IBM Singapore Ring 115’s November meeting was held on Saturday 15th November 2025, in Function Room 2, Level 3, of the National Library building.  Ivan Lee and Wee Kien Weng were the hosts.  The total attendance was 40, which was made up of 25 members, 1 patron and 4 guests.   The theme of the evening was Novelty Magic.

Ivan Lee welcomed our guests Jennie The, Ernest Chew, Calvin Teo and Jerome Bourgeon.

In his opening remarks, President John Teo quoted Jeff McBride’s definition of magic: “magic is the art of creating wonders in the hearts of others, reminding us of the beauty and mystery that surrounds us”.  He told all of us that there are benefits for both the spectators as well as the performers of the art of magic and encouraged all of us to treasurer our gift of magic well.

Ivan Lee kicked off the evening with his “Bizarre Shop” by converting a borrowed S$10 bill to S$2 in a container and ultimately producing it from a cash-back hand held printer.

There were 2 Associate Members who took the Induction Tests.

The first person to perform was Xuande Tan.  He did a topsy-turvy pack routine where a pack of cards was mixed up with some facing one way and others facing the other way.  He magically restored the pack back to order so that all the cards faced one way except a card chosen by a volunteer.  Then he had 3 volunteers cut the pack into 3 packets.  He proceeded to recall correctly every card in each of the packets held by the 3 volunteers.

The second person who took the test was Lim Shi Jie.  He multiplied a sponge ball to two balls and proceeded to transpose balls from hand to hand and finally caused all the balls to vanish into thin air.  This was followed by an ambitious card routine where a chosen card kept rising up to the top of the pack, and a solid pack routine where the entire pack of cards became a solid block of plastic.  He continued with magically transferring an “X” made by a marker onto a spectator’s palm.  He finished by not only finding a spectator’s card, but causing the other cards to vanish altogether.

Wee Kien Meng (aka Mr Bottle) shared his experiences with Concept, Context and Presentation to create novelty magic.  His approach is to have an open mind to blend science and use the environment to find alternative use of effects, and not necessarily invent new tricks.  He went on to give examples of his novelty magic tricks he had used for his magical tour event during the Covid period.  He demonstrated how to shrink a Rubik Cube, and capture a chosen card on a mobile phone selfie stick.  He showed how to adapt the multiplying balls to multiplying Ferrero Rocher sweets, and a ring and string routine using a string and a doughnut.  He also performed a penetrating card packet trick and catching a signed “bullet” using a toy gun.  At this juncture, guest Jerome Bourgeon joined in and showed how use creativity in magic by demonstration the pom-pom trick in miniature form using coloured peas and an empty pen casing, and how to use the film container as a magical production tube.

After a short break, guest Jerome Bourgeon gave all of us a mini lecture.  Jerome was from France and has been residing in Singapore for more than 17 years.  Jerome’s endeavour is to get the audience to do as much of the magic as possible, but also leave a doubt in their mind on the feasibility of the effect.  He performed a toss-out deck effect and combined this with the revelation of the 3 selected cards using Mark Shortland’s “Amazebox” which contained slips of papers written by each member of the audience on the identities of 3 random playing cards.  He stunned a member of the audience by locating her chosen card merely by studying her body language, much to the method used by the protagonist in the popular TV series “Lie To Me”.

Jerome explained how to use creativity in magic by always looking from a different perspective to the original effect.  He explained an interesting example of how to perform the “crossing the deck” force by cutting a deck into 2 portions and throwing the 2 portions onto the table.

The final event of the evening was the auctioning of magic books and props from the late Ashish Lodhavia.

Reported by

Kogi