Forty-eight people braved the haze to attend this evening’s IBM Meeting. Among them was a guest based overseas, Harapan S Ong. After welcoming all present to a ’Silk & Rope’ magic themed evening, host Satish Kumar reminded all to buy their tickets early for the 65th IBM Ring 115 Anniversary Dinner on 14 November 2015 at 6.30 pm at the Roland Restaurant. Apart from a sumptuous dinner, magic show and door gifts, lucky draw prizes can be won, and all for only $20 per ticket.
First to perform was Derek Lee who presented a deft rope trick by George Sands.
Satish Kumar began his tale of the mysterious Indian Rope trick, along with the myths and reality surrounding it.
Charles Choo impressed with a tooth pick penetrating a solid match box, a horizontal length of thread penetrating a scarf placed over it and re-arranging the same number of puzzles pieces such that an earlier missing piece is no longer required to complete the puzzle.
Satish Kumar continued with the riveting history of the Indian Rope trick from 9th to 17th century AD and its reach to as far as Batavia (present Jakarta) and Hangzhou, China.
JK Tan presented a ring sitting atop a rope …and in a second, it had penetrated the thickness of the rope with ease. He also coolly demonstrated how he could form a knot on a length of rope dangling from his hand with a mere quick flick of his wrist.
Samantha Ong and Bertram Yang accepted their magic wands from John Teo after taking the oath for new IBM Ring 115 members.
Jeremy Pei demonstrated some exciting items for sale at his dealer’s booth eg. eternal ropes, and linking rings using rings formed by tying the ends of each rope.
Satish Kumar moved on to the development of Indian Rope Magic in the 19th and 20th century AD.
It was Jonas Phua‘s turn to take his qualifying test to be a IBM Ring 115 member. He ‘remotely’ turned an entire blue deck in a card box into red except for his guest’s selected card which had been inserted in the same deck. Then, by lightly brushing the 51 blue cards against that only red card, he also changed the latter into blue. Next, he managed to get his guest’s card to jump from the middle to the top of the shuffled deck in a snap. In his finale, he showed how his very jumbled up cards could somehow all point in one direction.
Enrico Varella baffled the audience with his stretching rope trick as he also cracked them up with his jokes.
Gician Tan wowed the audience with a bunch of loose Chinese beads with hollow centres. He placed them in a narrow cylinder and when he pulled up one bead from the cylinder, the rest followed one by one as if strung together invisibly.
Jeremy Pei performed Tommy Wonder’s cups and balls routine followed by “Explosion,” which is a matrix and coins production and multiplication act by Dean Dill, to an appreciative audience.
The evening ended with an engaging performance and teach-in by Michael Lee who used a ‘Han Ping Chien’ move to demonstrate how 8 coins could penetrate, one by one through a mat on the table; and how a glass with coins could also penetrate a table top.
It was another delightful evening for all who attended the meeting.
Reported by
(Ms) Low Hwee Lang
