Malaysia Magic Fellowship

Friday 7th July 2006

Remus, David and Angeline came to pick me up at my home in Melaka. Knowing how Malaysian’s are, their pick up time initially 9pm delayed to 11.30pm (haha).

It was awesome sitting in Remus’s Skyline. Super nice and super powderful and LOUD! 

Upon our exit, just before the Ayer Keroh toll, there was police checks and we knew the policemen would ask us to go aside. Our car was loud and hehe I guess had many things that is not legal. Remus stepped out of the car…. and went aside with the policemen, whilst the rest of us stayed in the car. 15 mins later, Remus came back to the car… we ask “Dude… what ya happened man?”… then Remus replied…. dont ask man, whipping his mouth on his sleeves as though…. LOL. Nola…he was just acting la. He said the policemen chatted with him abt cars.. tat all.. haha.

 The journey to Johor was fun. I wanted to nap for a bit but the noise and the bumpiness of the car kept me awake. I was partially deaf for a while. haha. We arrived Johor abt 2am and met up with our host Tom (Angeline’s bf). Another car dude with a nice modified 1989 Beemer. Later learnt he was the founder of zerotohundred.com, one of the most active forum for Car enthusiast. He took us to eat supper. Nice duck noodles.

 After that we went for a cruising around Johor town and bridges. Most streets were empty so it was cool. Remus showed me tricks with his car and how to make fire come out of the car exhaust. It was loud man! He must have wasted like Rm5 each time he fires up his car exhaust. haha.

We slept abt 6am that nite.

Saturday 8th July 2006

We woke up at 10am. Had breaky and left for Spore.

We took the Astima there… big and comfy to fit 5 of us.

Reached and pass Spore toll and Remus bowel is full and calls for the toilet.

He could have gone to this toilet, but he didnt want to after he saw the red signboard… LOL.

                               

Suddenly it was jam at Spore. Nearly stationary to crawling speed. 40 mins later still stuck and Remus calls for emergency. He said “Im gonna pee in this car man”… so he went to the back seat and did his business. I offered him my 500ml bottle, telling him u better not overflow it man lol. It was so funny… he kept laughing doing his business. The great thing is he managed to shut the flow off so that it doesnt overflow. Then he ask for more bottle. We dont have anymore bottles. Then Remus said to use his 2L bottle which contain abt 300ml water inside. He quickly drank them all and continued his business. Ok.. all done then lol…. u wont believe this.. he showed proudly his output! wow! almost 2L of water man!

Here is the pic of his output. LOL

Remus….letting is all go…. relief… LOL.

 Reached Shaw Towers at 3pm…. late! Spore Flourishers and Magicians await us.

When we reached there… the flourishers were playing this game where we sit in a circle and one by one we will add a move on top of the previous moves. Pretty fun but hard. It was very cool to meet great flourishers like Kevin, Jaspas, and Daren there. Also got to meet Virtuoso Cai and Sly as well, Ling and Fume. Was great to meet new guys like Neo, Dragon, etc.

Remus and Lai joined the magic group while I joined the flourishers.

Here’s a pic of David and some Singaporean Magicians.

(From left : Gordon, Ning, Uncle Bob, David, Aloysius)

Soon after the flourish game, Kevin and Jaspas start their Flourish Lecture. It was great to hear from these two guys. They are one of the top and well known flourishers in Spore and gave a great speech abt flourishing, cards to flourish, where, people who flourishes, tips on flourishing, uses and purpose etc etc. Great stuff!

Above: Jaspas and Kevin giving the flourish lecture.

Below: Me and the creator of Damn Straight, Mr Kevin Ho. Background: Dragon, Cai and Sly join in at the snap!

A pic with Jaspas.

Jamming ended abt 8pm and then we quickly rushed to Golden Landmark to buy our cards and stuff! We had to call the aunty to wait for us. hehe.

