Festival of Magic

Last Sunday I went for the Festival of Magic in Subang Parade. Too bad I only managed to catch the closing of it. They were giving the prizes away and after that they had a 3 hour non-stop performance by all the competing magicians for the whole event. The Festival of Magic lasted 3 days and it is a yearly competition held in Malaysia. Magicians and illusionists come from all over the world for this yearly event. There were a lot of international and well-known magicians there – including my mentor Anslem Roy (he wasn’t competing)

I went there with Gideon Tan Han Chung, I guess a lot of your Grace Assembly people know who he is. Yes, he is into magic as well. He is from IBM Singapore, IBM stands for International Brotherhood of Magicians. And I am from TMA Malaysia, The Magic Annexe =)
Gideon came down from Singapore to Klang for a week and went back to Singapore again yesterday. We managed to spend quite some time together. We practiced magic and traded some stuff and had a good time =) then I came up with this "crazy" idea. He did it before in Singapore but I bugged him to do it in Klang one day haha. Tell you about it later.

Gideon and I and two more of our friends went to Subang Parade to catch the supposedly 4pm-6pm show but to our dismay we waited until about 6pm and it haven’t even started! The prize giving ceremony was so so long and draggy and the emcee was really bad in his English.

Here is one thing I want to let all of you guys know. Magicians are not “cheap” people who go around “tricking” people. Real and good magicians do not leave you feeling stupid after showing you an illusion. Instead, they leave you entertained and happy. Also note that magicians are not people who know a few “tricks” and walks around with a deck of cards. There is more to being a real magician.

In my club, The Magic Annexe, Anslem Roy our mentor and founder always stress that magicians ought to be looked up to and ought to have a good standard in society. We must dress well when performing, we must entertain and not fool people, and we must not have a big head (egoistic) but be humble and friendly. We must also bear in mind that our purpose is only to entertain, not fool or trick or belittle anyone. One more thing that Anslem wants us to have is a good command of the English language. Magicians must have good English and have to watch our grammar and pronunciations and all. This is important because we want to build a standard for the magicians in Malaysia. There are too many so-called “magicians” around which do not have proper guidance and this has tarnished the magicians’ status in this country. That is why Anslem stresses a lot on all of these things in our meetings and also our forum (www.themagicannexe.com). You would be surprise to find “English Language Lessons” on the forum. Go check it out for yourself and see what I mean.

The Festival of Magic was a little disappointing to me also. There were a lot of things that happened there that were not suppose to happen. The emcee was a Malay (not wrong being a Malay okay, I am not being a racist here yea) guy who can’t speak good English. Do you know what he kept repeating for hundreds of times during the one hour long prize-giving ceremony? He kept saying, “I will REPRESENT the prize to…”, “Let me call upon Mr. So and So to REPRESENT the prize to…”

Represent or Present???

And the emcee even said, “This is your CERFITICATE…”, “I will REPRESENT this CERFITICATE to…”

Certificate or cerfiticate???

And the way he stood on stage was so not professional. It make the event look like a cheap carnival or something. And the assistant emcee had a voice so dead that my friend said would wake him up if he is hypnotized haha. This emcee was a Chinese guy and he had nothing much to say at all. Another thing was that there were people selling magic items backstage and they made the place so cheap. It looked like a fish market to me. And I heard from my friends that some of the performers screwed up on stage while performing and they “flashed”. You get what I mean? However there were a good number of really good magicians and they deserve to win so much.

I shall not talk more about the event because I was not there personally for the whole course of the event. However I saw enough that day to feel sad that they made the art of magic look so cheap.

Oh yea, Gideon and I are planning to go to Bukit Tinggi’s AEON Mall to do some walk-around close-up magic =) Don’t know what it is? It is called “Street Magic” in another term. However there is no such thing as “street magic” although David Blaine created it and made is famous. The right term for it is called close-up magic. Gideon is back in Singapore studying now and he will be back in early August. Then we will plan about the “magical trip” to AEON. =)

Just before I go, I want to let you know that I am still on track. I know why I am involving in this art and I am still going to do what I plan to do in the beginning. Thank you, Pastor John for giving me the chance to share my Gospel Magic at Grace USJ two Sundays ago.

New Beginnings and New Trends in Taking Dominion.

The stage.

Lai and Jeff Gan. They are two of my friends from The Magic Annexe. Jeff does mentalism magic =) he reads mind hehe.

The chinese emcee who talks like a zombie haha. The little girl was one of the "magicians" that "FLASHED" om stage. Do you know what Flash means in Magicians' language? Figure it out.


On the right is the malay emcee. "I will REPRESENT the prize to..." =)

The magicians.
Gideon Tan... that look... ooo.... sexy.... =)

This is magic. He has the strength to carry his little child for so long haha =)

The Little Flasher! This illusion is called Dancing Cane. She flashed.

Anslem Roy and I.

Gideon with IBM Singapore's president (right) and his wife (middle).

My turn =D

We didn't want to stay back for the 3 hour long performance so we headed to One Utama to eat Sushi. =)

Served with a deck of cards. haha joking.

I see magic everywhere now...

Catch us at AEON in August =D

tata...