MAROON BOOKLET

The number of crowd on the tent , 6:15 in the morning

Work in renewing my passport has become pending lately, I was supposedly should have renewed my papers way back December last year, but due to holiday season it sorted to fall behind and had waited this January. By the time I had to have it renewed , again it was set back a few days because of a national holiday when the Pope visited this country. Now after clearing all the holidays that went, I decided to make an appointment online on this so called passport services.

Unfortunately this so called online passport services my country brags a lot end up to a big disappointment , and to simply say the services they provide are not poor but horrible. If I would compare the services they were doing several years back to present - I would definitely say that passport services years back was better considering that Online appointment system was not implemented yet. For migrant workers you can get a passport within less than 5 hours while normal passport applicants can get it within 10 days maximum.

Nowadays this Online passport service is not a big help but a burden and they gave a scheduled appointment a month away from now, what's worst was that this excludes that processing time of another seven days - totalling up to thirty seven days ( 37 days) and this is if I put it in "rush" processing which basically is worthless given that I still have to wait for seven days. Overall passport services in the country are pathetic and more expensive than it was several years back.

Given with this options I was left with no choice but to gate crash my way to the DFA office in Robinsons mall, and go thru the trouble of waking up as early as 3am. Assuming on what career ship management told me was correct, there should be no "appointment" system here and can simply get a passport here easily.

Anyway in the Philippines , government offices here have a nasty habit of forcing people to wake up as early as 3am (in an indirect way) , Now a days it's becoming a trend now.  NBI, PCSO, DFA, POEA, etc. all these government agency workforce has all the same kind of bull shit , poor public service !!!

There's a rumour I heard from one of the passport applicants that the reason why DFA (department of foreign affairs) decided to de centralized the issuance of passports to different malls was because the main area of DFA was already festering with "FIXERS" , and to avoid the various scams running around on their office , they decided to spread it out. Unfortunately for a typical Filipino citizen  it was a big inconvenience on the fact that passports takes a long time to process and get a passport.

the actual waiver of DFA 

Anyway on my time waiting, I fell asleep on the waiting area which is just a public walkway with a tent. When I woke up , the security guard was already distributing a piece of paper and one by one checking out photo copies of our documents. It was about 10am when Robinsons mall opened , and I had to fall in line again to get an application form , it was already about 15 to 25 minutes when we got inside. Good thing that the process inside didn't took that long and it was about exactly noon when I was finished. Aside from the application form for the passport , we were given another paper which we had to sign and looked more like a waiver which tells that passports fees are non-refundable if we decide to back out while midway on the process , we won't get our money back (make me think this is a scam) and notifies that 7 days processing isn't exactly seven days, (they hinted that there's some sort of problem on the printing machine)

Once inside , the first step was go to window one which the receptionist there just checked if my photocopies are all in order and if I had all the necessary original documents (old passport, seaman's book , SRC card , and a third part ID - I used AMOSUP sailors union card). After the first step , I had to wait for the electronic queue to go to the second window . Basically the second window just checks if all the entries on the application form are correct and ask me if I want my passport to be processed on regular or express . I opted express then after that proceeded on the third booth which is the accounting , obviously its function is to pay for the passport services . The last part will be encoding booth, which took an ID picture and lets me check if the information to be put on the computer is correct, after wards they told me the claim schedule on what date I'd get my passport. Then that's it!!!  I'm off in the DFA "consular" mall office.

EXPRESS ISNT EXACTLY INSTANT

For the general public's information, as of 2015 . Passport fee are 950 PHP for regular processing which takes roughly 14 working days (take note working days not regular days). And 1200 PHP for express which takes half the time and seven working days only. The funny thing about this service is the "Express" part which is not exactly "express", I mean why the hell would they say its express if they don’t exactly mean it eh ? The only difference is a week which the difference is barely noticeable. On my personal stand point this is one of the many noticeable "legal" scams in department of foreign affairs, the only difference of express and regular is that its only called that but the time of processing is just almost the same. In Europe and western countries , Government corruption is hidden and nobody admits it's - here in the Philippines its institutionalized and LEGAL , perhaps even encourage.

After the long hard difficult work of securing a passport , all i need is a nice cold tall glass of frappe from Starbucks 

SEA NO EVIL: THE LIFE OF A MODERN SAILOR

Some article i had read about being a sailor on the internet , Cannot verify if this is true or not. but some are.

