The day I blocked the DPM

It was the 5th Malaysian Festival of the Mind.



Held in the university from the 10th to the 12th of July, it was jointly organised by the university, the Malaysia Mental Literacy Movement (MMLM) and a few other organizations. It was officiated by the Deputy Prime Minister, YB Tan Sri Dato' Haji Muhyiddin Mohd. Yassin.







I was on my way to campus as usual, when I spotted a traffic police on his large motorbike guiding a black car coming from behind. I automatically slowed down, moved to the side and let them overtake me. The black car had a plate beginning with 'W' and the windows were all tinted with dark shades. Wonder if that was the DPM.



When I reached the campus, it was crowded everywhere and really difficult to get a parking space. Anyway, the opening ceremony had started and I saw red carpet leading to a lecture hall. My friend and I were not interested in the ceremony, so we headed straight to the exhibition hall.... mainly because someone told us there were free shampoo give-aways :p



When we got there, there was already a big crowd. There was a long queue at the give-away counter. We did not want to wait so we ended up not getting any shampoos... sob... sob :p



We proceeded to the exhibition booths. There were many interesting things to see. Everthing was related to the mind, the brain, IQ, EQ......

Large crowd surrounding the booths

Even the MENSA society had a booth there

Halfway through, the DPM who had finished his speech at the hall in another block came for a short tour of the exhibition with his entourage. The Menteri Besar of Perak was with him too. My friend and I continued with our own tour.



We were looking at the display of a booth situated at a corner when the DPM turned the corner. Automatically, we moved closer to the booth to make way for him, thinking that he only wanted to walk around. Suddenly, the DPM stopped beside me and I realized he wanted to look at the booth. My first reaction was to bend down so as not to block his view (as he was not very tall :p). It was at this point that his bodyguard made a small gesture asking me to get out of the way. I hurriedly moved away while still bending down a little. My friend said the whole scene was very funny! Luckily, it was not on the newspaper :p ... another lucky thing was that I was not living in the old days, or I would have been beheaded by now!



Things went back to normal after that as we continued to each booth :p



The concept of hypnosis.... someone was swinging a small pendulum above a piece of card with things written on it....

Power of the mind... a visitor was holding a pair of 'L-shaped handles' parallel with both hands without moving... and the exhibitor was able to move the handles closer, farther away or cross each other using his mind power..... Harry Potter, eh?

MPH Bookstore had a booth as well, selling books related to the mind at a discount of 15 %....

A booth selling mind games, puzzles, etc..... we were allowed to try each game... it was so much fun that my friend and I ended up buying a few different games each :p

Brain display

Real human brains immersed in formalin, while some were preserved brains... we were allowed to touch and hold it. I tried it, and since it had been preserved, it's hard and smooth instead of soft and slimy as I had imagined :p

An equipment that can capture our brain waves...

Some were selling products (games, books, CDs, etc.) while some were promoting training programmes.

It's funny how most exhibitors thought my friend and I were students. There was this booth selling CDs containing songs audible to the conscious mind but also embedded with certain frequencies that could trigger our subliminal minds. We were really interested, until she gave us the wrong example, saying how her niece and nephew after listening to the CD managed to score distinctions in exams. That was it. We lost interest :p

There was a booth which provided tests on our memory. For each test, we were given two minutes to memorize things and then recall them afterwards. In the first test, we were given a list of 20 items and we had to recall everything in the right order. In the second test, we were given the prices of 10 items and we had to recall the price for each item in random order. And in the last test, we were given the pictures of 12 persons and their names and titles (Ms, Mr, Mrs, Dr, Datuk, etc.) and we had to label picture of each person in random.

I tried all the tests and managed to get them all correct! The exhibitor doubted it at first, so he double-checked my answers. He then congratulated me, asking me what kind of technique I had used. I did not know what to say :p.... I had never received any memory training before. I described to him how I remember things and he said, "Oh, so you're using the association technique!".... I just nodded and said ya.... :p

There was a magic and msytery corner which sold magic-and-trick products, with some scheduled stage magic performance every 2 hours. There was no body-cutting, but there were pulling things out of an empty hat (no rabbit though :p), swallowing a piece of paper but pulling out a long strand of colourful paper, lighting a piece of paper on fire and a nice scarf suddenly popped out and changing a one-ringgit note into a two-ringgit note.

Other activities included mind challenges and competitions, testing the age of our brains and minds, a sleep therapy corner, talks on emotional intelligence, mind mapping, personality test and interesting workshops.

I attended a self-hypnosis workshop by Mr Terry Winchester, a well-known hypnotherapist from South Africa... well, not the kind of hypnosis you're probably thinking of.. no pendulum swing and controlled action (though that was what I had thought earlier :p).. but interesting all the same....