Jolly Mäh MacRitchie Reservoir Park

Jolly Mäh is at MacRitchie Reservoir Park! Jolly Mäh is exhilarated as MacRitchie reservoir is the oldest reservoir in Singapore. Let's join Jolly Mäh now to his enthralling hiking trip today. Hope you'll enjoy the scenery of forest and grass, and of course the reservoir.

MacRitchie Reservoir Park has several routes you can take on, the whole MacRitchie reservoir park hiking trip will be 10km today as one of Jolly Mäh's main destination is the MacRitchie reservoir treetop walk in the middle of the route. Jolly Mäh is lucky that today's weather is cosy and not too warm.

As Jolly Mäh commence onto his MacRitchie reservoir park's first trail, this interesting animal appears right in front of us! Looks like a lizard of some type with a shiny armor. It doesn't look too friendly but its not intimidating us, Jolly Mäh is clever to stay away though.

Jolly Mäh will now be going through the MacRitchie nature trail. It is a forest trail in MacRitchie reservoir park that runs a couple of kilometers with nothing but tall rainforest trees encircling you and there is no o

As Jolly Mäh ascends the wooden stairway, we slowly infiltrate into the deep rainforest. We wonder how long is this MacRitchie nature trail is gonna take..

3.9km to MacRitchie reservoir treetop walk! One of our milestone destination today. After walking up the wooden stairway, we arrive at the ingress of the MacRitchie nature trail and..

awaiting Jolly Mäh is a daunting forest trail where you can't see the end. But there's no turning back now for Jolly Mäh, so let's go! MacRitchie reservoir treetop walk here we come!

After 2.5km of forest trail that seemed never ending, we finally saw light of the exit. Jolly Mäh was all tired and hungry, so we decided to find a spot for a little picnic and..

Jolly Mäh found an ideal spot to rest our legs and feed our stomach! That's Jolly Mäh's owner taking off his shoes and resting on the picnic blanket.

This wonderful spot is a shaded hut on top of a slightly hilly slope. We think this is the most cosy place to picnic or rest at MacRitchie reservoir park en route.

Jolly Mäh, what's our meal today? Jolly Mäh dishes out the most wonderful, perfect food for picnic - BREAD & HAM! Coupled with soy milk drink and orange juice, a delectable tree break we call it. Not advertising for NTUC FairPrice but their orange juice is pretty good compared to other FairPrice house brand products.

Jolly Mäh decides to take a nap after the sumptuous bread + ham meal. Aren't you a little too comfortable Jolly Mäh? We have to continue our journey to the MacRitchie treeptop walk remember?

Jolly Mäh jumps up joyously and gave us the cliché NICI plush toy pose. Enough of acting cute, you are already the most popular NICI toy, let's get going shall we Jolly Mäh? Another 1.4km to the MacRitchie reservoir treetop walk isn't too far away.

Finally, we arrived at the MacRitchie treetop walk, or the HSBC treetop walk. Jolly Mäh you made it! Good thing we had a break and some food earlier or else we would be starved! The treetop walk signboard here is in the middle of the road, you can still walk further up as there isn't a sign saying "Entrance". We walked up and found nothing, so we turned back in search for the way to the MacRitchie treetop walk.

This dodgey looking stairway downwards is the entrance of the MacRitchie treetop walk. Jolly Mäh could not understand the logic as to why we have to walk down a stairway for the treetop walk, isn't the treetop walk one of the highest place in MacRitchie reservoir park? Jolly Mäh can only wonder..

Jolly Mäh is finally here at the MacRitchie reservoir treetop walk. It is a 250m aerial suspension bridge, so be prepared that it way sway or shake when you walk on it. If you're afraid of heights, we don't recommend you to cross the bridge as it is a ONE WAY ROUTE! Once you step on it, thats it! Jolly Mäh are you ready?

Jolly Mäh gives a fearless sign of YES! What a brave sheep our Jolly Mäh sheep is. You might feel a bit shaky initially on the treetop suspension bridge, after a while you will get used to it.

On top of the MacRitchie treetop walk you can have a panoramic view of the surrounding lush rainforest. This is one of the highest spot in MacRitchie reservoir park, it is worth the extra kilometers coming here. Jolly Mäh totally enjoys the slight breeze brushing through his plush.

This is Jolly Mäh looking down from the suspension bridge, the forest below the treetop walk is thick and dark, you can't see the ground at all.

Jolly Mäh strikes another daring pose on the MacRitchie reservoir treetop walk while maintaining his joyful smiling face showing no signs of acrophobia.

Jolly Mäh gives us another pose saying goodbye as we approaches the end of the MacRitchie treetop walk. Look at that freakishly tall tree growing right beside the suspension bridge.

Remember we climbed down a stairway at the entrance of the MacRitchie reservoir treetop walk? Now Jolly Mäh is climbing back up, not the same wooden stairway as this is a one way route as we mentioned. Jolly Mäh can only advance forward..

After going up, now we're going down! This downward stairway looks like it has no end to it, how much further Jolly Mäh has to go before reaching the ground?

