Caterpillar kissing the leave.

As you may have noticed, I have added a new batch of header pictures for this site.  ColinJong.com has 4 batches of header pictures now.  Each batch is made up of 8 pictures, there are a total of 32 headers picture now.  As usual, the previous batches will be disappeared for few days to welcome the new batch of header pictures.  Here, I emphasis the living things such as caterpillar.  They are all from my recent post entries.

Fat Silver-Spotted Caterpillar.

Hairy Caterpillar.

Thanks again to Haan, telling me that these are called “Red Padi-Field Snails” (Hong2Tian2Luo2). 

Orange vs. Green.

Of course sometime you may notice that some headers picture doesn’t look like some of the pages or you don’t like some of the header pictures.  That’s can be solved by refreshing the page that you are reading, it will change to another random header picture.  Please tell me the one that you don’t like the most. :p  I have a guess, I just want to prove it.

Related Post Entries:
(1)  Header Pictures Batch 1
(2)  Header Pictures Batch 2
(3)  Header Pictures Batch 3
(4)  Header Pictures Batch 4 (this post)

Anybody who read this post should check your cars and tell your relatives and friends and as a reminder: “Don’t let the car’s timing belt break especially while the engine is running”, otherwise you will know what happen. You don’t have to worry if you have got a new car, but your car will become an old car one day. So please be reminded.

I just got my car back from the workshop on last Friday. It has been through a major operation in the workshop for one week. It suffered from serious engine damage because its timing belt had broken while I was driving the previous Friday. It’s exactly one week “admitted” into the workshop.

The engine died half way near a traffic light. Nobody was helping to push the car to the road side. It caused a traffic jam for a while until my father, my brother and my brother’s friend came. I tried to start the engine many times, but it sounded different and couldn’t be started. I guessed that the timing belt has broken, but I wished it’s not.

My brother’s friend checked the car, we tried to push the car to start it, but the engine was producing a strange sound and still couldn’t be started. It sounded like something within was loose. It was changing its usual old man voice to a young lady voice. Then my father sent a mechanic to come and check. Within 5 minutes, he said that it was a big issue with the engine and was confirmed that the timing belt has broken. My car needed to be towed to the workshop because it couldn’t move by itself anymore.

My heart sank.

I have learned that experienced from a friend called Samuel Andy. He had the same experience 2 years ago. At that time, my car mileage meter was only 60k+ km. And not long ago, I told my father that I plan to change the timing belt. But… It was too late. IT WAS TOO LATE. I’m not sure when it’s the last time the timing belt was changed, because my car is a second hand car. And from the mileage meter, it is only 80k km+. My friends said that the timing belt can last for 100k km. But I planned to change it soon, why it happened so soon.

For those of you who don’t know what can be caused by a broken timing belt while the engine is running. Let me tell you. It can cause serious engine damage depend on your luck. Many parts may need to be replaced, such as the valves are bent, pistons and cylinder heads may be destroyed. The engine may need an overhaul. It all depends on how fast the engine was running when the timing belt breaks because the crankshaft is heavier and it’s still rotate by initial. Therefore the valves are bent and other parts are destroyed.

It happens all in a blink of an eye. Instead of only need to change the timing belt, the engine suffers from a serious damage. It’s cost me a lot more than the price for changing a timing belt.

After the mechanic had a detailed check on the car in the workshop, they said I’m not lucky. The engine needed to have a “General Overhaul”. Initially I plan to change a new fuel injection engine because the old engine is quite old, not efficient and I need to cleanup the plug quite frequently, whereas the new fuel injection engine can save fuel better, but it’s advised by my father that I don’t have to, because the engine still can be repaired and it’s quite troublesome to change the engine number on the green card at JPJ, therefore I just let the workshop overhaul the engine. 5 valves, water pipe and contact were replaced. The mechanic discovered that the clutch disk also got problem, and it was replaced too. Total up it cost RM 1200+ including towing. The mechanic told me the timing belt is for 60k not 100k; I forgot to ask him the unit is in km or mile. Anyway I am going to change it before it breaks again. I will write a big note and stick it inside the car to remind myself.

May be I may have got my dream car before its timing belt break again? But I will not give up this car, even if it can’t be repair anymore, I will keep it as a memory, because it’s follow me for more than 10 years already.

This is the second time I step my foot on Miri Airport. But this is the first time I visited most parts of the airport. Last time, I only transited through Miri and only had a few minutes to get to know how the departure hall looks like. This time I had more time, because our flight was delayed for 5 hours. Therefore I had about 2 hours to take photos everywhere in the airport.

Its departure hall has the same design as the previous Kuching International Airport (before its upgrading). There is a big common departure hall for all the flight, and there are a few doors only. After the passengers heard the announcement, only then they get out from the door of the departure hall, and walk through a long corridor. For the current Kuching International Airport / LCCT and KLIA, they are different. We walk through a long corridor first and reach the gate and then take a seat to wait for the flight. For small airports we wait and walk, whereas for bigger airports we walk and wait.

The first thing we did after arriving in Miri was looking for food. We saw Mr. Bean instead of Coffee Bean. Since our friends from Limbang said that it’s still a long way for them to reach the airport, we ordered food at the airport. But later they came just after a short while. It’s just a “minor communication error” and we have to pay the “standard price” to have our lunch at the airport and there are not many choices at the airport since we are all vegetarian.

Later we accompanied our friends from Limbang to have our second lunch. Wilson took another flight from Kuching to Miri 2 hours later, he missed both our lunch time. Once he reached Miri, it was about time to start doing what we came here for. And he had to wait until the dinner time. He must be hungry. We thought we had time to have the third lunch, but that was not the case.

Hmmm… something came into my mind. [ Why can’t human share their stomach fullness? If I eat something, you will not hungry. That is totally illogical and impossible. Some of the things we can share unlimitedly such as happiness. We can only limitedly share money. For Health, experiences, skills and abilities we can only get it by doing them ourselves, there is no way to share. ]

This is the dining area at Miri Airport.

I saw a moth (something similar to butterfly, but not butterfly) on the glass at the viewing area. This is the picture I focused on the moth.

This is the picture I focused my camera lenses to the infinity. The moth had gone.

This cloud looked like the smoke comes out from the Aladdin Magic Lamp. If it asked me what I want, I will tell it that I want to go back to Kuching as fast as I can, because the flight had delayed from 11:05am to 3:45pm. And it departed at 4pm which delayed for another 15 more minutes.

I like to see the airplanes take off and landing. Although I can see part of the track only, I have waited there and seen 3 airplanes using the airport track. I like the feeling when the airplanes take off. It’s just like a strong force pushing me from a slow speed, and accelerates to the top speed in a short time.

There was a mini airplane for domestic flight.

The followings are the common things that we can see at the airport.

The mini cute car was pulling the checked-in baggage. I hope I can sit on it one day and try to drive it everywhere on a wide area like the airport.

If I’m not mistaken this truck is used to refill the on-flight food for the airplanes.

The airplanes need to drink as well; this is the truck carrying the drink (fuel) for the airplanes.

We haven’t visited many places in Miri. We are not sure when the next time we will be there again. We will plan it in the future.

Related Miri trip (April 2008) posts:

(1) Beach.
(2) Petroleum Museum.
(3) Airport.  (this post)