At night, we returned to JB for supper together with one of Tom’s fren. Had a nice meal and I drank quite a bit of Carlsberg there… its a nice restaurant. David, Remus and I performed some magic for Tom’s fren. David did some strong mentalism effect which fooled him, I did more sleight of hands tricks, and remus …. LOL… this guy is a real comedian. His act.. super funny. I love his 2CM and his coughing cards!

We came home in the abt 4am, jam a bit more and then kabooom… zzzz

I and Remus zzzzzzz-ing and Card in our hands. hehe mine was a pose, but Remus beside me was real. He really slept with his newly bought clear plastic bikes in his hands. I had to take it off his hands. LOL. We were all v tired.

Sunday 9th July 2006

Woke up late, had “bakuteh”, Tom’s mum cooked. Yummy. We decided to go to Spore again after that coz we didnt get to see Spore the night of the gathering.

Some of us had too much garlic to eat that on our way to Spore, someone kept burping and it stunk badly. LOL.

We went to 2 main places in Spore. One is the place to buy shoes! I bought my And1 shoes there! And David bought his Nike’s. Then, we went to the electronic place. Cant remember the name but all selling electronics. Pretty cool.

8pm, yups 8pm then only we left Spore… but before that, we took some cool pics at the Carpark… yups the carpark. They have to be the best pics taken during our trip.

From Left to right: Tom, Angeline, Remus, David and I

More pics from the car park…

Back at Tom’s house in JB abt 9.15pm. His mum had dinner prepared for us. How nice. And this time, it was the yummy fishballs that all of us loved. She made them herself and fried them. Wow… how chewy and tasty they were. Love them a lot.

10.15pm, we went to meet Reno, his gal Sarah and Alvin (Reno’s fren) at Lemon Tree, a place to drink and relax. We all chatted and showed each other magic. David left Alvin speechless with some of his strong mentalism effect. I did my card routine and Reno performed his ungimmicked dollar thru bill effect. No its not Dough by Sankey. It’s much better and more convincing one. Reno performed it well.

Here’s a blur pic of my performance.

From Left to right: Alvin, Remus, Tom, Angeline, David, Sarah, Reno and I.

12.15am… ok.. its time to go home!!!! So we left…

 We hit Max speed 180 on few occasions on the straight highway….

Here’s a pic of 3 of us looking cool at the Petrol station.

 We reached Melaka at nearly 3am. Remus and David reached KL abt 5am.

So there u go… a lil memory of our trip. Super fun and super enjoyable. Another plus is I woke up and found out Italy won the world cup. Yay. haha. Looking forward for road trips like this again! To Remus and David… u guys are great. Was really fun travelling with u guys! Some hilarious and coo moments to be cherished!

 Cheers!!!

 

 Here are some pic taken from my camera of the MMF Convention on the 3rd June 2006. I didnt manage to get everyone’s pic in it but I hope I’ve taken some that Aloy missed out. Have fun looking at the pics!

Below is Kamil our M.C.

 

He did a great job becoming our MC for the day. The gals loved his accent, which I always thought it was nice and unique.

Me giving speech. Just a simple speech welcoming all to the event and a brief introduction on how MMF all came about, its first thought of (ie MMC) name etc etc.

Aloy’s turn to give speech. He helped cover those parts I missed out which was great. It was amazing to really look back at how it all started and watching the forums grow day by day.

Ignatious, Kam and Brendan playing around with Werms. 3/4 of the Four of A Kind. Wish you were here Jeff (Zhe Ming).

Darren doing his wonderful Jumping Gemini with a flourishy four of a kind revelation for each card. Wonderful

Baalan testing out his abilities. “Can you still feel my pulse?…… hey… dont grip so tight, you dont want to kill me do you?” LOL. It was entertaining to watch his performance.

 

Ning displays her magic goodies. Wow… look at those litte red balls! Some cool stuff sold and thanks Ning for giving us the mini spool of IT. Wonderful.

Out comes the good stuff. Huron taking out Kevin Ho’s first published notes, called the Couch. Some amazing card magic and flourishes inside. Kamil, David and Baalan eagerly wants to see the notes!

