NICI Brochure

A few weeks ago, Jolly Rosa logged on to nici.de and ordered a NICI brochure from the website.

After getting an order confirmation for our NICI brochure, Jolly Rosa waited and pondered and waited for the mail to arrive from NICI Germany.

Finally after 3 weeks, the postman dropped us mail with a NICI logo on the envelop! Jolly Rosa and Hugo Wolf are so excited to receive a mail from NICI.

Candy Love Hippo and Green apple heard about the excitement and came to check out the mail from NICI Germany.

Our NICI plush opened the envelop up and saw a penguin! Yes it is the NICI brochure we ordered from Germany!!

Jolly Rosa is so exhilarated that the NICI brochure flew more than 6000 miles from Germany to reach here safely in her hands. This is the latest Autumn/Winter series brochure from NICI.

As we glazed into the first page of the NICI brochure, Happy Birthday Jolly Mah sheep glanced upon our eyes. It is kind of reminding us that there is only a limited 2500 of them.

Next in the NICI brochure is the NICI Ice Guys which then lured all our Winter Friends to gather around looking at their future friend. These penguins are cute aren't they?

A newer version of the NICI horse club! Edward minily looks at his horse friend thinking, this newer design is much cuter than the previous NICI horse club horses.

NICI Bubbles 2 is going to be released soon! We haven't even got the first NICI Bubbles yet!

It's Jolly Lucy's page! Our green apple worm stares at himself in the brochure.

NICI Forest Friends Quincy Oak is already selling in NICI shops now.

NICI Elephant and Monkey next. The elephant is very adorable, he is right next on the list to join our family.

NICI Castle Friends is for the NICI Halloween series, they are definitely more towards cute than spooky!

NICI Wonderland is a cute little girly doll looking for a best friend.

NICI Talking Bear! I think Ninu the talking bear only speaks in German.

NICI Beauties, NICI Bean Bags, Fancy Mugs and NICI Year Planner.

NICI Loulou is a cute doggie, probably for next year's Valentine's Day, isn't it a bit too early for Valentine?

NICI Calendar and Jewellery. That's it for the autumn/winter NICI brochure. You can order the NICI brochure right here but the language is only in German.

Selamat Hari Raya 2011

Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri! Today the Malays celebrate the end of their fasting and marks their New Year! Every year this day, our friendly Malay neighbors will share their traditional Malay food with us. We are very excited too because they make very very delicious food!

This is a Ketupat. Its a rice dumpling, a very significant traditional Malay food.

Ketupat usually goes with rendang chicken or satay sauce! *yummy*

Here is the rendang chicken!

Malays cook their rendang chicken with a lot of spices. You can still see shreds of lemon grass in this picture. Their rendang chicken is just so delicious, we could never cook it as good as them.

This is the satay sauce that is meant to go with the Ketupat earlier. These are grated peanuts roasted and fried in chili oil.

This is small beef cubes fried with red chili, green chili, onions and loads of oil. Not sure what is the name of this dish but it is crazily delicious! 

Beef maw or beef tripe is inside too! Beef maw is very yummy although some might be afraid to eat a cow's stomach.

The final dish is a Lontong! Our favorite classic Malay dish.

Lontong is something like a vegetable stew, there are french beans, cabbage, carrot, glass noodles, fried tofu, fermented soya bean cake cooked in coconut milk and the yellowish color should be accounted to turmeric.

Happy holidays to everyone and Selamat Hari Raya to the Malays, may the divine blessings of Allah light upon your life with peace and prosperity!

Levitation and Levitation Photography

I'm sure some of you have already seen this picture of Jolly Rosa with her super powers on facebook. This is not magic, it is simply called "Levitation Photography". Levitation Photography is one of the hottest thing on the internet right now. What is Levitation Photography?

Levitation Photography means you take of yourself or any other objects levitating in mid air. Levitation photography is not just using Photoshop to make fake pictures, Levitation photography requires technique, patience and the right composure to create the perfect levitating picture.

After planking and leisure diving, NICI-Mania embarks on levitation photography as our latest project. We have already taken pictures of our NICI plush planking and leisure diving but we decided to post pictures of levitation photography first because making our plush fly is just too exciting and our friends have all been curious on how we did it when they saw the pictures.

Milo Gorilla levitating in mid air! Who says levitation is only with David Blaine and Criss Angel, Milo Gorilla can do it too ^_^

Hugo Wolf takes a leap of faith. Do you dare to take yours too?

Last but not least, Hugo Wolf and his owner free falling. We love to see your plush toys do levitation too! We have done a simple tutorial on how to do levitation photography. If you are interested, follow us on our next entry to find out.