If you thought this was the end of Jolly Mäh's journey, this is not even HALFWAY after 2 hours of hiking. Jolly Mäh has to make one big round along the MacRitchie Reservoir to go back to where we started. There are no shortcuts back home after the treetop walk, so stay tuned for the second part of Jolly Mäh MacRitchie Reservoir Park

NICI Plush Labour Day Holiday Celebration

Last Monday 1st of May is Labour Day, a public holiday in Singapore, Malaysia and some other countries. Our nici plush are having a Labour Day celebration for no particular reason, so here you see mini hugo wolf in front of Cold Storage is waiting to get some food and drinks for our celebration.

Cold Storage is all about hams, sausage, sausage and hams! Hugo Wolf will definitely be getting our nici plush favorite cheese sausage.

As usual, Cold Storage is a great place for getting shellfish like mussels and clams, hugo wolf is gonna get a nice big bag of venus clams.

Hugo Wolf approaches the drinks section! Loads of beer here at Cold Storage, we need a bunch for our Labour Day holiday celebration.

This is what Hugo wolf came back with: Clams, cheese sausage, tenderloin beef, broccoli, onions and a double 6 pack beer. All these food and drinks for 2 humans and a bunch of nici plush toys ^_^

Other NICI plush quickly came out to join the Labour day holiday celebration. Jolly Sheebo eagerly starts the party with half a pack of clams.

Twins found in a clam! The venus clams are juicy and succulent, they are all fresh and alive when we cooked them, hence we only boiled them in salt water to cook it. You can still taste the sea in the clams.

Next we are preparing some cheese sausages, pan fry in low heat with black pepper and our homegrown rosemary.

First Choice brand of cheese sausage is one of the best we have tasted. The cheese literally oozes out of the sausage non stop, you have to be careful when biting them as the cheese will explode in your mouth and you might get scaled if its too hot.

Read the sign: Do not feed crocodile

Other nici plush joins the Labour Day holiday celebration, nici monkey, jolly sheebo, hugo wolf, minily crocodile, edward horse all looking at the tantalizing piece of tenderloin beef steak in front. We were trying to do an artistic design on the plate inspired by the French culinary.

But it didn't really work out well for the first try, so we eventually added the cheese sausage and fried onions to make the plate complete.

We cooked the tenderloin beef with simply salt, black pepper and rosemary. Medium rare is the always preferred way of eating steak and our culinary skills were perfect today on the thick piece of tenderloin beef.

Let's show you a closer look at the tenderloin beef, the inside is still red and juicy while the outside is cooked and browned. We'd say this is a near perfect medium rare steak! Not something you can usually get from restaurants outside as they tend to overcook or totally under-cook.

Last but not least, not forgetting our favorite wholegrain mustard which goes really well with meat and lots of meat like what we are having today. Our nici plush had a great Labour Day holiday celebration, hoped you had a nice holiday too! See ya next time.

12 Days of Christmas Wallpaper

The fourth entry of our NICI wallpaper is the 12 days of Christmas wallpaper made with pictures from one of NICI-Mania's personal favorite - 12 Days of Christmas by Hugo Wolf & NICI Plush from December 2010's blog post. This time we will show you the wallpaper preview in two different resolutions but first, here is how the 12 Days of Christmas wallpaper looks like:

12 Days of Christmas Wallpaper - resolution 1680x1200 | size 947kb 

Click here to download 12 Days of Christmas Wallpaper

12 Days of Christmas Wallpaper preview on 1280x768 resolution lcd on Windows Vista desktop. Click here to download 12 Days of Christmas Wallpaper

12 Days of Christmas Wallpaper preview on 1360x768 resolution widescreen lcd monitor on Windows 7 desktop. Click here to download 12 Days of Christmas Wallpaper

This time we decided to use a grungy style for our wallpaper. Personally, we love these 12 pictures because we had loads of fun last Christmas during the making of 12 Days of Christmas entry. We already cannot wait to start thinking of what ideas we can do this coming Christmas. Most probably not the same 12 days of Christmas song idea but maybe another Christmas carol instead.

Upcoming wallpapers: NICI Raccoon wallpaper

Ipod Nano Accessories Carrefour Sale

NICI-Mania recently went to Carrefour to shop for a new storage compartment for our NICI plush toys and surprisingly came across the Carrefour IT gadget department having a clearance sale! All the Ipod  nano accessories were on sale at an unbelievably price of $1 each! They must be making space for the newer Ipod  nano accessories for 6th generation. Mini Hugo Wolf will now show you what we got.

We are using the 4th generation Ipod nano, so it was as if we struck gold finding these Ipod accessories for such a cheap price. First off, a black leather case with belt strap, we'll be using it while jogging.

Next Ipod accessories, a screen protector to prevent scratches. Our Ipod nano is almost 2 years old and this is the first time the screen finally gets protection.

Lastly, a new black leather case! Let's give our Ipod nano an extreme makeover! ♥♥

To our amazement, we found two sizes of screen protectors inside! The label on the outside clearly states it's for Ipod nano 4th generation, so we're not sure why is there a longer piece of screen protector inside. Free gift? But what should we stick it on?

