IBM Singapore Ring 115’s July meeting was held on Wednesday 15th January in Function Room 2, Level 3, of the National Library building. JK Tan and Kenneth Chia were the hosts. It was attended by 32 members and 1 guest. The evening featured 10 presenters and 1 teach-in. The theme was CNY Magic. There was a door gift and a lucky draw.
Kenneth set the tone of the evening by producing a giant fish from a tiny carrier bag that everyone agreed had grown in size since his last production of a fish. He welcomed students Chen Xun from AC JC, Edwin Lau and Lucas Lau from Ngee Anee poly. The latter two joined the IBM Ring115. A big welcome to the club to them. Simon Hung and Lee Wei Chong joined us after a long absence from the Ring. Their enthusiasm about returning showed in their presentations.
James Pang started with his usual glittery presence and presented what he called Lucky 4 8 dollar trick. He displayed 4 ang pow envelopes with $8 in each and a fifth with $80 in it. The volunteers were selected by catchers of a ball he threw who named a number. Using that number James matched the cards and the colours of the ang pow envelopes. James’ success in matching earned the volunteers the $8 ang pow. His failure would have given them $80. He concluded by producing all 8’s from the card box he had emptied earlier.
Desmond Peh had a creative deck and got a card selected by riffling. The black 8 card was matched with the production of no. 8 black pool ball. QH selected was printed on his t-shirt and 7C selected was revealed by pulling a mini card from his t-shirt.
Charles Choo had a US half dollar signed by a spectator and produced it out of a sealed coin box on a keychain. Next he asked a volunteer to say any 3 digit number starting with 8. 855 was chosen and multiplied it by another 3 digit random number – 123 giving an answer 105165. By dealing a number of cards equal to each digit of the answer he found the AC that was his prediction.
Simon Hung, the returning member, performed Spectator cuts to Aces. In keeping with CNY theme the deck was cut to four 8s. He took the 8s, blew on them and shook them and failed to turn over the 8S till a volunteer blew on it. Next the 4C was selected and using the four 8s, each 8H, 8S, 8D were shown face up in turn but the last card shown was the 4C.
JK Tan performed the Matching Colour trick with ang pow envelopes and casino chips. Written on a paper was ‘Will The Colour Match’. A volunteer and himself dealt envelopes from top to bottom and tabled the envelope for the last letter of the word. Thus 4 pairs of envelopes were left on the table. They placed bets for each word. If there was a match JK would win. No matches were found so JK lost. In the last bet, JK won by showing that the backs of each pair of envelopes had matching colours.
Kenneth Chia transported his volunteer to Maldives, the chosen holiday destination, by travelling in 1st Class with Singapore Airlines. By a process of eliminating boarding passes, discs representing the volunteer scaling tortuous routes, drawn on a board, to reach the correct aircraft and his mobile phone.
Lee Wei Chong, also a returning member, had a 10C chosen from the deck. He cut the deck into 4 packets and remixed with alternative face up and face down packets. In the end 10C was the only face up card. His lucky charm cards had famous destinations from around the world. By a process of dialogue the volunteer chose the card with the horseshoe sign. Wei Chong dropped a coin out of an envelope that amazingly had a horseshoe symbol.
There was a 10 minutes comfort break. There were no dealers selling their wares.
Gician Tan opened the 2nd half with photos of iconic monuments. By a completely random selection the Merlion was chosen. He opened the pad that had blank pages and miraculously a beautiful image of the Merlion appeared. Next his production of snakes, wands and a snow storm from various containers was fast and furious. He performed the Professor’s nightmare and in a flash produced 1 long rope. Fears of having to stay back to clean the room, long after the end of the session, evaporated when he produced a vacuum cleaner out of thin air.
Kenneth Chia returned for the teach-in with a transparent empty box that was instantly filled with bank notes. He demonstrated the production of the springy banknotes by using strips of ordinary everyday used steel measuring tapes and sticky tape. Fake US$ are the easiest to purchase. Other currencies can be found around festive times like Hari Raya. Flowers can also be made using the same principles. His money production trick of Singapore dollar to Ringgit was robust and easy to operate once the principles were grasped.
Wee Kien Ming (Mr. Bottle) showed 2 sets of blank cards with different coloured backs. He and the volunteer shuffled their packets and dealt each card in turn on the table. On turning over, the backs of each pair had matching colours.
Victor Heng was the last performer. He had several 50 cent coins with numbers on them and a prediction. He dealt two or three coins in a row at a time and gave the volunteer the choice to keep or give to Victor till all the coins were used up. On turning over all the low numbered coins were with the volunteer. Victor had all the high numbered coins to a total value of 750 matching the prediction. Next he had cards with number 1, 2, 3 and 4 written on them. They were shuffled face down and the volunteer chose, changed his mind and finally chose 3 that Victor had predicted.
A cute “Lucky Cat” was distributed as the door gift. These are solar power driven and were donated by Gician Tan. A very big thank you to him.
The night ended with 5 lucky draws and thanks to hosts, performers and the attendees.
