This is a much anticipated yearly event because for the cost of a dinner, diners get magical entertainment as well.
Our 59th Anniversary Dinner was held on the evening of 14 November 2009 at the Mong Hing Restaurant at Key Point Building , Beach Road . It attracted about 176 diners seated in 18 tables. About 60% were guests. VIPs included Mrs Wong, wife of our late The Great Wong, our patrons, and representatives of 2 other magic organizations in Singapore .
Early arrivals were treated to table-hopping magic provided by Sandeep Singh, Baharudin, Tan Jui Kuan, Victor Heng, Gordon Li, Andy Zhang and John Teo. After a welcome address byPresident John Teo, dinner commenced. It consisted of a 9 course Chinese sit-down dinner. This was punctuated by a table game and an awards ceremony for the following most active members of the year: Tang Sai Thong, Alvin Terence Tan, Jeremy Pei, Wee Kien Meng, Chew Liang Huat and Lim Teck Guan. This was also the first time that we had decided to conduct our Induction Ceremony in the presence of non-members. New-comers Jason Loo andCalvin Wong went on stage and were officially inducted into ordinary membership by President John Teo.
After the dinner, the efficient restaurant staff rolled away the round tables and rearranged the chairs in theatre seating style. It was time for our stage magic. Jeremy Tan opened the show with strong manipulative magic involving canes, silks, streamers and doves. He also did contact ball juggling. The next performer was Wee Kien Meng who did a wrist tie act, and an invisible card routine in which a freely named card was visually produced from a purse frame. Aaron Ang performed visual and manipulative magic. His repertoire included umbrella production, zebra silks, colour changing scarf, card manipulations, diminishing cards, cards to top hat and ended with a production of a large silk flag on a pole.
Nishant Kasibhatla is a memory expert. He could memorise 30 digits randomly called out by various spectators and then recited them forward, backwards and named the digit at any point of the 30 numbers sequence. Frankie Yeo manipulated a puppet to perform magic. Everything was as if a real magician were to perform them, except all the tricks were in miniature sizes. There were dove pan, squared circle tubes, raccoon (miniaturized), and even a dancing hanky act and snowstorm in China !
The stage lighting was dimmed as the last magician’s act consisted of magic with lighted objects. Joe Yu performed meteors (blue light transferred from palm to palm and to forehead), D’lite, lighted dancing cane, cane to string of lighted bulbs, D’lite rose, and lights in paper container.
The Master of Ceremony was Nique Tan who kept the program for the entire evening flowing smoothly. No dinner party would be complete without door gifts and lucky draws: that evening was no exception. The door gifts and table prizes were contributed by our patron Gician Tan. Betsy Teo organized the event, Baharudin was the videographer, Bernard Sim the photographer,Kenneth Chia and Joshue Lee took charged of the stage, and Low Hwee Lang and Betsy Teo were at the reception.
Reported by:
JOHN TEO
p/s: More of Dinner photo at our Photo Gallery! Click Here!
