More on the earthquake donation A List Material

I made a statement on donation to Si Chuan earthquake 3 times in my blog and various magic forums in last week. Everytime I write it, I feel more depressed, because the content is the same, except the number of people killed in the earthquake.

In the last few nights, I stayed up and watch the news in my hotel room, the more I watch, the more heart breaking I am. I feel I can and I must do more than just donating 50% of my income in May and June to the victims.

Now I have decided to donate all sales of my latest english offering - A List Material to the victims, and that includes the postage from the purchaser.

In this booklet, I have explored the routine design concept in the Bullet Train chapter of John Bannon's Dear Mr. Fantasy, 5 routines were explained and an essay is also included to illustrate the various approaches can be used to apply the concept to routine design and performance. 

Also included is a special bonus trick- A Sure fire prediction, which comes with two specially printed gaff card on Bicycle card stock to perform the routine. 

The price of this booklet is $20 USD, shipping included. 

I will try to make a demo video of one of the routines in the booklet and later on post the link here. 

If any of you is interested in this booklet, please paypal $20 USD to Steven Leung : 
mksteven@netvigator.com 

At the moment I am doing my lecture tour, and I will go back to Hong Kong on 27th, so I'll be sending you the notes on 28th May. 

I'll be touring Australia in June, so after 1st of June, notes will be send out by my friend Steven Leung. 

Thank you all for your help! 

Zenneth

SiChuan Earthquake

I was on tour the whole time for the last week, and I didn't have much access to the internet, finally I read the many news about SiChuan Earthquake, ...almost cried...

Originally I was thinking to buy a new mobile phone, and now I will donate that money to the organizations which are helping the victims, apart from that, I will donate 75% of my income of this and next month to help out the victims.

For those who will be attending my lectures in the next two months, please also extend a helping hand if you could.

Thanks,
Zenneth

2nd Visit to Malaysia (KL)

I went to Golden Mill after lunch, there are lots of buses to Malaysia for you to choose from, normally. Yesterday (16th), however, is a special day, all the buses were fully booked, the earliest possible one is 7:30 p.m. ...sigh....no choice lah...I bought the ticket and did some really good readings at the resturants in Golden Mill.

So finally the bus departed at 8p.m., it was okay until we passed the Malaysia customs.

The bus was stopped there for literally two hours, so what happened was the Malaysian Government decided for the benefit of tourists who don't speak Chinese or Malay, to prevent them from being ripped off, a tour guide must come with tour bus (as opposite to the fixed route bus in Malaysia), and so happen the tour guide on our bus only has license in Chinese and Malay, but not English, and so happen there were quite a few passengers on our bus that are westerners.

So after 1 and half hour passed, the tour guide came up with a solution, requesting 5 passengers who don't under Chinese or Malay to take a small van and go to the check point, and then joining the bus again.

Well, this sounds absolutely dodgy! Think about it, it's already 11:30 at night, and you are asking 5 foreigners to get onto a different van? Who would buy this theory and take such a risk?

No one is willing to get down the bus, and until 2 hours passed after we went through the custom, a lady who has an english license came up and saved the day. And only by then, we realised the request was an authentic one!

By the time we arrived KL, it's already 3:30 a.m.!!!

I was completely knackered...paid 25 Ringkit for an otherwise 10 or less Ringkit on meter taxi fare.

The only nice thing of the day is the arrangement of the hotel, originally I booked hotel for two nights, 16th and 17th, but the lady was kind enough not to take my stay this morning into account, and altered to 17th and 18th, so that I can check out on 19th.

Okie, time to go and meet some friends...

2nd visit to Singapore 14th May 2008

Arrived Singapore on 14th May, just before departing Hong Kong, I bought a whole carten of cigarettes at Hong Kong Duty Free, and when I was on the plane, I heard an announcement of Singaporean Government is posting a serious penalty for not declare cigarettes bringing into Singapore.

Considering my not too good luck this month, I decided to declare it. Well, here you go for the rules:

1: You can't bring any cigarette into Singapore, except a pack which the cellphone is unwrapped( I wasn't told at the time anyway, it was a magician who told me about this after I entered Singapore) .

2: for each pack of undeclared cigarrette, you will have to pay $7.5 Singapore dollar tax, and $200 Singapore dollar($120+ USD?) penalty if they discovered it at custom.

And this piece of regulation is not recently enacted, but back then from early 1990's, well, I didn't know that, last time (April 2007) I came with two cartens of cigarettes!

