Instead of our usual Anniversary Dinner, we had decided on a Guests Night cum Ring 115 Parlour Magic Competition. The event was held on the evening of 15 November 2018 at the Roland Restaurant at Marine Parade Central. It commenced with an 8-course dinner, after which the chairs were re-arranged so that the 90 diners, which comprised both our members and their guests, could sit theatre-style to watch the parlour magic competition.
There were altogether 9 contestants and 4 judges. The judges comprised our President John Teo, and patrons Gician Tan, Fernando Ng and Jerry Lee.
The first contestant was Goh Yin Xian with linking coat hangers, cups & balls with stirrer and drink production, and appearing and vanishing bow-tie. Next was TK Jiang with bare-hand coin production, blanks to bills, bills from ipad and he finished with a shooting fountain of bills. Lim Kai Seng’s repertoire consisted of ring-no-ring bell, colour changing hankies and rose, d’lite, production of bouquets and paper to streamers.
The fourth contestant was Charles Choo who did an interesting version of Romero’s transparent cups and balls routine with the final appearance of a lemon, an egg and a potato. Cassidy Lee’s act had a time travel theme where actions became undone when the clock was reset back in time: watch returned back to his wrist, mixed-up deck went back to new deck order, Rubik’s Cube became undone, and cards, coins, bills and Rubik’s Cube became transparent. Using jumbo cards, Henry Thio got 4 spectators to correctly arrange the Jack, Queen, King and Ace of each suit even though the cards were initially all mixed up.
Lim Teck Guan’s act consisted of torn and restored magazine, silk in coke bottle, colour changing records and an egg bag routine. Kogi did silk to cane to sponge ball, vanished an entire deck of cards and produced any named card inside an envelope. Last performer was Alvin Terence. He did bounce-no-bounce ball and managed to control the movements of a spectator’s hand simply by using his mind.
While the judges were deliberating the results, special guest performers Jeremy Pei and Joe Yu enthralled the audience with their professional parlour magic performances. Jeremy Pei performed a fast-paced linking rings routine, magically caused a Rubik’s Cube to assume the pattern decided by the audience, and finished with a mixed-up Rubik’s Cube that became the actual missing piece in a large mosaic display of hundreds of cubes that formed the portrait of Albert Einstein. Joe Yu caused flashes of coloured lights to appear everywhere: at his finger-tips, on his magic cane, and onto a stalk of rose. Audience members even got to “throw” the lights onto a tumbler from which Joe proceeded to drink up the lights through a straw. Finally, the lights on a foulard formed the words THE END!
The Champion was TK Jiang, winning $300 and a trophy. The 1st Runner-Up was Cassidy Lee, winning $200 and a trophy, and the 2nd Runner-Up was Alvin Terence, winning $100 and a trophy. All three winners were each awarded a 1 year free Ring 115 membership subscription. There was a People’s Choice and the winner was also TK Jiang, who took home the People’s Choice trophy.
The event was produced by Kenneth Chia. The Master of Ceremony for the evening was Tommy Chiang, who entertained the diners with interesting and crafty contests and caused much laughter throughout the entire event.
