A magical Chinese New Year!

Yeah, may this new year bring you prosperity, good fortune and all such good stuff. Started off this Chinese New Year by trying to learn an unconventional new skill...magic! Haha, one my friends Alvin has been learning magic tricks for a while and showed quite a few to me. And I, being the gullible person that I am, was very entertained, not to mention duped, by most of his tricks....It was also turns out that there's a new magic shop at the Summit, which is like 5 minutes drive from my place, selling all this magic stuff. So me, Alvin and a couple of other friends went there the other day to check it out and got wowed by a guy working at the shop who did a few tricks. Next thing I knew, I was seriously thinking of trying out magic myself. I figured it was time I learned a new skill to add to my list of sort-of talents. Sort-of, because I can do lotsa stuff like play the guitar, sing, do taekwondo, etc...but I'm not exceptionally good at any of them. Jack of all trades and master of none, they say... anyhow, I figured doing magic tricks is a cool thing to learn to entertain people. It's especially cool for me considering most of the good magicians I've seen are all guys...and it would be nice to be one of the rare female magicians around. At least it'll get rid of the notion that girls aren't just for strutting around the magician looking pretty! I've learned a few tricks in the past few days and did a few 'performances' to my friends, relatives and family over Chinese New Year. It's great when they can't figure out what the heck I did and I run off giggling like a schoolgirl. But I also screwed up a few ones, which was of course, rather embarassing and discouraging. But then Alvin did warn me that I should try not to get discouraged if I messed up some tricks...all part and parcel of the trade. Some of the tricks also require quite a bit of practice and slight of hand...which are usually quite cool if I can pull them off, but the amount of practice I have to put into them really PUTS me off. And the only things that would keep me going is looking forward to the dumbfounded looks on people's faces when I do it for them...plus the fact that I already paid for this stuff so I'd better do it good.....hehe. It's extra nice that I have Alvin as a budding magician friend, so we can help each other out and encourage one another to keep on practicing. I still got a heckuva long way to go and plenty of cool tricks to learn, but hopefully I'll have the diligence to actually stick to practicing this so I can perfect at least a few really good tricks...and become Carol da Magician! Bwahahaha! Ha! Hee...heh... :Þ