This evening’s meeting themed “Mental Magic” was hosted by Alvin Terrence. It was held at the Dram Centre and attended by a total of 20 members and 7 guests.

It featured a new segment called “Fireside Chat”. This was conducted by Carson Goh who interviewed a veteran member, Charles Choo, who was in his 80s. Charles shared about his initiation into magic, his involvement in his magic shop, his favourite trick – mentalism, lessons for young magicians and how magic kept him young.

Alvin Terrence delivered a mini lecture on the differences between performing Mental Magic for a live audience and online. He highlighted the covert use of angles and constraints imposed by the computer screen. He spoke about dealing with “robbers/hecklers” and “delighters” in the audience. He concluded with a performance using the One-ahead Principle.

JK Tan used a packet of Mah-Jong cards and had a volunteer mixed them up face- up and face-down several times. Finally, he separated the face-up cards from the face-down cards and they spelt the numerical date of 24.9.23, the date of the forth- coming Yelllow Ribbon event for our members!

John Teo ”memorised” the positions of each card in a shuffled deck. A volunteer merely thought of any one of the 52 cards. He then checked out several cards with card symbols and numbers representing various cards of a deck, and passed only those cards that did not contain his thought-of card to John. After studying them, John directed the volunteer to deal to the 39th position of the deck where he found his selected card, the Two of Spades! Next, John performed and explained an effect he contributed in the April’s issue of The Quantum Ring. He used kid’s flash cards, and utilising the “Origami Folding” principle, had the cards mixed up face-up and face-down. In the end, he could predict what flash cards would turn face-up. These flash cards spelt out the word M-A-G-I-C while the remaining cards spelt the word A- W-E-S-O-M-E!

Luke Tan, one of the guests, displayed 7 cards on the table. He invited a volunteer to move a coin placed on one of the cards either to the left or right, and then to remove some cards. This was repeated several times until one card was left over. It matched the prediction Luke earlier set aside in an envelope.

Thomas Yeo laid out 24 colourful Easter eggs, each one labelled with a different number for identification. He invited 2 volunteers. Each time the first volunteer selected an egg secretly, somehow, the second volunteer could predict the first volunteer’s choice exactly. This went on successfully for several times.

Gician Tan showed a gag in which he could divine the card randomly cut at from a shuffled deck of cards. When a volunteer tried to do the same thing employing the same method, he failed.

James Pang, a guest who signed up to become our member, displayed a diary in which he had assigned a playing card symbol to each week. He invited a volunteer to choose a random date, and one of 2 envelopes. The chosen envelope contained the very card depicted by the selected date in the diary, while the other envelope contained another card.

Ng Kah King correctly guessed the exact number of cards randomly cut out by each of 2 volunteers. He could also tell the identity of a card randomly selected by a volunteer by simply asking a few questions to which the volunteer could choose to tell the truth or not.

Kenneth Chia performed a torn and restored Titanic poster. He proceeded to don the Squid Game host attire and invited 3 volunteers to play a game with him. Each volunteer chose an envelope with a prediction inside and must eliminate ESP symbol cards, leaving 5 cards to Kenneth. All the 3 volunteers lost the game as the prediction in each of their envelopes matched Kenneth’s cards each time. They were “terminated”.

Jeremy Pei concluded the evening’s performance. He demonstrated the “Age Cards” with a twist of his own, Phantom Dice, and “The Movie” trick. He introduced several collector’s items magic and offered them for sale at his dealer’s booth.

The meeting continued with a jamming session after a lucky draw was conducted with 3 lucky winners.