Mr. Lightning Finger at our Career Expo booth last January.
IF YOU’RE looking for party entertainment or events management, you can’t go wrong with Mr. Lightning Finger, recognised as one of the best local party entertainers in the island. As a balloonist, “he is not only good in twisting balloons to various shapes,” his publicity material claims, “but is also very good in twisting [them] into various cartoon characters, for example: Road Runner, Bugs Bunny, etcetera.”
He also holds ginormous appeal to both children and female adults. He’s a babe magnet! Balloons are doing for him what Golden Retrievers do for hunks in sweatshirts: attracting the crowd and garnering the attention.
 Animal shapes and the balloon gown.
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We witnessed this ourselves at the 88DB Shop For Services booth during the 2008 JobsDB Career Expo early this year.
We gave him a corner stall and a crowd assembled as soon as he sat down, blew air into liquid rubbers and then shaped them with his hands. So fast! And before we could even attempt to pop one of those beetle-shaped balloons with a needle, it seemed like the entire jobseeking community had already gathered, requesting for their own special balloon.
Such is Mr. Lightning Finger’s popularity.
A very elaborate gown made out of balloons, which Mr. Lightning Finger spent half a day creating. |
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But who is the man behind this character? He is no other than Mr. Chia Meng Choon, who runs Balloonist Entertainment, an events company that provides all kinds of entertainment for parties. He learned the craft when he was 17 years old, and began doing it professionally a year later.
“I was a volunteer at Club Rainbow, a charity which helps children suffering from chronic and life-threatening illnesses. They taught us volunteers how to sculpt balloons,” he tells 88DB.com.“Even then I thought it was quite useful and made it easy to deal with children and even adults, too. We used it for the caring of the sick children, to make them happy.” |
He didn’t engage in party entertaining immediately. He was a fireman for five years at the SCDF before realizing that playing a clown was his real calling. “Although it is very tough, I enjoy it very much,” he says. He says the most fulfilling part of his job is when he does charity work for the Children's Home, Elderly Home and similar organisations.
At parties where he’s hired, Mr. Lightning Finger the Balloon Clown spends 30 minutes on stage and invites kids and adults to go up, then he makes balloons impromptu, depending on his mood or the personality of who went on stage. At the 88DB booth during our career expo, to mark our final night, he even made a gown out of balloons! Wait, a balloon gown? How trendy is that!
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