Forget any romantic notions of life on the ocean wave – most modern-day seafarers are simply ‘prisoners with a salary’

It was only late afternoon, but already dark and stormy, on the Thursday of the week before Christmas 2009, when the cargo freighter Danny FII approached the Lebanese port of Tripoli en route from Uruguay to Syria. She carried 18,000 cattle, 10,000 sheep and 83 humans, including four passengers, and had been converted from a car carrier into a modern-day Noah’s Ark.

Danny FII was not a new ship, but it was modern, because her crew was international: a British captain and chief engineer, 59 Pakistanis, some Filipinos, a Lebanese and a Syrian. Though she was Uruguayan, she flew another country’s flag. She was a typical member of the 90,000-strong fleet of freighters that sail the seas, bringing us 95 per cent of everything that we consume.

Eleven miles out from Tripoli, the night, the weather and the Danny FII itself combined to create a fatal outcome. The details are still unclear, but Danny FII changed course, then capsized. Twenty-three sailors reached the lifeboats, but they capsized, too, and the seas filled with drowning animals and men. Forty men survived, 43 did not, including the captain, who went down with his ship. And so Danny FII was added to the 36 other ships that sank that year and the 43 men were added to the estimated 2,000 or so who lose their lives annually.

Why were there no headlines? Consider the reaction if 37 airliners crashed every year, or 37 trains, and if it happened every year, regular as a shipping schedule. In 1910, the journalist FR Bullen wrote that we regarded this ‘indispensable bridging of the ocean’ as ‘no more needing our thoughtful attention than the recurrence of the seasons or the incidence of day and night’. Nothing has changed.

The man who goes to sea, wrote Marco Polo, is a man in despair. This is still true, but today’s man of the sea is also probably poor, probably exploited, and living a life that contains, at the least, chronic fatigue and overwork; boredom, pirates and danger. Suicide rates of seafarers are triple those of land-based occupations and carrying sea cargo is the second-most deadly job on the planet after fishing.

The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), which represents seafarers, said recently that ‘the maritime and fishing industries continue to allow astonishing abuses of human rights of those working in the sector. Seafarers and fishers are routinely made to work in conditions that would not be acceptable in civilised society’. Middle-class shoppers may think they are helping the world’s poor by buying Fairtrade food, but, chances are, they have never given a thought to the conditions on board the ships that bring them those goods.

Only last year a young South African cadet named Akhona Geveza was found floating in the sea, an hour after reporting that she had been raped by a senior officer. An investigation by South Africa’s Sunday Times newspaper interviewed other cadets and found two made pregnant by senior officers; two male cadets raped; and a widespread atmosphere of intimidation. ‘When we arrived,’ one female cadet told the newspaper, ‘we were told that the sea is no-man’s land and that what happens at sea, stays at sea.’

The International Commission on Shipping estimates that thousands of seafarers, working on 10-15 per cent of the world’s ships, ‘work in slave conditions, with minimal safety, long hours for little or no pay, starvation diets, rape and beatings’. All to bring us our Fairtrade coffee and our ethically sourced clothes.

A British Navy Admiral last year accused Britons of ‘sea blindness’; of having no idea what sea life is like. But how can we? Shore and sea lives are nothing alike. You would expect for example that the families of Danny FII’s dead crew would be compensated, because that is what happens in shore life, ideally, where there are checks and balances and courts and redress. But the men of Danny FII lived in a world that is essentially lawless.

When something goes wrong at sea, a seafarer has nowhere to turn. ‘A land-based person would have national jurisdiction,’ says Deirdre Fitzpatrick of the ITF,. ‘I’m in the UK, my problem is here, and I know where to go for help. If you are Filipino, on a Panamanian-flagged ship, travelling from South Africa to the Netherlands, what law is going to govern you? You are a total moving target.’

International, multinational, transnational: this is normal in shipping, an industry whose complexity would impress offshore bankers. Crews of five or more nationalities are standard, and 60 per cent of ships now fly a flag of a country that is not that of their owner. These days, the average ship in British ports is unlikely to have either a British flag or a British crew. The only thing you can predict with certainty about it is that its sailors will be from poor countries, and exhausted. Occasionally, they will also be unpaid, or worse, which is where Tommy Molloy comes in.

An inspector for the ITF, based in Liverpool, Molloy spends his days visiting whichever of the world’s freighters has arrived at the quays of Liverpool and Birkenhead, to see if they pass muster. We meet in New Brighton, old-time seaside resort for Liverpool, now supplanted by Ryanair and short-haul sunshine. His office is on a retirement estate for ex-seafarers run by Nautilus, a seafaring union.

