country (most of the competitors were European). There is another competition - the biggest deal in this sport, I believe - in China this coming December and I hope and pray that our Memory Whizzes do even better and that they get all the support that they can get from the country, especially the government.

You can watch a video about the competition here - embedding disabled, hmph! Obet and JR screentimes are at 0:13-0:16 and 1:34-1:43. :)

3 comments:

The Kano said...

Congratulations to JR and Obet! I think they did great. I remember reading some memory-enhancing books while in high school (many years ago)and used to memorize shopping lists from the techniques I learned. However, now I am too old (or too lazy) and write my lists down on paper.

Sharkbytes said...

Tell more about what kind of competition this is, please.

spinninglovelydays said...

@Dave: Thanks. I'm pretty lazy myself and shamelessly blame the epidural for all memory lapses, lol

@Sharkbytes: It's a competition with different categories. I don't really know much about them, but they all involve testing your memory - like you're given 5 seconds to look at something (something like a long sequence of numbers or the arrangement of a deck of cards) and recall them perfectly.