This was our seventh meeting using the Zoom platform held on the evening of 15 October 2020.  The theme was “Mental And Bizarre Magic”.  Alvin Terence and John Teo were the co-hosts.

This was our seventh meeting using the Zoom platform held on the evening of 15 October 2020.  The theme was “Mental And Bizarre Magic”.  Alvin Terence and John Teo were the co-hosts.

John Teo started by paying a tribute to Mr Wong, one of the founder members of the club.  The Great Wong Ring is named after him.  Mr Wong, besides being a good magician, was also a generous person willing to lend his magic props and also coached the borrowers in how to use them.  The entire Wong family practices magic including Mrs Wong.  Mrs Wong sadly passed away earlier in the month.  A minute of silence was observed as a mark of respect for her.

John Teo went on to thank Tommy Chiang and Baharudin who work tirelessly in the background to coordinate and organise the zoom meetings every month.

Alvin Terence shared his experiences and methods of performing Mentalism in the virtual medium.  He discussed pre-show preparation, use of props and how to keep up the performing energy by using emoji.  Next, he performed an invisible deck effect where a spectator’s named card was the only card facing the other way around in his deck. 

Carson Goh was the next performer, using his deck of cards.  David Fillary, using his own deck of cards, was the volunteer.  Both of them carried out the same actions with their own deck of cards and both chose the 7D – a perfect match.

Alvin then proudly mentioned how two of our members, JK Tan and Kogi Oberoi, would contribute to the engineering community in Singapore.  In the forth-coming event, the National Engineers Day in November, JK would explain how magic props are linked to engineering principles, and Kogi would use magical effects in his sharing of his 50 years as an engineer.

David Fillary, for his contribution, did a truth/lie effect.  He laid 4 objects on a table.  They were a deck of cards, a linking ring, a sponge ball and a jumbo coin.  Ming Da was the volunteer.  He was asked to secretly choose an object.  Through a series of questions, in which the volunteer could tell the truth or lie, David not only could divine which object was selected, but also determined whether Ming Da told the truth or lied.  His second effect was a clever use of a progressive anagram to determine the name of a superhero thought of by Ming Da.   

New member Tech Tze Chun was the next performer.  He drew a heart symbol on a red Post-It note stuck on the back of a red backed card.  By shaking the card, the Post-It note magically changed into an origami folded heart.  He then transformed his sharpie into a soap bubble kit.  He blew bubbles and caught one that changed into a solid transparent marble. 

It was “Open Sesame” time with Cassidy Lee.   He demonstrated the various types of invisible decks, including the latest “In The Visible” deck.  He also showed the various types of haunted keys, and performed an interesting effect where he drew a picture of a closed lock on his business card.  He wrote a four digit number named by a volunteer, and the drawing on his business card changed into a picture of an open lock.  Cassidy then caused a small empty treasure chest to be become full of gold ingots. 

Goh Yin Xian presented the Eric Stevens’ Colour Stick, which was an interesting take on the Hot Rod. 

After a short break, Tommy Chiang came on with three effects.  The first trick used 5 cards in which one of them was the Ace of Spade which represented a bullet inside a 5round gun barrel.  In a random process of elimination, a volunteer was left with the bullet card.  The second effect was a one-ahead trick using 3 containers and 3 folded pieces of paper.  Tommy was able to predict a volunteer’s favourite food, number and a playing card.  In the final effect, a card was chosen and then put back into the deck.  By asking a series of questions to the volunteer regarding his chosen card, and spelling to his answers (the volunteer was allowed to lie or tell the truth), Tommy was able to locate the chosen card at the end of the spelling.  Tommy then gave a teach-in on his first effect with the bullet card.    

Kenneth Chia’s theme conjured up images of dungeons and guillotines.  Dressed as the Terminator, he performed both the guillotine and the sword-through-neck illusions using his own body as the subject as this was a virtual performance.  Needless to say, he survived both ordeals to give us more performances in the future.

Jeremy Pei performed several routines followed by his dealer demonstration.  His first trick was an invisible deck effect where the rest of the cards were blanks.  He transformed a sponge ball into a cube, and magically, a round cut-out in a playing card became a square hole.  His last effect was a chair test using 3 cute toy chairs in which he was able to predict the colour as well as the name of a card printed on each chair.

In his dealer demonstration, Jeremy showcased the following Tenyo products: The

Great Escape, Mystery Doghouse (with which Jeremy did an interesting prediction trick), Constellation Cards, Mental Bento (in which Jeremy converted it into a Rubik’s Cube prediction), and the 2021 Tenyo range comprising Cheek To Cheek, Magic Tweezers, The Blur, and Magical Honeycomb.  He offered some attractive bundle deals.  Jeremy also demonstrated a torn and restored Christmas poster from Japan.

Kogi Oberoi came on with a teach-in of his own version of Joyce Basch’s trick that used five cards to transform four picture cards into the four aces.  Kogi showed us how his method evolved from using 6 to 8 to 5 cards.  It did not use any card sleight-of-hand, only presentation.

The last event was the lucky draw which was won by both Curtis Choy and Enrico Varella.