So I'm packing up my apartment here in Boston. It's always so interesting to me how new places can become new mental journeys for memorization. I've got a new place down in Miami waiting to have itself be memorized by a deck of cards. Pretty sweet. As for the near future, we all just got an update for the World Memory Championships. Still seems to be on target and not on the verge of collapse. Hopefully that will remain. Still going to wait to buy my ticket though, but I might just go ahead and figure out my Chinese visa. I feel bad for the people who have already bought their ticket to Beijing before it got switched to Guangzhou. There isn't any prize money either anymore so no hope of winning back some money spent on the trip. Bummer.
Anyways, I'm still training everyday. Going through a bit of a slump right now. Slumps are good though, because they make me re-work my current systems. I've been crap at cards for the past 5 days and I have no clue why. But this is good. I'll break down my system and figure it out; only makes me better.
Other highlights in my training are that I've been rocking the spoken numbers practice (memorizing digits spoken out loud at 1 digit per second). I can manage 100 pretty easily now and I did a record best 170 digits the other day. 200 is close in sight! Also I've been getting smoother at Abstract Images (where you have to memorize the order of random blobs), managing 95 in 5 minutes. If I can get over 250 or close to 300 in 15 minutes, I'll be happy.
Gotta keep packing. On a side note, when I meet people with the name Steve, I think of them as a stove. Like so: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN0rpv43AlY