Tonight’s meeting was special as the Lunar New Year celebration was still ongoing. Some members came dressed in their traditional Chinese costumes, and Kenneth Chia brought a case of oranges to give away during the break-time. Hosted by President John Teo and Umer Shahid, the theme was ‘Semi-automatic Magic Tricks’ and attendance was a full house with 43 members and 10 guests.
John Teo presented a colour-changing Chinese fan where the final design on the fan featured a pair of dragons, setting the festive mood for the Year of the Dragon! He then introduced the special guests. Overseas guests included Glen Bailey from Hawaii, Matt Canvas from Germany, and Barry Khoo from Penang, Malaysia. Local guests consisted of Loh Kok Hong, a researcher and reporter of CNA, who is doing a documentary on Karikal Mahal, a building in Singapore used as a venue for magic meetings in the world-war 2 period, while the rest consisted mainly of newcomers, several of whom signed up to became our members.
Carson Goh began the fireside chat segment with special guest Glen Bailey. Through this interview, we got to know how Glen became interested in magic, and how he used magic in medical mission works to the Philippines. Glen was also featured as a magician in an episode of the popular TV series “Lost”.
The first of the overseas guests to perform was Glen Bailey. He did the Insurance Policy routine, and used a light bulb to energise a volunteer so that he could cause his selected card to rise from the pack. Next was Matt Canvas. Hewas a professional dancer as well as a magician. A volunteer randomly arranged the order of a small packet of playing cards. The number thus generated matched exactly the number tattooed in the performer’s arm! Barry Khoo performed a torn and restored poster of Spiderman. Derek Ho, aka Mr Egg, shared his experience at a recent ventriloquism competition where he won 3 awards, including the Grand Prix prize.
John Teo proceeded to deliver an interesting and insightful lecture on ‘Semi-Automatic Card Tricks’. He defined and explained the difference between Fully-Automatic and Semi-Automatic magic. John demonstrated and taught an effect of Fully-Automatic magic where a volunteer moved around in a matrix of 3 X 3 squares depicting 9 various behavioural styles of people and finally landed on “Courteous”, a behaviour style predicted by John in advance. He then went on to show an application of this principle in a psychological story of the 2 guns involving the help of 2 volunteers. John then moved on to show a Semi-Automatic card trick. It was an ‘elevator’ plot using the Ace, two, three and four of hearts. He then explained how, with a simple hidden move of the cards, this interesting effect can be accomplished.
Playful Kenneth Chia, complete with a ‘dragon head costume’,presented a banner with 2 hearts and the Mandarin word ‘Family’ printed across them. In line with Valentine Day, he transformed the word ‘Family’ to ‘Friends’ on the banner. In his next effect, a volunteer randomly placed the 4 Aces above 4 small boxes. When the boxes were uncovered, the prediction on each box matched exactly the Ace placed above it.
Ng Kah King performed “Cube-Libre” with a volunteer. He covered a stack of small mixed-up blocks numbered 1 to 6 with a long opaque cover and caused the blocks to arrange in ascending order when the cover is removed, and then in descending order the second time. In the final phase, the volunteer arranged his blocks in a random stack and Kah King was able to duplicate this order with his own set of number blocks.
Before the break, Jeremy Pei and Goh Yin Xian presented their dealer shows. Jeremy offered 2 bundle deals at very attractive prices. He also demonstrated the Ice Spoon which can cover the magician’s eyes, yet allow him to see as if his eyes were uncovered, and performed his 3 golden shell trick. Yin Xianhighlighted some products featured in Blackpool. He shared about ‘Six Pack’, Rainbow Cards and Plug-It where a charger cable was used to pick up a volunteer’s selected Social Media Card from a bunch of cards placed inside a bag.
After the break, Enrico Varella performed Lennart Green’s ‘Stolen Cards’. Using a pack of cards from the various casinos in Las Vegas, a volunteer was able to pair 2 cards with 2 other cards randomly selected from the pack. Enrico then showed that somehow, the volunteer had chosen these 2 special cards out of a pack where all the other cards were the 6 of diamonds.
Thomas Yeo presented 2 plagues depicting ‘Chinese dragon kids’ which could communicate via blinking red/green eyes to express their joy or displeasure.
James Pang challenged 4 volunteers to select each of 5 ang-pows, using the roll of a dice, and leaving the last and fifth one to him. All of the 4 volunteers received $8 in each ang-pow they picked, and the last ang-pow that went to the performer was shown to contain $88.
Jeremy Pei returned to transform a normal playing card into a dragon card in a packet of 4 cards. He also changed 3 large CDs from all black to multi-colours and then to all red ones, before turning them all into confetti.
Glen Bailey came back and presented Daryl Martinez’ “Audio Transposition” effect using a Mickey Mouse toy rattler and a Donald Duck toy squeaker. Sprinkling some magic powder over them, he made both toys switch their special features.
A lucky draw was held towards the end of the meeting with 5 lucky winners, happily walking away with their special prizes.
The meeting ended officially but the night was early for several members who stayed around to mingle and shop at the dealer booths.