SINGAPORE RING 115 - May 2022 Magic Meeting Report
After more than 2 years of virtual meetings amid the pandemic, it was such a liberation to meet in a physical venue. Our May meeting was held on Sunday, 15th May 2022, in Function Room 1, Level 3, of our National Library building. The theme was "Mobile Phone & Digital Magic". It was co-hosted by Tommy Chiang and JK Tan. The attendees were 36 members and 1 guest.
The meeting was called to order by Tommy Chiang at 7:30 PM. He greeted a guest, Okamoto, and then invited the President to cover some regulatory and safety
procedures and information.
Tommy Chiang started the ball rolling by being the first performer. He was able to divine the 6-digit pin number of our Vice-President’s mobile phone and unlock it. An 8-digit total was the result of a multiplication of 3 large numbers from 3 different members of the audience. This turned out to be the actual mobile number of someone in the audience! A selected card turned out to be the card depicted in an old photograph of the Houdini family recalled from the photo gallery of Tommy’s mobile phone. 2 volunteers, one with an Apple and one with an Android phone, were solicited. A random item searched by one person using Google on his mobile phone magically appeared in the Google search of the other person’s mobile phone. Tommy was also able to divine this item before it was revealed in the other person’s mobile phone. Tommy finished off his session by teaching all of us the “TOXO” force using our own mobile phones.
Acting the part of a nervous magician, Zhang JinMing had a card chosen and then lost in a deck. The deck was put inside a transparent document box, and the cards were shuffled by shaking up the box. When the box was opened, JinMing was able to abstract 4 cards from the mixed-up deck – one was the chosen card, and the other 3 turned out to be the other mates of the chosen card.
During our virtual meetings, 3 associate members tool their Induction Tests. An Induction Ceremony was conducted for the 3 members by Secretary JK Tan. President John Teo gave out a wooden wand each to Siew Kim Siang, Zhang
JinMing, and Thomas Yeo.
Ng Kah King made a boisterous start to his presentation. He displayed a sign for Pepsi. Using the calculator on his mobile phone, the sum total of random numbers became the word PEPSI, when it was viewed upside down.
It was dealer’s demonstration time. Jeremy Pei demonstrated several items, including DK’s chicken egg bag and Tenyo’s “+1” products, and offered them at special discounted prices for the evening.
Treasurer Siew Kim Siang passed a silk through his mobile phone, and then vanished a glass of water with a handkerchief.
Marcus from The Fundamentals demonstrated “Crafty Coins” and a couple of Rubik’s Cube magic including one with a carrying cloth bag which could reveal each of the 6 colour sides of the Rubik’s Cube when it was turned inside out each time.
A break of 10 minutes was taken and after that, Kenneth Chia took over the hosting. Ian Tan sent a WhatsApp message to John Teo, and had a volunteer doodled a
playing card on his mobile phone. It matched the WhatsApp message.
John Teo had a card chosen from a deck by a lady volunteer. She took a selfie of herself with her selected card of 6 of spades with her mobile phone. Her card was lost in the deck. John took out the Queen of spades and insisted it was the selected card. The design of the Queen of spades has the Queen (which represented the lady volunteer) holding a card which contained 6 spades symbols. He continued with the volunteer generating a random total of some 7-digit number. She kept one digit by herself and recited the other 6 digits out load. John was able to divine her
secret digit.
Guest Okamoto had 2 volunteers freely select cards from a packet of 10 cards. Magically, they separated the black from the red cards. For his second trick, he had 3 cards selected from 3 packets of cards. He managed to locate all the 3 selected cards.
Jeremy Pei showed that a selected card matched the wallpaper used on his mobile phone which featured a picture of his son Jac, with a Jack of clubs playing card in it. Jeremy displayed a wall made up of 20 small Rubik’s Cubes. He had one face of each of 4 Rubik’s Cubes solved according to a colour designated by a volunteer. The remaining 16 Rubik’s Cubes magically transformed into a matching emoji design selected at random. He then performed “Will The Cards Marched?” popularised by Larry Becker and Howard Adams using 2 wine glasses to contain the 2 sets of 5 half-cards. The audience was able to match the backs of only one set of cards. But all turned out well when the half cards were turned around to reveal their faces. All 5 sets of half-cards match exactly, with one set showing the logo of IBM. He then presented this entire set of cards to the president of Ring 115,
Kenneth Chia performed several effects using his own constructed props. He had 4 prediction tiles matched exactly the 4 symbols randomly placed behind each of them. He then performed a type of “McCombical Deck” effect using social media symbols. Using a large board of Facebook symbol, Kenneth did a Winston Freer Puzzle Tiles trick where he was able to add 2 extra family photograph pieces onto the existing
one without increasing the total area.
The final item for the evening was the Lucky Draw. He had someone spin a wheel containing members’ names on it. The 2 lucky winners were Carson Goh and Ian Tan.
The meeting closed at 10:20 PM.