Let's carefully stick the screen protector on our ipod nano.

We're done with the screen protection business. Neat and sleek! Now the new Ipod nano skin!

Our Ipod nano is very excited getting a new skin after so long! But personally, I would say using a leather case is more suitable for mobile phones instead for ipods. It just look a little awkward, maybe we're used to seeing silicone skin for Ipod nano.

NICI-Mania Extreme Makeover successful! On the right is our old purple silicone skin. Well, our Ipod nano looks a bit more matured in the new leather skin but anyways, it's new and it's cheap. It gives us an illusionary impression like we just bought a new Ipod nano. One thing we should mention, the ipod classic accessories are also included in the Carrefour sale, plus other IT gadgets like Ipod dock, mouse, game controllers, etc.

NICI Toys new storage

NICI toys at NICI-Mania have a new storage compartment! This is where our nici toys are currently staying and this cupboard will not be able to fit the ever-growing number of plush toys coming in every month.

Other nici toys residing in this box are worse off, they were stacked 4 to 5 levels on top of each other and squeezed tightly in the box, so we went in search for a new storage compartment for our nici toys and found a suitable and inexpensive 5 tier plastic drawer from Carrefour hypermarket.

Some of our nici toys Jolly Mah, Jolly Wolf, Sheebo, Big El Lion, Rob Raccoon, Frederic Fox eagerly crowd around with the head of the family Hugo Wolf & Jolly Rosa to witness the grand opening of their new storage compartment.

Jolly Rosa who could not suppress her excitement went in first to open the carton to check out our new nici toys storage compartment. Looks like we have to DIY assemble this 5 tier plastic drawer ourselves.

We could hear the nici toys at NICI-Mania mumbling among themselves to decide who should be the one responsible to assemble the new storage compartment.

Jolly Rosa orders Hugo Wolf to go assemble it NOW. Other nici toys responded in silence, hoping not to get named by Jolly Rosa but the plastic drawer is pretty easy to fix, there were no instruction manual given, just some joints to put together, no bolts and nuts required. Thus after 10 minutes later..

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NICI toys 2011 new storage compartment is up and ready to use! The 5 tier plastic drawer from Carrefour hypermarket is made in Malaysia as stated on the box, the quality is pretty good, its not flimsy or shaky. Our nici toys are all very excited to check out their new house!

Jolly Rosa eagerly the first nici toy to test out their new storage compartment. An exhilarated Jolly Rosa says: Seems quite comfortable, can I have one drawer all by myself? *blink blink*

Hugo Wolf jumps in moments later: Rosa, I wanna join you ~ Jolly Rosa shoves Hugo with her elbow: In your dreams!

The mountain of nici toys at NICI-Mania stacked on top of one another getting ready to be moved into their new storage compartment. The fun thing about this picture is, 2 seconds later all our nici toys collapsed, it was like a disaster.

A single plastic drawer can fit around twelve 25cm nici toys sitting quite comfortably with extra space for some additional 15cm plush toy.

But Jolly Wolf found it a little too cramped with other 25cm nici toys in the drawer, he moves up a level to catch a breather. We love how cute Jolly Wolf looks in this pose with his rabbit like sheep ears pointing up. So guess what some other nici toys did?

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The SAME POSE!

NICI forest friends Frederic Fox and Rob Raccoon. They just look so cute in this picture.

NICI wild friends nici zebra & nici lion both getting ready to move in too.

Elsa & Gustav are in but our 35cm nici toys cannot sit inside because the height of the drawer is about 25cm, their head will get brushed when we open and close the drawer. Not a very safe thing to do, hence..

We have to rearrange them and now, eight 35cm nici toys can fit not-so-comfortably stacked over each other in a single drawer. Underneath these four plush toys is another four squeezed pretty tightly, not very ideal for our plush toys but no choice.

This is another drawer with our 35cm nici toys also stacked on top of one another, nici raccoon our dounut eating king munches away~ nom nom nom. Rob looks extremely happy.

Kay poh (busybody) Hugo Wolf climbing onto the third drawer to check out how some of our nici toys are doing in their new apartment.

NICI-Mania's recent arrival of Fu Bao Panda and Jolly Elsa seems pretty satisfied with their new home sharing the space with other nici toys like Sheebo and Liselle. The only worry in our mind is, this 5 tier plastic drawer from Carrefour will be fully occupied well before end of 2011. Currently, four of the drawers are already full and we love buying 35cm nici toys. With Ralf Rabbit and NICI Pirates coming, we should plan for another storage department soon as Calvin Skunk and Hetch Hogan are waiting to join NICI-Mania too.

80cm Hugo Wolf cannot fit into our new storage apartment, this poor nici wolf plush is going back to the old cupboard but at least now he doesn't need to squeeze with other nici toys anymore. Hugo can enjoy one messy cupboard all by himself!

p.s. we found some nice Ipod accessories on sale at Carrefour hypermarket's IT gadget department. NICI-Mania will share them with you in the next blog post.