All the old seafarers here are British, and ‘they wouldn’t recognise the industry today’, says Molloy, as we drive at pensioner speed through the lanes. But he hardly ever sees a Briton on the ships that call here, because they cost too much in wages, and expect things like being paid on time, or having the right to be in a union, that shipowners can avoid quite easily and legally by flying a ‘flag of convenience’, a responsibility-avoidance system unique to shipping.

It is common to see ships who are owned by, for example, a Japanese company, flying the flag of Liberia or Panama. This entitles them to operate under a nation state that supplies none of the governance that it should, a practice that makes tracking down bad shipowners near impossible. Flagging out your ship, an Australian maritime union wrote, is like ‘being able to register your car in Bali so you can drive it on Australian roads without having to get the brakes fixed’.

There are decent flag-of-convenience registries, but questionable ones abound. North Korea has a large fleet. When Cambodia-flagged ships got involved in too many sinkings and drug trafficking investigations, the registry office in Singapore was closed and two weeks later reopened as Mongolia’s. The United Nations Law of the Sea specifies that there should be a ‘genuine link’ between the flag-owner and the state. It took years for diplomats to agree on this. They are now spending years deciding what a genuine link should consist of. In practice, when anything goes wrong, the seafarer is on his own.

I drive with Molloy to Birkenhead docks. He has the right to visit ships that have signed an ITF agreement promising to respect certain wage levels and hours of rest. Otherwise he asks politely to visit. Shipping is the only industry that regulates working hours by hours of rest, because it would be impossible to conform to hours of work limits.

On a recent passage I took, conforming to regulations was impossible. In port, crews were working 18 hours a day, because shipping these days is 24 hours, seven days a week. The days of prolonged stays in port are long gone. With containerisation, a ship can be unloaded and loaded and gone in 24 hours. Some of the crew on my ship hadn’t been ashore in months. ‘I’ve been to New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo,’ the chief engineer said, ‘and they all look like my engine room.’

Molloy doesn’t see many decent ships. ‘I deal with the dirty end of the industry,’ he says. The first ship we visit, though, is fine. Hohe Bank is flagged in Antigua, owned by Germans, managed by Britons, built by Chinese, and with an Indonesian crew and Russian officers. Normal, in other words. Molloy hands out ITF magazines in Russian and an Indonesian language, and they are pleased to get them, because it is human contact, which they don’t get much of.

Plenty of seafarers I meet tell me their job is like being ‘at prison with a salary’. Wrong, wrote the Maritime Charities Funding Commission, which found that ‘the provision of leisure, recreation, religious service and communication facilities is better in UK prisons than on many ships’.

The ship ‘house’, where seafarers live, is small but clean. But Molloy gives me a PowerPoint presentation about some other ships he has seen. Mouldy, filthy couches, rotting fruit and meat. I hear complaints that chandlers – suppliers – regularly give ships poor quality food, simply because they can, when a ship is in port for 24 hours. But the crew doesn’t complain here and the paperwork is orderly.

Still, even on the better ships, Molloy can go aboard and be there for days. ‘You’ll find that all the crew have exceeded their contracts. We always try to persuade them to leave but often they don’t want to.’

Non-officers don’t have permanent contracts, so staying at sea longer means more money and less need immediately to look for work. I met Filipinos with four children who had missed every birth and every birthday. It is the price they pay. ‘We call it dollar for homesickness,’ one said.

Many seafarers also find themselves abandoned in a port with no money, no supplies and no way to get home. The abandonment of ships peaks during times of recession, but it happens all the time, usually when an unscrupulous owner has run out of money and disappears.

The worst cases happen overseas, such as that of Arabian Victory, stranded in Dubai in 2002 for 45 days in temperatures of 111F (44C). The Indian and Ukrainian crew didn’t even have water. Appeals to Dubai authorities, the flag state (Belize) and the Indian consulate failed. When the crew decided to sail to India for help, the Iraqi owner tried to arrest them for hijacking.

This case is extreme, but Molloy sees abuse that is alarming for being so routine. He boarded one Greek-owned ship and found that the Filipino crew and officers hadn’t been paid for months. ‘The captain got on the phone to the company and told me $48,000 was being wired immediately. I said, hang on, I haven’t even calculated the total yet, then I did and it was $47,600. They knew exactly what they owed.’

Once, when Molloy got money for the crew, he had a call at 3am from a crew member. ‘He was at Manchester airport on his way home. He said: “I’m the only one who refused to give the money back as soon as we got off the ship, so they kicked me off.”’

