IBM Singapore Ring 115’s May meeting was held on Friday 15th May 2026, in Function Room 1, Level 3, of the National Library building. Ng Kah King was the host. The theme for the evening was a lecture by Rick Holcombe from the USA. Total number of attendees was 50, comprising 42 members, 2 patrons and 6 guests.

Ng Kah King introduced the guests and made some announcements.

The first program was an Induction Test taken by newcomer Teo Yu Xiang. A random 2-digit number, 54, was chosen. When the notepad in his phone was opened, 54 was missing from his list. He performed an ACAAN effect where a volunteer chose a number between 1 and 52, and the card in the deck at this number matched the prediction in an envelope. Finally, he dealt cards from a deck and two volunteers stopped him at random. The cards revealed when stopped matched the handwritten predictions and amazingly, the rest of the deck was blank.

Jimmy Wong was warmly welcomed back to the club. He magically linked and unlinked solid rings, even when the “key ring” was visible.

Dave Karyadi, in his Psychometric effect, got 4 volunteers to sketch shapes on 4 blank pieces of paper. These were shuffled and he managed to give each volunteer their sketch back, even after they had lied when asked. In his second effect, the volunteer could not find the card that would have won him 5 dollars. In his final effect, the volunteer chose a fruit that was produced from a can of fruit cocktail.

Chew Liang Huat performed the Obedient Ball effect using a walnut and a thread. He followed this with a cylinder that he made with a 3D printer, which could also move upwards on the string, defying gravity.

John Teo had a board with 8 popular children’s characters on it. The chosen character, Batman, was revealed as a QR code that was proven to be correct on the volunteer’s phone. Then the QR code magically transformed into an image of Batman. Next, he showed 3 boarding passes with 3 different airlines. A volunteer freely named any city in the world and chose the airline he would take to travel to that city. When the QR code on each boarding pass was scanned, only the one the volunteer selected travelled to the city he named.

An Induction Ceremony was conducted for Rob Newberry, who took his Induction Test in the previous month.

James Pang displayed his elaborate prop of Once Upon A Time Sixes and Sevens. Using two volunteers, he performed a routine of cutting a deck, turning some cards face up, exchanging decks and mixing. He matched several predictions that he had displayed during the setup.

After a 15-minute break, it was time for the lecture by Rick Holcombe.

Rick Holcombe started by showing his Snack Break effect, in which sponge nuggets kept disappearing and appearing, finally producing a bone. The rest of the lecture was truly magical, with small coin purses, coins, including silver, copper, Chinese and a silver/copper coin, a Sharpie pen, small silver balls, a slinky coil and his phone. His Fusion routine is a complete coin act with three different coloured coins. It is an extension of the ideas he expounded in his book Calico.

Rick Holcombe demonstrated the manipulation of the coins very openly, with interactive questions from the audience.

After his lecture, brisk sales were observed at his table. They included his book Calico, Recoil, video packages, Snack Break and others.

The formal lecture ended at 10:00 PM, but discussions and exchange of ideas carried on till 11:00 PM.

Reported by
Kogi Oberoi