I stayed in a budget hotel in Geylong area, the scene is..hmm... what is that word... arh! awesome!!! There are at least 200+ prostitutes on the street soliciting business after dinner. I must say it's kinda fun to take a walk along the Geylong area for guys at night.

At the afternoon, I made a call to Jeremy Pei, he came along with his lovely girlfriend Joan to pick me up at the hotel, I doubt what's the conversation between them on the way to my hotel.

We went to Marina centre, which is very close to the hotel where Jeremy's show takes place. he treated me with a HaiNan chicken at dinner, it's really tasteful, a lot different from what I used to had in Hong Kong.

After the dinner, Jeremy took me to Mustafa, a 24 hours shopping centre in Little India, which sells literally anything at a very reasonable price. We then meet up with his magic buddies, we had some dim sum and did some magic, by the time I returned to Hotel, it's nearly 4 a.m.

When I got up the next day, it's also 4, but p.m.

Jeremy came and pick me up again at the hotel, this time he took me to a 2 dollar shop, everything in this shop is $2 Singapore Dollars, and all of the products are either made in Japan or branded by Japanese companies. It's a great treasury for magicians, you can find a lot of things for magical use there, I bought all the stocks of coloured rubber bands that I can see there. We have a similar shop in Hong Kong too, Japanese City?, but they only take the concept by selling most of the stuffs at $10 HKD, of course, not so many made in Japan items.

After the dinner, we went to the IBM meeting, and it's great to see John there, he's about the nicest IBM president that I have seen this far.

The theme of the night being D.I.Y. magic, magicians share their thoughts and stories about why and how they make their own props.

John's friend who is a memory expert also demonstrated a great feat there, he had everyone in the room successfully memorizing 30 random words in 2 mins time, really amazing stuff!

I did a dealer demo, it was well received, cool...

Jeremy has two shows the next day, and I had to go to Malaysia too, so he drove me back to the "awesome" place...

hmmm...I am not going to tell what I have done afterwards, plus you are not going to believe it anyway...

Malaysia lecture update

Hi guys,

The scheduled Malaysia lecture on 17th May is now cancelled, although I will still spend a couple of days in Malaysia in the Asia Pacific tour.

Thanks,
Zenneth

2008 Malaysia Lecture

Organized by Anslem Roy
http://www.themagicannexe.com

Zenneth Kok Lecture

Date - Saturday, May 17, 2008
Time - 10.00 am - 12.00 noon
Venue - The Magic Annexe, Petaling Jaya
Amount - RM 50.00 per person

See you guys there!

March -April 2008

Finally returned to Hong Kong with a short break before going onto tours again, done a lot of things in the last two months, yet alot more things are awaiting me to do...

Secondary School classmates reunion in ten years! Thanks to facebook, we found the most of us there.

All of us are nearly 30 years old now, except two or three are married, the rest of us are still single or in a relationship, a solid proof to the fact that people tend to get married late in these days.

It's really nice to see them again, the familiar faces bring back many oh so nostalgic memories of good old days...

Attended a magic convention/competition for chinese university students in Beijing from 18-20th last month, this is also the first time that I was invited to be a member of judge panal. Most close up acts are very Vallarino:

cards, matrix, rose, candles...

as if this is a competition where the constants are limited to the use of same kind of props

Not many surprises, except two of them:

A Japanese exchange student who is currently learning Chinese in Beijing foreign language academy, who did a brilliant cups and balls act, he has an excellent execution of moves, great misdirection and some truly original effects.

Another nice surprise is from two Beijing students whom almost did a situional play, very Stephen Chow, Penn & Taylor, the magic is not strong enough, but nevertheless truly funny for chinese audience, some great gags. Both of them are great actors, espeically the student who plays the role of mentally challenged...I asked him after the competition that how long it took for him to practice the acting bit, but his partner said that's not really acting...well..okie, fair enough...be yourself

Finished writing a brand new booklet A-List Material, special thanks to Lennart Green and John Bannon, the core content of this booklet is directly inspired by the works of these two gentlemen.

Will be touring starting from 13th this month: Singapore, Malaysia, Philipine and Australia in May and June.

Really miss the good mates and my sister in Australia, Kenny, Desmond, Anton, Ben and Rachael, will see you guys very soon =)

Recently acquired some Crimp, it is indeed one of a kind, the magic material is fantastic, the rest...sick but very entertaining.

When can I really finish off the production of Philosopher's Stone DVD set? Good question, will be very happy to see the final product before the end of this year.