It is “makan” time! Yummy Dominos Pizza selections, satay, and bread. Hehe… lots of bread…. LOL. Everyone was very hungry at that time. Some even skipped breaky for this. Thanks to those who helped to set up the table and arrange the food. Great job!

 

Brendan and Huron displays their cards. Huron has the best one hand fans I’ve seen. wow!

Huron and Darren doing their fans.

Dinner at MTR. Food was delicious, entertainment was awesome, the whole atmosphere was just incredible. We were the loudest table of the lot. Fantastic restaurant. Thanks Vision for getting a nice table in front of the stage . MMF and SMC members surely had a blast there!

Jeff Gan (professor), Me and Isaac (doing our coin rolls).

Kamil, Adrian Khoo and Alvin Luo.

  

Huron and Larry

Werm displays.

 

Isaac, Me and Jack.

Lai entertaining the crowd, first with his cards, then out comes his best weapon.. linking rings!

Lai showed tremendous confidence and showmanship on that day. Everyone was cheering and giving him support. The crowd were amazed by this young talented chap. With great passion and dedication,  I see a bright future in this guy’s magic. Keep it up Lai!

Pictures with James Tong.

Finally got to meet Ignatius (Aerox) in real life. He was one of the Four of a Kind. Hehe… the first ever MMF flourish compilation vid.

Isaac and Aloy

This is me and Aloy. Yups, its been a long time since I met him at SMC 1st Magic Competition. I thank him for helping me set up and build MMF together. I beleive that we will continue to work hard and do the best we can for the forums. This event (MMF meeting SMC) has really build stronger relationships between members and I know we can do bigger things. Awesome!

 After MTR, there were still some people so alive that they want to continue to party so some of them (especially the sporean) make their way to Zouk to party. Others went for mamak. I wasnt very hungry but was super thirsty, so I had 3 drinks. Some were still hungry and ordered themselves double maggi goreng. Really big plates. LOL. Even Jeff Gan could not finish it.

We had a wonderful time chatting about magic and it was really fun. Samuel showed us his second deal and we were like wow…! Below is a pic of Samuel and I at the mamak.

 A tiring day indeed…. But definitely worth every minute of it! Definitely looking for future gatherings like this!

Cheers,

Brendan

Finally!!

Here’s the photos of the MMF Mini Convention from the SMC group who came. The night before, all of us were in Genting for the Mysteria magic show by Tim Kole and stayed over at Genting. That was a whole lot of too but it’s a different story for a different time.

Anyways, here’s the phtos for Day 2 of our Genting + KL trip……The Day of the Fellowship.  

There were 8 of us from Singapore but Pambudi and his friend had their own transportation and arrived at the convention themselves. This is us just got off the bus from Genting waiting for Sukyi and David Lai to pick us up from Sentral Bus Station. Sukyi arrived 1st and later we met David and Samuel at MacDonalds.

I’ve met Sukyi previously when she came to SG so that wasn’t a problem. I recognised David immediately when he arrived even thou we’ve never met him before because of the many newspaper articles that were posted in the MMF forums with full blown up photos of him. Samuel as a little surprise because he was wearing specs and was fairer than his avatar in the forum. Meeting everyone from MMF was a most interesting experience. I feel like I know everyone so well yet I am meeting everyone for the 1st time.

Anyways, after David and Samuel arrived, they drove us to check into our hotel which was on the way to the convention.

Ning, Huron and Fuming took Sukyi’s car and me and the rest took David’s car. That is David’s car in the background in front of our hotel.

It was a nice chat along the way and we had some great laughs at Sukyi’s driving antics. Not that she is a bad driver of course. She just drives…. erm….. very confidently.

This is the hotel that David got for us, The Summit Hotel. He also got us special discounted rates for it. It was a very nice and comfortable hotel with big bathrooms and a nice big bathtub, much better than the Genting one we stayed in. But we didn’t really see much of the inside for it coz we were out virtually the whole day.

We went straight to the MMF Convention after checking in, and everyone was already waiting for us. We ended up starting about 1 hour late.

