Wednesday, December 3, 2008

It breaks again

Dark rain clouds blanketted the morning sky. Then it rained - nothing strange and unexpected about it - it was monsoon at its early stages.

I was at Kemaman Workshop, Ambank Panel, getting my Citra's cracked windshield replaced.

It was cracked quite sometimes ago when a stone from a lorry that I was following hurtled fast towards my car and landed causing a nasty 1-inch dent in my newly replaced windshield.

At first the crack was just barely visible from afar. Then it began to lengthen both ways. When it almost reached both ends of the windshiled and I could feel the rough edges from inside, then I knew that it was time for a new one.

Luckily and once beaten twice shy, I included the windshield cover in the new car insurance.

The workshop was very simple in design. It only had a container as the office and the floor, in most parts were plain earth.

Two mangy mongrels scouted the workshop compound, pausing as they passed by mechanics as if they were saying hello to them.

As there were no chairs or stools to sit while waiting for the windshield to be replaced, I had to stand for almost 3 hours.

They offered me a ride back to my house while they fixed it, but I preferred to see how they did it.

IT involved a lot of skilled works. First they loosen the glass inch by inch trying their best to prevent it from breaking into pieces.

The cracks lengthened in many ways as they did so.

After they finally removed it from the car, they began scraping off the dried up 'glue' from the metal parts. Then they place new glue onto the metal before finally replacing the new windshield.

The cost? The insurance company had to let go RM 700 for it.

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