Next Meeting: 15 March 2025 | Theme: Annual General Meeting | Location: NLB Drama Center

SINGAPORE RING 115 – Aug Magic Meeting Report

 

August’s theme was meant to be Guests’ Night where families and friends of our members were to be invited to our Ring meeting. Because there would be an event in October where guests would also be involved, we changed August’s meeting theme to “Anything Goes”, where members could perform anything they wish.

37 people were present on the evening of 15 August 2010 at the BayView Hotel. Included in the attendance was Hugh Levinson from UK who was visiting Singapore at that time. He is a member of the Magic Circle of London. President John Teo presented him with our Ring 115 bannerette and 50th anniversary magazine.

Announcements were made of the following forthcoming events: Shoot Ogawa Lecture and Redefine Magic’s “The Dream” both in September, and Ring 115 one day mini convention in October. Norm Barnhart’s new DVD was also offered for sale.

The first performer was guest Hugh Levinson. His repertoire included a stunt where the entire audience could not separate their third fingers from one another, a gambling version of twisting the aces, and an ambitious card routine with the chosen card ending up inside a wallet.

Chew Liang Huat came next with haunted matchboxes where the matchboxes moved by themselves. Lee Wei Liang performed Chad Long’s colour changing flash-drives.

 

Gician Tan gave us a preview of what he would be lecturing in October. His tricks included a fancy 4 aces production, a neat triumph card trick, a chosen card that could shoot out from a deck bound by rubber bands, and a nice variation of Dr Daley’s Last Card Trick.

Joseph Then brought along his “dummy” horse named Harry and did a splendid ventriloquist act which included current topics such as our forthcoming one day convention. It was hilarious and witty!

After a good laugh, we were treated to a 20 minutes break with snacks and drinks.

After the break, Pambudi, who hosted the first part of the evening, passed his duties to President John Teo who took over as MC for the remaining part of the evening. This released Pambudi, who became the first performer after the break. He successfully predicted one of 3 international cities freely written down by various members of the audience.

Lee Chong Jee followed with a trio of magic tricks. His first effect was submarine card where an odd card placed on the bottom of a packet of 3 cards kept moving up to the centre. He was able to divine a random name written on a business card and folded twice over. His third effect involved 5 cards freely taken out of a deck. He was able to tell which one of these 5 cards was chosen by another spectator.

 

Jeremy Pei, who won the coveted 2nd place in Stage Magic at the recent IBM Convention, did a linking and unlinking rubber bands effect where the 2 rubber bands could be thoroughly examined. He followed with a card trick using only one hand – his other hand was placed inside his trouser pocket. A card was peeked at by a spectator – it magically vanished and reappeared in his other hand when it was withdrawn from his pocket.

Tang Sai Thong ingeniously combined 8 different card effects into a seamless whole. A chosen card was predicted, found its 3 other mates, got sandwiched between 2 cards, transposed to another 2 cards and underwent all sorts of magically transformations. Finally, the remainder of the deck was shown to be blanks!

Charles Choo did a couple of Masuda’s incredible card magic. A wrong prediction card righted itself magically, and a Joker placed inside an empty card case transformed into the second chosen card. Charles caused the content of a can drink with “Blue Tea” label to taste like lemon barley, a drink freely chosen by a spectator.

Wee Kien Meng demonstrated 2 packet card tricks without using playing cards. The first trick had cards depicting various artist colour paint tubes and a blank drawing. The various colour tubes got depleted and the blank drawing was transformed into a colourful picture. The second trick involved cards depicting a spinach and an ice cream, and a story of a boy who preferred one over the other.

President John Teo closed the evening with 2 tricks. He did a straight-forward version of “Pick Me – Pick Me Not” effect with 2 spectators and 6 jumbo cards. He ended with an ACAAN effect where a freely chosen card was found at a predicted position in a second deck of cards.

 

Reported by

Bernard Sim and John Teo