   

Kicking off the convention, was Brendan’s speech, where he talked about the Mickey Mouse Club and how far MMF has grown from the support of everyone. It was nice and short and sweet.  

I was the next to speak. I mostly did acknowledgements and thank yous for all the people involved in making the convention possible. I was also hiding a barbed wire club behind my back ready to whack anyone who laughs at my weird voice.

Beside me is Kam the moderator and also the emcee for the day. It was funny when I met Kam, coz for some weird reason, i always envisioned him to be someone older and on the plump side, don’t ask me how I got that impression.
But he turned out to be a dashing young man with an accent the girls loved.

The performances starts after that, I was distracted now and then so I hope I took a photo of everyone’s performances. If anyone’s performances isn’t in here, don’t worry, Brendan has more photos for everyone later.  

This is Lai doing his linking rings which went down very well with everyone. On top of the standard Shoot Ogawa’s moves, Lai actually came up with a few kiler moves and variations of his own. The most impressive to me was the one where he twirled the ring on his finger and then did a silent link. Woah.  

This is Charleston (spelling?) doing his card manipulation act. It was a silent act done to music.

A lot of the people performing actually took their performances very seriously which was a very impressive attitude to me. Charleston dressed up for the part and bought his own music for the act.  

I’m sorry, I wasn’t there when this photo was taken, Fuming was helping me with the photo taking for some parts.
Can someone post a comment about what act this is?

Edit: Thanks Jeff for the information. This photo is Darren doing his cards revelations routine.

  

Jeff Gan the moderator was up next. Jeff Gan is the Chief Coordinator for this Convention and everyone recognises the tremendeous effort he put into this.

This is him doing Banechek’s effect. His Magic of the Wind gag got everyone rolling on the floor. We could all tell he was kinda nervous and he tried to escape with only one effect but no such luck. The crowd was chanting for more and he had to come back front to do….

A book test. I actually forgot what book test he did but it went down pretty well.  

Next up, Baalan! In a nice pink shirt and jacket get-up. Ning told me later that she thought Balaan was the best dressed for the day and that he should be a moderator because he is cute. She has strange ideas sometimes.:D

Baalan did a KINDA mentalism effect. I don’t recognise it but it makes me think of Luke Jermay so it might be from Jermay’s material.
Baalan made his own pulse slow down and finally stopped. Then he made David’s pulse stopped too.  It was one of the most interesting performances for me because I haven’t seem much NLP stuff done before.

This is the watching crowd from the side of the room. There are people standing of thee sides of the room and in the adjacent rooms. Next up Samuel Chong.

 

Samuel seems like such a serious guy in the forums but he is a real funny and lively guy in real life. He did a 3 card monte effect with bent corner finale. This is the people crowding around him as he asked everyone to come to the front to take a better look.

Edit: Sorry, I lied. Samuel’s act was a multiple phrase 3 card monte routine with bent corner as the 2nd last phrase. The finale was actually a colour change of all 3 cards. Shocking effect it is.

 

This the the view from the other side of the room.

The turn out for the event was fantastic, we could barely fit everyone in the room. Next time round, we might have to find a bigger room so that even more people can come.

 

Kevin with his cups and balls was up next.

I love the fact that there are so many variation of performances for the day and it wasn’t just concentrated on cards which are the hobbists fav.

After this was lunch. I was at the Mod’s meeting so I didn’t take a photo of the food. It was really quite a spread, with satay and pizza and all kinds of finger food. There was a lot of impromptu jamming and performances during the break too which I hope at least someone took some photos of.

After that, was Pambudi’s performances and lecture.

Pambudi’s performance went down very well with everyone and had everyone rolling with laughter many times. There was minor glitches with 2 effects that he did but he recovered without any difficulties.
From talking to everyone later, Pambudi’s performance was one of the most memorable of the day. After the performances, Pambudi went to to give a lecture on his performance. He talked about the finer aspect of performances and explained the methods of the effects he just performed. It again went down very well with the people.
I was too distracted by the lecture and forgot to take any photos of Pambudi lecturing. Maybe someone has got some. After Pambudi’s lecture, there’s a short break before we go into the 2nd round of performances.

