Memorization Skills

I found an interesting article in the New York Times a few days ago called Secrets of a Mind Gamer. I found the article intriguing because I've been told I have a good memory. I have a distinct memory from my childhood of sitting in my grandfather's office one lazy afternoon while my grandfather taught me how to memorize. I think I had somehow finagled my way out of naptime that day and my grandfather promised my grandmother that he would keep me quiet. So I was tasked to memorize the Apostle's Creed, all 12 lines of it, by dinnertime. He instructed me to memorize it line by line. Memorize the first line until I knew it. Then read the 1st and 2nd line and be able to recite that. Then the 1st, 2nd and 3rd line and so on. I'm pretty sure I got a pre-dinner cookie out of the deal too. Bonus!

As I grew up, I learned that my memorization skills were not only useful, but not necessarily common. I can learn new katas at the dojo in three or four repetitions. I could perform a 7 minute speech from memory after 2 or 3 practices (I suppose not counting the act of writing the speech to begin with). I had plenty of other skills I needed to concentrate on with public speaking so it was a bit of a relief that I didn't really need to work on my memorization skills on top of it.

But back to the article in question. The author is himself a memory champion, having memorized the order of a deck of cards in 1 minute and 40 seconds, a US record at the time. The interesting part is that he didn't start off as a memory prodigy to begin with; he trained himself to become a champion.

From the article, I learned that the human brain is better equipped to remember things spatially and visually than numbers and words. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors needed to know which plants to eat, which was the correct way home instead of logins and passwords for a myriad different websites. Using this knowledge, memory champions train themselves to attach a sequence of cards or numbers or words to odd combinations of visuals and imagine themselves walking through those visuals as if situated in a memory palace. Perhaps the five of clubs becomes a bear juggling spoons in the foyer, and behind it is a crab playing hopscotch in the living room (Queen of spades), meanwhile a herd of buffalo stampedes in the fireplace (King of diamonds) behind them and so forth. To recall the associated information, they only need to visualize their walk through their very strange palace and pull the attached information.

I thought it was an interesting methodology for memorization and completely unlike the one I was taught. But upon looking at it more closely, perhaps I am engaging the visual part of my brain when I recall things. When I memorize words, I'm envisioning reading them off of the paper or screenshot in my mind. When I memorize katas, I'm also engaging some muscle memory, so I guess that's spatial memory. Memorizing stories is probably the closest to the technique described above since I'm envisioning the movie of the story playing out in my mind. Nifty! I want to try out the picturesque memorization to see if that's faster or better or something. At the very least it should be entertaining coming up with absurd images to go along with more mundane things like numbers.

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Totoro Nursery Theme

We've been pondering the nursery theme for a few weeks as Lee finished up the closet and we finished painting the room (pale yellow). Because of my penchant of creating costumes of actual characters (Tali, Harley Quinn) rather than concepts (disco vampire, zombie banana) I wanted a theme that included actual characters. It has the added benefit of style consistency in case anyone else in our family wanted to help with the theme. Stitch from Lilo and Stitch still looks recognizably like Stitch regardless of which store it's bought from; safari animals may run the gamut of styles from cartoonish to realistic.

At first, I was drawn to a some sort of Disney theme, just not the princess ones. As much as I loved watching Little Mermaid, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, etc., I disagree with the over-princessalization being taught to girls and I don't want to start a baby on that stuff. And I'm not all that fond of too much pink. Then I was drawn to a Winnie the Pooh theme - this idea is so popular that Babies R Us has it as its own nursery theme category. Lee was mostly fine with it except that he felt that the Disney treatment of a classic book made it seem too commercial.

I noodled around the internet for some more ideas but ultimately, it was still Disney that provided the payoff. Studio Ghibli is a Japanese animation studio headed by director Hayao Miyazaki. Disney licensed the rights to distribute their films in the US. My Neighbor Totoro, one of their earlier films, tells the story of two young girls befriending the wood spirits near their country home. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. Here's the trailer:



Since Disney is one of the strongest merchandising companies in existence, there are Totoro themed items that can be bought in the US. However, most of these items are plushes and toys, not quite all the paraphernalia needed to outfit/decorate a nursery. Wall decals are all the rage for their ease of application. We'll probably make our own Totoro decals from acrylic paint and contact paper. I've found a seller in Japan with some Totoro-related fabric type things (rugs, Japan-sized bedding, towels) but they're expensive to ship here so I'll probably only get a few key items, perhaps a rug and a door hanging that can count as curtains. Other fabric-based items can be Totoro'd via printed iron-ons. I'll probably leave the bedding as something that's just generically forest-themed or colored because I'm not sure I feel like sewing bedsheets even if I did find Totoro cotton fabric.

Besides the charm of the characters and the story, the aspect that appeals to me about a Totoro nursery is that we get to craft our own decorations. There are a few other Totoro-themed nurseries in internet-space where I'm sure we'll get some great ideas. I can't wait to get started!

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