I won my first ever simultaneous game with an international grandmaster. Raymond Keene's Sicillian Defense was played a little too casually and he resigned after about a dozen moves. In the second game I was overcome by a more careful Queen's opening on his part and a poorly executed Nimzo-Indian on mine. I think I'll forget the second game (smile).

What ELSE was interesting about the first day of the Global MindMap Conference:

1. Henry Toi (Executive Director for the Art Costa Center for Thinking in Singapore) spoke about learnt helplessness. We say/believe "Impossible!" and do so sans trying, sans planning, sans thought. Sans everything?

2. Masanori Kanda, Japan's No.1 marketeer (according to GQ mag this year), began by saying how a Japanese usually apologises at the start of a presentation and how a Westerner usually starts by telling a joke. He then apologised that, since he was Japanese, he didn't know how to tell jokes (get it?)

3. Polio victim, William Tan, told us how he overcame poverty, rejection and hardship to become a brain scientist and medical doctor. His life now involves joining marathons in his wheelchair and so far he's 'ran' on all seven continents (including the Antartica) and is planning to do it again.

Tan is easily the most accomplished physically challenged person in the world.

4. Tony Buzan, whose story-tellling skills are excellent and made the 1.5 hour session fly by, shared about three principles which 'launched' him off to developing mind-maps:

• The inadequacy of traditional school systems to assess the intelligence of students
• The importance of nurturing the mind failing which paralysis and atrophy sets in
• The significance of images and associations in understanding how the brain works

Buzan put the modern development of education and brain research into some perspective: The universe began 15 billion years ago, civilisation a 100,000, the traditional school system 150 and breakthroughts in brain research less than 20 years ago. A drop in a drop in a drop of space-time history. (I'm not sure how useful this piece of data is but it does at least have that 'ooh-ahh' effect).

We've come a long way from the industrial revolution to knowledge management to the management of the manager of knowledge i.e. the brain. It's pretty exciting, especially in its application for schooling, for work, for theology (you know I just had to include this, right?), for thinking as a whole.

Welcome to the Brain New World.