This is Brendan doing an couple of card effects.

Issac was everyone’s fav volunteer that day. He must have been used as a volunteer for at least 4 - 5 times, thanks to his strategic seating right in front.

 

This is Issac volunteering for Jack’s performance too.

Jack didn’t really have enough to eat during lunch and he took a big bite off the cards he was using. I tried to take a photo of the finale where the deck had a big mouthful missing from it but that didn’t turn out well. Again, wait for the others to share their photos for it.

  

And the last performance was by David Lai. I actually snapped a lot more photos of him than this but for some reasons, whenever the camera shutters went off, i would catch him with a funny/awkward posture or expression, or his head will be turn or it will come out blur. This was the best one that came out…. His mentalism was just too strong and affected the electronics of the camera i think.

After this was James Tong’s lecture. The thing about me is when the lectures starts, i forgot all about phototaking. So I forgot to take photos of Jame’s lecture too. But i know his assistant was taking plenty of photos from the side of the room so we’ll just have to wait for James to share the pics. James gave an insightful lecture on the business aspect of doing magic professionally and shared many of his thoughts and experience on the matter. He also did a card fanning demostration with a deck of very vintage fanning cards with some very fancy fans, some of which are his own creations, which impressed everyone very much.

There was also a group photo of everyone at the end of the official gathering. My camera’s lenses were not wide enough to take in everyone so we relied of James Tong’s assistant’s camera which had a wide lense. We’ll have to wait for that for sharing later.

After that, it’s off the The Magic Theater Restuarant! Wee, the general manager of the restuarant was also at the meeting and he arranged for a table booking for everyone right in front of the stage for us. We went seperately in different cars, and some of the guys were staying back in Jame’s office jamming a little and arrived later than expected.  

Almost everyone who went for the convention went for the dinner. You can see how long our table was and we were really packing the front part of the resturant.

 

 

We quickly got down to the business of stuffing down our dinners. They have colourful drinks with pretty names at the MTR.

Pambudi was to be a special guest performer at the MTR that night. The resident performer, Robin did an opening balloon swallowing act before introducing Pambudi on-stage. I tried to snap a few photos of Robin’s act but it came out of focused. So…..wait for the others.

Next was Pambudi. He did a routine that was different from the ones he performed and lectured and it was pretty well received. I was looking around the restuarant during the performance and saw that there were no conversations happening and everyone’s eyes were riverted to the stage. Maybe it has something to do with Pambudi’s hypnotic shirt.

 

This is Pambudi hynotising the crowd with his shirt. We are seated right in front of the stage.

 

This is Pambudi working a volunteer from the restuarant.

And this is Pambudi doing his victory dance after his show. He was going to break out into a song too but the applause drown him out. But his act really was well received not just by our own pple but by all the patrons of the restuarant as well.

By this time, almost everyone had finished their dinner and the sessioning begin. My gosh, when you have a bunch of magicians together, there’s just no stopping them. There were so many little groups going on it wasn’t funny. I could only shoot some random pictures every now and then when I remember.

This is Ning stealing Huron’s Joe Poper card clip while he was distracted with his cards.

And they sessioned….

 

….And they jammed…

 

….And they magic-ed the night away.

 

I saw a lot of filming in progress for lotsa clips so look out for them in the coming months in the forums.

And this is meeting Brendan again after more than 1 year when he came to Singapore for the SMC magic competition. 

Meeting Jack whose videos has always had my eyes popping out of their sockets. 

And meeting Issac, MMF’s favourite stooge.  

 

Ning getting entertained

 

And the jamming continued….

We were so loud and noisy that we pretty much had the attention of most of the tables. At some point, the guys suddenly decided to urge Lai to do an effect for the adjacent table. After some chanting we finally got him to start and  did that got him on a roll.

 

He started with a card effect and tried to end it off there. But there’s no escaping. With some more chants of “We want more”, he got his set of the linking rings stuffed into his hands. 

