The first meeting of 2013 was attended by 35 members and 6 guests. Co-hosts Derek Lee and Jeremy Tan welcomed the guests who included a French police attaché and Great Wong’s youngest daughter who was also in foreign service. President John Teo broke the sad news about ex-member Tang Yeng Fun’s passing away on 3 January 2013.
The theme for the evening’s performances was “My Favourite Trick”. Satish Kumar made some magic moves and in a flash, all the mixed-up cards in a deck when spread out, had all turned face-down except for one earlier selected by a guest.
Next, Chew Kai Wei took his induction test. He made 4 coins vanish through his closed fist and re-appear inside it. He also executed some cool moves in a cup and ball routine.
President John Teo distributed a house layout to the audience where anyone could indicate his preferred number of steps that would take him to a particular room in the house. He invited a guest to participate and his destination turned out to be the “dining room” which matched the prediction in John’s sealed envelope.
Eric Bargone, a French police attaché, performed a 4-Ace production from a shuffled deck as well as caused a Queen placed in any order between the 4 Aces to somehow ‘rise’ right to the top.
Hayashi Takuya made a deck of cards disappear from a container only to re-appear secured to his leg. He had a guest’s randomly selected card buried in a deck and when the deck was spread out, the only card with a blue back turned out to be the selected card!
Jeremy Pei performed two Woody Aragon card effects. In the first effect, he showed how he could spell his way to his card of choice eg. Eight of Spades. Spelling “President” brought him to a card with a photograph of President John Teo. The next effect was a version of ACAAN. He got a guest to randomly call out a suit (heart), a few numbers and using one of the numbers,’5’ and suit, ‘Hearts’ as his magic ‘wand’, he added up the balance of the numbers and counted off the deck to that number. That turned out to be the guest’s selected card!
After the break, the magician of the month was none other than our President John Teo. In a Sid Lorraine popular paper folding effect, he told a humorous story of someone trying to buy a house he could not afford. He showed how the seller would fold one end of a picture of a large, towering house each time the buyer claimed he could not afford it, such that it became a smaller, one-storey house and eventually, to just “The John”! The next effect was a jumbo version of “The Whole Thing”. With two holed-cards and two whole cards, he magically transformed them into four totally different cards viz. one with red sides, one with a red dot, one with a red hole and one with just the words ‘the hole’. He told another story of a fish seller who took counsel from a man and tore off words from his paper signboard ‘Fresh Fish Sold Here Today’ to just the word ‘Fish’. Eventually the torn sign was restored. Another bundle which fell onto the floor, supposedly the torn pieces, was picked up and opened to show it was just a strip of white paper! John then showed a version of the pom-pom stick that was a fishing rod with a hook, sinker, reel and a float. He then produced another fishing rod, this time it had 3 hooks and a fish hanging from a side hook. In a split second, the same fish was hanging from the centre hook instead, and in the next second, 2 more fishes appeared from nowhere, hanging from a hook each! This was Codology. Finally, John presented the popular zig-zag lady illusion in 2-dimension miniaturised form. Initially, the lady (a picture of a lady), who was cut in 3 sections, was fully restored. A second lady was not only restored, but she had her costume changed as well. The third lady vanished completely from the cabinet, only to reappear back in the envelope in which all the 3 ladies were first housed!
Enrico Varella, Vice-President of Ring 115, shared tips about the importance of achieving “naturalness” in magic performances, and demonstrated it with the French drop, double lift and other sleights. Audience should not have any reason to suspect an action, let alone detect it….
Jeremy Tan vanished 3 coins, one at a time, with the last one accompanied by a burst of
flame. He also showed how he teleported a coin from one hand across to the other.
Lim Teck Guan showed how when he threw a dice and got a ‘Six’, all the dice in his little magic box of dice would also all change into “Six”. He also performed a pocket-sized zig-zag lady.
Ashish Lodhavia had 2 spectators each named a different Queen. There were 2 packets of 4 cards, one with blue backs and one with red backs. The named Queens were found to be the only card reversed in each packet. Finally, the 2 Queens were found to have the opposite colour backs!
At close to 10 pm, members called it a night, but both Jeremy Pei and Jeremy Tan’s counters were still opened for sales. ………
Reported by:
(Ms) Low Hwee Lang
