This evening’s meeting, themed ‘Festival Magic’, marked the last for the year. The attendance consisted of 41 members and 4 guests.
Following a half-hour magic jamming session at four mini groups, co-hosts Ng Kah King and Kenneth Chia kicked off the meeting with a few announcements. IBM Ring 115 will be holding its 75th Anniversary Celebration with a buffet dinner and magic show at Pan Pacific Hotel on 14 March 26. Members are highly subsidized at $60 per ticket and those who pay their annual membership fee by year end, get to enjoy a promo ticket price of $60 for their partner/friend. Dr Loke Han Ying also urged members to sign up for the joint Republic Polytechnic & IBM magic show on 22 January 2026. The hosts also welcomed Jennie Teh, a new member who just signed up.
President John Teo introduced Mr and Mrs Pairuch – long-time friends of the club – especially to the newer members.
Pairuch demonstrated tricks originated and manufactured by himself. They included “Super Punch”, a special hole punch with adjustable holes. He showed 2 effects with this hole punch. 8 holes were punched on a dollar note and then went on to congregate at one corner of the note. He punched a hole on a playing card and proceeded to move it freely around the card’s surface. With “Vampire Bat”, he introduced a “coffin” with “Dracula” lying inside. The only way to kill the vampire was to drive a “stake” through its heart. The “vampire” then transformed into a human skeleton! In “Pin-It!”, a volunteer inserted a pin on any body part of a voodoo figurine. Pairuch put another figurine together with a loose pin into a cloth bag. When this figurine was taken out, it had a pin in the same body part as that inserted by the volunteer. Next, he presented his “Money Maker”, a roller-printer that read a money note and then duplicated in onto a blank paper on both sides. Lastly, he linked 2 plastic tooth floss picks together! He then generously contributed 27 packets of these linking plastic tooth picks for lucky draw for the members.
The Club welcomed Xuande Tan and Lim Shi Jie who were newly sworn in as IBM Ring 115 members, after passing their Induction Tests at the last meeting.
Henry Zuo took his Induction Test. Starting with 4 cards, he multiplied each of them to 3 cards. Next, with the 4 new sets (3 cards each), he magically moved the same card from each set to a pile, leaving each set with only a pair of cards. He then transformed a deck of blue-backed cards to red ones, and further removed all printed images on the cards so that they appeared as blank ones. Putting the deck into a card box, he gave it a squeeze and the box vanished in some smoke, leaving the audience amazed.
After the break, James Pang invited 2 volunteers to pick a card each and insert them into the deck randomly. When the card backs were fanned out, 2 had different back designs from the rest. When flipped over, these 2 cards were the 2 volunteers’ chosen cards. A 3rd volunteer signed a card and randomly inserted it into the shuffled deck which was then placed inside a card box. As his birthdate fell on the 10th, the cards in the box were counted off to the 10th card. When flipped over, it was the volunteer’s signed card! The volunteer then reshuffled the deck with his chosen card in it; and cut it to 3 sets. He selected one set and when its top card was flipped over; it was his signed card!
Kai Emmanuel Kuah invited a volunteer to select a card, sign it and insert it randomly into a deck. He then made this card travel to his pocket with a tap of a magic buzzer. He also made the card appear under the buzzer just when the audience expected it to be in his pocket again. He tickled the audience as he made several cards appear instead of just 1 from his emptied pocket. He proceeded to vanish all these cards before the audience’s eyes, leaving just the volunteer’s card in one hand. Finally, when the buzzer was silent when pressed, he opened it up to reveal a folded card inside – the volunteer’s!
Eisen Lee began his version of Card to Pocket using just one hand – shuffling, cutting and dealing the deck. He appeared to retrieve a wrong card (ie. not the volunteer’s) from his pocket but instead comically pulled out several cards from his supposedly empty pocket. In an instant, he vanished all the cards except for the volunteer’s card!
John Teo presented his effect “Shooting Gallery” which he contributed in the November’s and December’s issues of “The Quantum Ring”. A cardboard displaying 5 animals each with its own assigned score, representing points earned when a ‘shooter’ hits it. He then showed 4 more similar cardboards with the same animals ordered differently and with varying scores assigned. Together, the 5 cardboards would represent a shooting gallery on a moving conveyor belt. A volunteer (aka ‘shooter’) would choose an animal he ‘shot’ from each of the 5 cardboards. The scores of the 5 ‘hits’ after being totalled, was 248 which, incredibly, was John’s prediction, set aside earlier! He repeated this with 3 volunteers but asked the audience to guess who among them would attain the highest score. He was right again as the highest score among the 3 volunteers was his 2nd prediction!
The last meeting of 2025 ended, as awe-inspiring and entertaining as with previous ones. Several winners walked away with lucky draw prizes sponsored by President John Teo and Pairuch. 2 members also won the best Christmas outfit prizes. With that, the magic jamming session resumed for several members who found the night still too young.
Reported by
Low Hwee Lang (Ms)