He started his linking rings routine and man, the cheers that was going off, it might as well have been the World Cup Finals. By this time we have the attention of the whole resturants, even the patrons upstairs who were trying to see his performances.

 

It went so well that some diners on the upper floors requested for Lai to go up to their table which he finally did.

We don’t know what he did up there but whatever he was doing, it was good, because we could hear the girls screams and cheers coming from upstairs every now and then which also triggered a big round of cheering downstairs. Or maybe Lai was doing a different kind of magic to the girls.

The Sistas of Magic! Notice the uncanny resemblence of Ning and Sukyi, especially the horns growing out of their heads. The girls were virtually inseperatable the whole night. 

This is Pambudi and Wee, the general manager of the restuarant.

And the magic went on….

 

Even when the live music was going on.

 

…and it went on. By the time we are finally done, it was already close to 1 am.

I understand that some of the guys went off for supper and EVEN MORE jamming (Yes, they jammed from dinner all the way to supper and jammed somemore). I heard that went on to REALLY late too.

The SG guys, minus Pambudi and his friend who went back to the hotel, decided to check out the clubbing scene. So off we went with Sukyi and David as our guide and drivers.
We were actually planning to go to Zouk KL but we end up in Velvet Underground instead.
And yes, all of us went in, even 17 year old Fuming.

We had a pretty wild time in there but the details of the night is only for those who were there to remember.

Let’s just say we all had LOTSA fun.

 

Yes, i know this is a photo of Zouk, not Velvet Underground. But I snapped this photo after we finally left Velvet at like 3:30 am and I was walking 1/2 way to the car when I decided to take a photo but I was too tired to walk back to take velvet’s front door. But anyways, this is just proof that we were there.:)

 

And thus conclude this extremely long entry!

Its over and the verdicts are in !!! Check out what they are saying about the MMF 1st Anniversary Mini Convention :- 

 

• I enjoyed the whole convention thing very much.
  the longest jamming session i ever had, 12~12, a 12 hours jamming session with tons of magic performances and fun.- Lai       

   

   

   

• Fabulous. Fantastic. Incredible. Amazing. Wonderful. Awesome. All these are understatements of the time we had yesterday! - Aloy 
       

   

   

• It was a freaking great night, probably the best night since the first ever MMF outing - Kamil 
       

   

   

• The meeting was fantastic,really it was. One of my highlights of the year.Met so many new faces and friends. - David Lai 
       

   

   

• The weekend was just AWESOME!!! 3 days for both Genting & KL, just ain’t enough! Thank you everyone for making it so wonderful - Ning 
       

   

   

• Guys, that had to be one of the longest and most enjoyable time of magic sessions I ever attended - Brendan 
       

   

   

• There And Back Again…. Not Bad. Yep, an understatement - Ignatius 
       

   

   

• I learnt a lot from this convention (not just from the lecture itself but from everyone of you). Glad to met a lot of talent guys as well. All of you practice hard, as I can seen and you all are the best - Forrest Lim   
       

   

   

Hopefully, we’ll get some pictures up soon. You can read more about the events that day here :- 

http://forums.malaysiamagicfellowship.com/index.php?showtopic=1455&st=0 

To be continued :-  Jeff Gan         

       

    

      

   

Hey guys,

Just a friendly reminder to those already registered that the MMF Mini Convention is this Saturday, 3rd June 2006. Its starts at 12 noon. We’re fully packed and I really look forward to seeing you guys there.

There’ll be performances, sales of magic stuff and lectures too. Those of you who have placed order with Ning, please do remember to bring enough money for your purchases.

If you are performing, we urge you to dress to perform. Make it a memorable performance. Remember, you’re not there to fool your audiences, but to entertain them, and most importantly, have fun entertaining.

 Let’s make this a memorable day.

Yours,

Jeff Gan

Those already registered, its on the 3rd of June 2006, 12 noon.

Please be punctual.Those unclear or the venue can check the forums for the address.

See you there.

 

Jeff Gan