What Card Tricks And Language Have in Common

I love when life connects you with someone you think will succeed if they stay focused on their talent. Many things can get in the way of success it is all up to you to stay focused.

Shuffling a deck of cards

Last night I was sitting next to a shy, quiet young man playing with a deck of cards.  I wish you could have seen him shuffle, rearrange, reorder and mix the cards up with such ease and comfort.

He asked what I was doing in Amsterdam; I shared I was promoting LingoHut a language website. We then got into a conversation on how language learning takes discipline and mindset, and card tricks do too. We both agreed that the more practice one gets, the better you become at either one of these skills. We turned away from each other, back to our drinks — a few minutes later….

He looked at me and asked if I wanted to see something.  I am always open to new experiences, so I said sure.  He asked me to shuffle the cards and to pick a card; then he turned around and asked others around us to choose a card.  Once we all had our cards, he asked us to take a good look at them. He then asked us to put them back in the deck, anywhere we wanted.  He proceeded to shuffle them, rearrange, reorder and mix the cards up with such ease and comfort. Then quietly he handed one card to each one of us and asked us to flip over our card one at a time and confirm it was our card.

We were all blown away by the accuracy and card trick.

Then he asked if I had a coin. I gave him one. He performed a few tricks that were just brilliant. This boy has such remarkable talent and virtuoso future if life throws him just a little bit of luck. I know being a magician is going to be a challenging and a steep road ahead, but I hope he does not give up. We all know that life can throw us many things that get in the way especially with a dream.  But I have never seen someone work cards the way he did.

Interviewed Thomas

So, I had an idea; I asked him if I could quickly interview him to share with my LingoHut audience, and he agreed.

Let me present to you Thomas Uijen, an 18-year-old teenager from Amsterdam, Netherlands. Thomas has been practicing card tricks for three years.  He loves being from Amsterdam except for the weather. He speaks Dutch and English fluently and has dabbled in Italian since it was his mother’s first language. I asked him what he would like to do when he grew up. Fidgeting with his cards, he said, “Magic is a hobby that I would like to get paid to do, but I would also love to be a DJ, you see music is in my soul.”

Thomas, thank you for the card trick.  Keep shuffling, rearranging, reordering and mixing the cards up with such ease and comfort.

Enjoy a card trick

LingoHut’s first impromptu video. We are liking the idea of creating videos of ordinary people willing to share and talk to us about their life and how language plays a role in their lives. Like us Facebook.

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