IBM and SAM (“Singapore Association of Magicians”, which is the local chapter of “Society Of American Magicians”) had a special combined meeting on the evening of 24 April 2013 at Roland’s Restaurant, Marine Parade Central. This is to foster camaraderie among the magicians from the 2 different associations. Thirty-one IBM members turned up at this occasion. Also present as guests were Drummond, a professional magician from London, and his girlfriend.
The evening started with a buffet dinner from 7 to 8 pm. After the meal, SAM President, Gordon Koh, presented a short fire-eating act. This was followed by IBM President, John Teo, who magically restored a gigantic 7 of Diamonds into the King of Diamonds.
IBM Vice President Enrico Varella deftly pulled out 4 Aces and 4 Queens from a shuffled deck and then stealthily switched the 4 Queens which he placed into his different pants’ pockets with the 4 Aces. Drummond, our guest, shared that he had just finished shooting a TV special on the 3-card monte with National Geographic in London, Paris and Bangkok. He asked John Teo to visualise one of four queens in his mind and it matched the queen which he had placed right at the top of a deck right from the beginning.
SAM’s Lim Kay Heng told a tale of how an explorer chanced upon Queen Nefertiti’s mummy wrapped in white shrouds, in a “coffin”. After closing the cover, he began pulling on a piece of lengthy, white thread peeping from a hole in the cover. When he tried to re-open the coffin, he received a scolding from inside it….the mummy’s wraps had come undone! That was Supreme’s classic “Oh! Mummy!”. Next, Kek Heng got John Teo to mentally choose a card from 3 giant ones. He then covered them with a big, green scarf. When the cards were revealed again, John‘s card, the 3 of Spades, had vanished and instead re-appeared from his pocket.
Jeremy Pei, who is both a member of IBM as well as SAM, got Betsy to decide between the crest or flower design on a bunch of Singaporean coins in his hands. Once she had decided, he tossed the coins to mix them up, placed them on a table, and retained those with the selected face-up design. He repeated the sequence of tossing and separating the remaining coins until the last coin — a 50 cent coin – remained. Now, for the highlight – the earlier discarded coins which were placed in a box had vanished…. in their place, a gigantic 50 cent coin had now appeared! Next, he got the audience to randomly select 4 cards which added up to ‘34’….and from his wallet, he pulled out exactly $34 too! The 4 ‘flowers’ on the back of his wallet also matched those of the 4 selected cards!
A short break allows the magicians to intermingle and patronise the several magic dealers. After the interval, Jeremy Tan, also a member of both IBM and SAM, managed to produce a King of Diamonds card with the “King”’s profile looking like guest Drummond’s, just as he had wished!
Satish Kumar put aside a card from a random deck that he predicted a guest would select. He got the guest to total up a few random cards and then look up the corresponding month in the diary where he had placed some markings beside each month of the year. It turned up to be the ‘8 of Hearts’, which was his predicted card!
The Vice-President of SAM, Andrew Kong, performed “The Jumping Knot Of Pakistan”. He caused a knot tied on a white rope to jump over to the red rope beside it, simply by twirling both ropes together. The white knot could slide off the red rope easily and yet, jumped back onto the red rope in a second! He next got four ladies from the audience to each select either a silver or a black ball from an opaque cloth bag without him knowing and yet, he successfully guessed the lady holding on to the only black ball!
IBM’s Derek Lee got a guest to execute the same routine with a random deck of cards and she managed to magically produce the same card as him! Steven Sim from SAM produced his predicted card, ‘Ten of Spades’, and on moving a lighted flame over it, transformed it into a “Five of Spades”, which was the card chosen by his guest! He also got a guest to select a hand-drawn “Nine of Diamonds” and in a flash, it became a regular “Nine of Diamonds” playing card.
John Teo performed an experiment to determine Drummond and his girlfriend’s compatibility level. Each selected a suite and value randomly and when combined, was the “Jack of Hearts”, whose ideal female companion should be the “Queen of Hearts”, an indicator of a high level of compatibility. When the predicted card, which had been lying on the top of the deck, was turned over, it was the “Queen of Hearts”!
IBM’s Nique Tan rounded off the evening’s performances with 3 acts. Firstly, he caused 4 Jacks in his hands to mysteriously trade places with 4 Aces under a deck of cards. Next, he got 3 guests to write a 3-digit number, a 4 or 5 letter word and draw a picture of an object respectively on a piece of paper and folded them. He placed the pieces of paper in his pocket and randomly pulled them out, one at a time, still folded. He proceeded to correctly predict the contents for only 2 of them. Baharudin was then invited to select one of 3 items on a table – an iphone, a pen and a wallet. He selected the iphone and the message accompanying it stated that Nique would do as what he had done including making 2 out of 3 predictions correctly!
It had been a long yet fruitful evening as magicians from both clubs had the rare opportunity to mingle and bond with each other over magic performances, sale of magic items at 4 dealer booths and a sumptuous buffet dinner!
Reported by
(Ms) Low Hwee Lang
