Next Meeting: 15 March 2025 | Theme: Annual General Meeting | Location: NLB Drama Center

SINGAPORE RING 115 – Oct 2013 Magic Meeting Report

34 members attended our October meeting. Also present were 3 guests – Billy Scadlock, who performs as Charlie Chaplin at the Singapore Universal Studios, and 2 representatives from a local TV production house, Jarren Tan and Daphne Koh. The latter two were here to see if they could include an episode in the forthcoming TV on how Ring 115 runs a typical magic meeting. Host for the evening, Victor Tan, reminded that IBM’s 62nd  annual dinner would be held at Roland Restaurant on 16 November 2013 at 6.30pm. Bernard Sim advised that we look out for a performance by Nathan Burton in Singapore in December.

 

The newest member, Tan Choon Kang, was officially inducted into IBM Ring 115 after he took his oath and received his wand from President John Teo.

 

Jeremy Tan began the evening of ‘self-working magic’. He got a guest to follow his instructions which included shuffling a deck of cards, remembering a selected card, and then mixing up the cards further in the deck. Despite all the mixing, he was able to locate the chosen card spot-on!

 

Tan Jui Kuan demonstrated how a mini ‘toilet plunger” could pick up a packet of playing cards comprising the exact number cards as nominated by a spectator. Next, he set up a large board with 4 rows by 4 columns of

numbers. Using 2 sets of 4 different coloured lengths of ribbons, he got a guest to nominate where each ribbon length should be placed both horizontally and vertically on the board. Where the same colour ribbons crossed each other, the numbers there were totalled up. The total tallied with the amount of money in a wallet placed on the table at the start of the effect. When the 4 number cards were flipped over, the word “APPLAUSE” appeared, prompting the audience to show their ready appreciation!

 

Chew Liang Huat demonstrated the danger of smoking. A stick of cigarette was placed inside a tube. When it was removed later on, it was transformed into a smaller, black stick of ‘nasty’ nicotine!

 

Alvin Terrence Tan got a guest to shuffle and cut a deck of cards such that it was quite mixed up. Then, while holding on to his arm tightly, she was to spell out her selected card in her mind while he attempted to read her mind and quite successfully too as he spelt out her selected card physically with the deck!

 

Billy Scadlock distributed to the audience sheets with names of popular comedians printed within either a gray or white box. Everyone started with his or her own favourite comedian in a gray box, and then moved randomly to another box according to instructions given by Billy. Although they had free choices of movement and boxes….amazingly, all ended up at the box with Charlie Chaplin, the character played by Billy in Singapore Universal Studios!

 

Joseph Loh set aside a set of predictions and then invited 2 guests to share in the riffle shuffling and cutting of a deck, and basically messed it up so that the deck has random face-up and face-down cards. When the cards were laid out, separated and counted, they totally matched his predictions of 21 face-down cards, 9 red cards which happen to be all spades except for 2 clubs!

 

Maxwell Low got his guest to deal the cards one by one, face-up, and if he so wished, he could place a card face-down. When the cards were fanned out, the only face-down card was the same one as his prediction – the 8 of Hearts!

 

Aaron Ang performed a series of acts with scarves. He had 2 blue scarves tied together and put aside. Then, he burnt a yellow scarf to ashes in a net only to make it reappear between the two earlier tied-up blue scarves! Next, 21 he got an audience to mix up a regular-sized Rubik’s cube. Within 30 seconds, he managed to twist his own smaller version such that it matched the guest’s, side for side. He went a step further – solving the cube in under 30 seconds!

 

Jeremy Pei did a sucker colour changing silk trick and then went on to a comical ventriloquist act with a chameleon dummy, tickling the audience‘s funny bones. Next, he performed his own creation and marketed effect, “Lemon-Egg”. This was supposed to be a borrowed bill in egg rick, but turned out to be bill in lemon. An egg magically changed into a lemon and inside it was found the borrowed bill, with the serial number checked!

 

President John Teo did a version of Simon Aronson’s shuffle-bored card trick with an interesting theme of a planning function of a manager. He followed this by demonstrating and then teaching a self-working card trick found in an old edition of John Scarne’s book. A spectator merely spelt to and found their own chosen card. The interesting fact was that they could lie about their chosen card when spelling to it!

 

It was time for some light refreshment at 9.30pm.

 

After the break, Satish Kumar, our Magician of the Month, performed “White Star”, an eerie effect based on the passengers in the ill-fated Titanic. 2 spectators assisted and one consistently chose photographs of passengers who died in the tragedy while the other could only locate passengers who survived the catastrophe. He concluded with a member of the audience who was able to “predict” a card chosen by another spectator.

 

Hayashi invited Billy to help him in a version of “Insurance Policy” card trick where the escape clause of an insurance policy righted a wrongly predicted card. Next performer was Lee Choong Jee who magically transformed the 4 Jokers, including the 2 held in Billy’s closed palms, into 4 Aces! Being an expert in origami, Aw Kum Seng used an origami woodpecker to find a spectator’s chosen card!

 

Lim Teck Guan caused a chosen card to rise up from a deck in which he stuck a stick through a hole drilled onto one end of the deck of cards. He then magically transformed 2 round red balls tightly held in a spectator’s hand into a red box!

 

 

Charles Choo did a 3-phase card trick with Billy as his assistant in which Billy managed to correctly pair the same colour cards. In the next 2 phases, he was able to predict the number of red and black cards not paired by Billy.

 

Derek Lee did a trick with a deck of cards that had arrows printed in different directions on the back of the cards. A 4-of-a-kind was named by a spectator. She then sorted out the cards into 4 piles according to the directions of the arrows, and found that in each pile was found one of the 4-of-a-kind cards!

 

Jeremy Pei rounded up the evening with a lecture on the origin and handling of the appearing cane. He shared a lot of information, including 5 ways of transforming a silk to a cane, 3 ways of splitting a cane into 2, and his 3 step transformation from rose to silk to cane.

 

The meeting ended with extended time at 10.30 pm. It was an enjoyable evening with many performers.