Relaxing Buddha

The head of the Reclining Buddha in Wat Pho, Bangkok. The image is 46 meters long and 15 meters high, decorated with gold plating on his body and mother of pearl on his eyes and the soles of his feet. It is Thailand's largest and most beautiful piece of fine arts of Buddha in the reclining position, depicting the passing of Buddha into nirvana.

Car Wash 101

To detailing enthusiasts, car washing is something that should be done by oneself (i.e. not done by anybody else without proper knowledge on how to do it, usually including automatic carwashes). This is done to reduce the potential of inflicting swirls onto the paint caused by improper techniques commonly found. Car washing is also normally the first step in any detailing process and is the most often thing we do as a regular maintenance procedure, so why not take a look at how it should be done.

There are lots of online videos out there, and I'm sharing my favorite one so far here, that shows how to wash your car properly in a pretty comprehensive way. It's done by Mike Phillips, a celebrity in the car detailing world. I like his articles and videos because they are well composed and simply make sense. Enjoy this one!


One thing that I'd like to emphasize is the usage of a good wash mitt, because I see a lot of people use traditional sponge which can scratch paint (or even worse: chamois!). But if you feel like a lambswool mitt is too pricey to start with, there are actually other choices you might want to check out. How dirty is too dirty to safely use a rinseless wash? is another nicely written article by Mike Phillips which also lists some alternatives to choose from to replace the traditional sponge.

After Prayer

This photo was taken from inside the Sheikh Zayed Mosque, Abu Dhabi, the largest mosque in the United Arab Emirates, facing the main entrance gate across the main building. People were gathering to admire the beauty of the mosque after a Friday prayer. One thing that I overlooked was it's said that the decoration of the mosque's ceiling precisely mirrors the motif of the carpet below it.

Intro

Hi, my name is Arief. I got my bachelors degree in telecommunications engineering back in 2007 and work for an oilfield services company since then as a data management engineer. I was previously based in Jakarta, but starting from earlier this year got transferred to Balikpapan. I am married to my lovely wife, Sasha, and blessed with an adorable (now 15 months old) boy, Fuza.

In this blog, I intend to share anything that I found useful and/or interesting, hoping that someone else might find it that way as well. I'm planning to write about culinary (from places to eat in to simple recipes I tried), daily life tips & tricks, travel notes, my photography works, etc. Lately, I've been interested in car detailing; so even though I'm nowhere near a professional detailer, I might write stuff about car detailing that works for me as well.

Before moving out to Balikpapan, I lived in Bintaro, just at the outskirt of Jakarta; my parents live in Tangerang; and my parents-in-law live in Bandung, where I spent my college years, that's about 2-3 hours away from Jakarta. So you will also see things around these places.

Anyway, about the title of this blog: bincangacak... I was going to name it random talk, derived from "random walk", as it feels just right. (: Then when I tried to register it as the title of the blog, you guess it... it's not available. So I went on using a translation of it to bahasa Indonesia, my mother tongue: acak for random, and bincang for talk. Hence the name, bincangacak.

Cheers!