I never had my own magic set until very much later in my life. But whenever my parents, the tutors, went to Popular bookstore at Bras Basah to buy assessment books for their students, I will have a field trip in spending my half day at a magic shop inside the bookshop.
The owner is probably quite a famous magician in Singapore. (He later was a consultant on mediacorp TV for the gambling show.) He would demonstrate his magic whenever he has new customers but probably never to me. I was a regular face there but I never bought anything from him. I never had that much money to pay those expensive props. But I would still hang around to watch him as well as the TV that plays endlessly.
Of course, along the way. I tried to guess and figure out how certain magic was done.
One of them was the Svengali Deck. It is this cool magic where an audience choose a card and every single card will change to that chosen card. I couldn’t afford that deck of super magical cards.
When I was a kid, my grandfather works in the cigarette company and had lots of free decks of cards that he will pass to me to do magic. I experimented and I come up with a TOTALLY different way a Svengali Deck might work. I guessed wrongly.
Thinking back, it worked fine, but it wasn’t as good though. I recorded it down in one of my magic books here:
But I am happy that I am given a chance to think and fail, rather than served to me on a silver spoon.