A&W Fast Food A&W Restaurant

Minily Edward horse is here at A&W Restaurant. There are more than 30 A&W fast food restaurant outlets in Malaysia currently and we are now in the Johor Bahru Bukit Indah outlet.

A&W fast food restaurant is most legendary for its root beer float which is a root beer soft drink with a scoop of ice cream on top. Save the introduction for the later, Edward horse is going to order our root beer float now!

Edward horse at the counter of A&W fast food restaurant getting our order. The A&W root beer float is already on our tray!

Here we have it! 3 mugs of A&W root beer float dully served. We were given the number plate that indicates our fast food order. Even when the restaurant is not crowded, we still have to wait for our food to be served. The A&W fast food restaurant name did not really befit the fast food category.

A heavenly scoop of vanilla ice cream from our A&W root beer float. Why are we so obsessed with this A&W root beer float is because this drink was a huge hit when A&W restaurant landed in Malaysia during the time we were young. It was the talk of the town and everyone was flocking to A&W fast food restaurant to have a sip of this extremely hyped root beer float.

Edward horse was pretty bored waiting around for our food to come, so we spent the time taking pictures of A&W restaurant. We ordered A&W's waffle ice cream, a classic to go with the A&W root beer float. 

Other A&W restaurant's classic fast food is the burger, coney dog and fried chicken but the cheeseburger is nowhere near MacDonalds, the coney dog is a below average hot dog and the fried chicken is far from par with KFC. Pretty sure the original A&W from USA serves better fast food than A&W Malaysia.

Edward horse still waiting for the waffle ice cream. It is a norm to wait a while before your food is served, A&W fast food restaurant should really remove the fast food from the name and keep it as A&W restaurant.

Speaking of the devil, Edward horse's A&W waffle ice cream is served! The waffle is freshly made, the outer layer still crispy and the inner layer is soft and mushy. This is one fast food that A&W restaurant did well.

There are only 2 A&W fast food restaurant in Johor Bahru, one is here at Bukit Indah and the other at Jusco Permas Jaya. A&W restaurant in Malaysia is already one of the sole surviving countries, all the A&W restaurants in Singapore has already become extinct since 2003 due to poor business. A&W's business in Malaysia is scarce too because most people here only appreciates MacDonalds and KFC.

Let's just hope that A&W fast food restaurant can continue to thrive despite the hardships so that we can always have A&W root beer float and the ice cream waffle. Worst come to worst, you can still buy the A&W root beer soft drink from local supermarkets and add your own scoop of ice cream to make your own A&W root beer float.

A&W Restaurant Malaysia website link

A&W fast food facebook page

Hungry Ghost Festival

Hungry Ghost Festival, also known as the Ghost Festival is the 15th night of the seventh month in the lunar calendar where traditional Chinese believed that the gates of hell will open and ghost can return to Earth. This year, Hungry Ghost Festival falls on last Sunday night.

During Hungry Ghost Festival, Chinese people will burn incense, joss paper and food offerings as a customary tradition as they believe that the ghost of their ancestors will return to home. So these are a form of paying respect.

Note: Don't try what mini Hugo did, the fire was very close to him. He almost became a Hungry Ghost Festival offering!

We take you back half an hour ago where Hugo Wolf is preparing the joss paper to burn later. These colored papers actually represent cloth, thats why the many different colors. These cloth are meant to be burnt later for the ghost or spirits for them to make clothes!

These colored papers are always a must-have for every ghost festival! We usually roll it up like this to mimic a real roll of cloth, and for easier burning this way.

 Bank note from hell! 9 zeros!!! How much is that? WOW. If only this was real money $$

 Hello Hugo! Don't let the name "Hungry Ghost" scare you, this is not a scary festival, it is a festival for paying respects to our ancestors.

We have another type of joss paper here which we fold it into a traditional Chinese gold shape that represents silver and gold ingot currencies used in China before the 20th century. We are almost ready for the Hungry Ghost Festival.

Gold bars are the hottest thing now when the shares plunged into abyssal recently. This is the first time we bought gold bars for Hungry Ghost Festival, this is gonna be very popular too for ghost in the other realm.

We lay all the joss paper out on the floor, half of it at the front door and the other half at the back door. Burning red candles and incense are mandatory for Hungry Ghost Festival too.

When all is ready, Hugo Wolf lights up one of the joss paper using the fire from the candle. This is our very simple Hungry Ghost Festival celebration, as you can see we do not have any food offerings nor a lot of joss papers.

See you at next year's Hungry Ghost Festival again! We might do something different. All the people from our generation still celebrate this festival because of our parents, Hungry Ghost Festival will surely be extinct when the upper generation phase out. So we do cherish this festival now even though burning papers do hurt the Earth's atmosphere but what is this little pollution compared to us driving our cars?