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

SINGAPORE RING 115 – August 2016 Magic Meeting Report

There was a feeling of sentiment among the 22 people who turned up for the August meeting. The reason was that this was our last meeting at this BayView Hotel, a venue we had been using for more than 15 years. The hotel would be undergoing a major renovation for the next 9 months. We would be meeting at a new venue starting from next month.

 

The date was also shifted from the usual 15th to 14th August 2016 to coincide with Gregory Wilson’s lecture in the evening. This being a Sunday, we met at 2.30 pm instead of in the evening.

President John Teo made announcements regarding the forth-coming Magic Warehouse Mini-Convention as well as Gregory’s lecture to be held later in the evening.

The theme for August was Parlour Magic. The co-ordinators were Victor Heng and Alvin Terrence.
The first performer was Lim Teck Guan who filled up an empty glass bottle with water, put a drinking straw into the bottle of water and was able to lift up the entire bottle with the straw! This was from an idea found in an old Linking Ring magazine.

Maxwell Low was next and he demonstrated remote viewing and remote sensing. While blindfolded, he was able to tell exactly what 3 jumbo playing cards were taken by 3 different spectators. That was remote viewing. In remote sensing, he was able to divine which word was freely chosen by a spectator from any page of a book.

Charles Choo displayed a balloon with something inside it. A spectator chose one of 4 colour ribbons. When the balloon was bursted with a needle, inside it was found a duplicate of the selected colour ribbon. Next, a spectator selected one of 5 ESP symbols by repeatedly spelling to this name and eliminating cards until one was left. It matched exactly a prediction placed inside an envelope. Finally, Charles revealed in a very clean manner what number on a large die was selected by a spectator.

Just by using the power of his mind, JK Tan was able to cause a nut to unscrew by itself from a bolt. This was his presentation of the classic nut off screw. 

This meeting happened to be on the actual birth date of our patron Gician Tan. It was a pleasant surprise to him when we brought out a birthday cake and sang “Happy Birthday” to him. We then posed for a group photograph with the birthday man.

There was supposed to be 2 Magicians-Of-The-Month performing their award winning routines. One could not make it because of leg injury. Jonas Phua was the Champion of Parlour Magic category in a recent contest at the Singapore Street Festival. His award winning performance included a visual change of a wrong card quarter-by-quarter, first on the back and then on the front of the card, into the correct chosen card. Then the entire backs of the deck changed colour. This card was then signed and lost in the deck. It vanished from the deck and became the folded card that was placed conspicuously on the table in a transparent box all the time right from the beginning of the performance. It was a wonderful combination of 2 effects presented with an interesting patter. Well done, Jonas!

Alvin Terrence, one of the co-ordinators for the day, performed an invisible palm/ open traveller routine without the use of gimmicked cards, and with a nice patter of an invisible holdout used by the performer. Four cards, travelled one at a time, via an invisible palm of the performer from one side of the table to another.

President John Teo did 2 comedy mentalism effects. He commenced with the “No”/ ”Yes”/”Maybe” comedy prediction by Max Maven. This was followed by Cody Fisher’s Comedy Book Test. First, there was the dictionary gag (much like the “52 in 1 card” gag). This was followed by the revelation of the word selected by spectator no 1 with book no 1. The second chosen word by spectator no 2 with book no 2 was found in a code that lead to a word in the dictionary. The revelation of the third selected word by spectator no 3 in book no 3 was very much like Wayne Dobson’s “Exchange” where the performer had fun with the third spectator’s chosen word.

Nigel Lew was the next performer. He was able to cause one of 3 imaginary coins freely chosen by a spectator to materialise into a real coin. His next effect was a card across using the President and his wife. Each of them was dealt a packet of 10 cards. A card thought-of by the President vanished from his packet and reappeared in the packet of cards held by his wife.

A break with snacks and coffee and tea followed. After the interval, an induction ceremony was conducted for Vincente Tiu to welcome him officially to ordinary membership of Ring 115.

Cassidy Lee did a dealer’s demonstration of 2 effects. He caused the back of a chosen card to have a picture of a chicken nugget. Finally, the picture became reality when a real chicken nugget was produced from the chosen card. The second effect was called Grandpa’s Gift. A nice gift box contained 4 different design hole-cutters. A particular hole-cutter was freely chosen. Inside the gift box was a prediction that stated the actual selected design hole-cutter.