This old house once rang with laughter, this old house heard many shouts

Actually, I'm too tired and headachy to write at length about my trip to my old house tonight - I've only just got home and I've got to be up early tomorrow for work. So I'll leave it till tomorrow except to say that it genuinely looks so much smaller now, I was amazed! Especially since I lived there till I was twenty, brief dalliances with university aside, and visited it frequently until I was 23. I haven't grown significantly since then, as far as I know, so why do I remember the place being so much bigger?

Instead, I'll post tonight that the prize fund for the World Memory Championship has just been announced (woo!) and there are very nice prizes for the top ten competitors (double woo!). I quote:

The total prize fund will be US$ 30,000.

This will be divided in the following way.



The World Memory Champion 2007 will receive US$10,000

The Silver Medallist will receive US$ 5,000

The Bronze Medallist will receive US$ 3,000



Competitors achieving 4th to 10th place in the competition with each

receive US$1,000



I am sure you will agree that this exciting news will dramatically raise the profile

of the Mind Sport of Memory and contribute to making the 2007 World Championships

in Bahrain the best yet.



Our grateful thanks go to Shaikh Hamad and Intelnacom for their tremendous support

Presumably the remaining $5,000 will be embezzled by someone in a position of power. But even if the prize fund is actually only $25,000, that still makes it the biggest ever by a long way! And since so few of the world's best memorisers will be turning up, anyone who can scrape together the cash for a flight to Bahrain stands a very good chance of making back a good part of the cost. Hopefully this'll inspire a few last-minute entries (and hopefully the WMSC don't really mean it when they say registrations close a month before the competition, because that's just silly).