But who is going to enforce anything? When a crew is abandoned, the ITF can apply to special maritime courts to have the ship arrested and eventually sold. This can take 12 weeks, and the sailors have no money or food. Welfare organisations such as the Sailors Society, Mission to Seafarers and Stella Maris are often the only solace for exploited seafarers. They are crucial, especially when the crew won’t leave for fear they will never get paid.

Molloy tells of one Sri Lankan who told him: ‘If you send me home, I will cut my throat.’ Like thousands of seafarers, he had coped with not being paid by taking loans from moneylenders, who were threatening to kill his family. Russians and Ukrainians are more likely to stand up for themselves, says Molloy, but the Filipinos will resist longer because of blacklisting, a practice that no one admits to but which is widely used among the crewing agencies in the Philippines.

Roy Paul, who looks after Filipino seafarers for the ITF’s Seafarers Trust, says it is common practice. ‘You’ll have someone who has worked for a ship for four or five years, then makes a complaint against, for example, a racist captain. Suddenly the agency has no ship for him, though it did for four years.’

The conditions that Molloy sees every day would cause outrage ashore. And it’s not just lower ranking crew members who suffer. In South Korea, the Indian captain, Jasprit Chawla, was imprisoned for 18 months after his anchored ship was hit by a runaway barge and leaked oil into the Yellow Sea. He was only released after a protracted campaign. ‘You land a plane at sea and you’re a hero,’ Paul says. ‘You put a ship on land and you’re a criminal.’

Of course, there are many responsible ship owners. As Deirdre Fitzpatrick points out, ‘They know that their most valuable asset is their employees.’ They also know that there is a worldwide shortage of officers (a 33, 000 shortfall at the last count).

Campaigners hope that this shortage will put pressure on the industry to clean up its act. Not much else seems to be working. Even the Fairtrade Foundation is defeated by the complexities and realities of this extraordinary, unique industry. It would be nice, says Fairtrade’s Ian Bretman, to insist on using ships that have signed ITF agreements, or to avoid flags of convenience, but without any way of monitoring, ‘this would be merely an empty gesture. [But] I hope that it will not be too long before we can consider what practical support we would offer trade unions in the maritime and shipping industries so that seafarers can also see the benefits of Fairtrade.’

None of the seafarers I met shares this optimism. In a seafarers’ centre, I ask Menandro, a ship’s cook, if he would send his son to sea. He used to be a civil servant in the Philippines, but the economy collapsed and only the shipping agencies were hiring. He now spends his days bringing us everything we need to survive. Menandro is an educated and articulate man, but his answer is brief. ‘No, no and no. I am doing this so he doesn’t have to. This is no life.’

CHANGING BRANDS

Half of my leave pay just went down very easily in just a few hours. Often times I think that such a huge amount could have been put elsewhere to good use if we didn’t have any debt commitments to other people, I could have bought a lot of things to the house if I didn’t have huge debts to pay - Maybe I'd buy a big LCD TV along with a Refrigerator and DVD player , perhaps I'd even purchase a 22. calibre hand gun from the local gun shop. I can't argue that those debts are of reasonable nature , and if it weren't for those debts that we made during mom's hospitalization, mom wouldn't be alive now and vertical. For the record 40 thousands pesos was obliterated within roughly just two hours, after I got my leave pay.

On the following days I just stayed on my house , repairing and modifying more equipment. On the 13th of January, got a dose of a little bit of sunshine and surveyed any possible DFA branches on local malls were I could a passport with less the hassle of waking up early. One of my surveys in Ali mall cubao , yielded a promising result, The DFA branch there is less crowded and for my inquiry on the business hours , they open at about 10am. Which meant that I don’t have to get the hassle of waking up early just to get in the line.

The next day , I went out on shopping and started buying / replacing needed working equipment. I started out in Recto area where I had to buy a replacement for the working goggles I use, didn’t have any trouble on what I was looking for given that there are a lot of airsoft gun shops in the area, aside from that I also bought a multi-tool pliers. On my browsing on some of the shops , I saw a military water canteen type which I need to replace my old cylindrical water canteen. Unfortunately the shop vendor was rude and even try to overprice that item , charging me of 800 PHP plus on it. Obvious I declined buying the item and figured that I might get the same item on a much lower price in gun / military supply shops nearby Camp Crame area in Cubao. After finishing buying those equipment. My next stop was the malls in cubao area, I went on a little browsing there but nothing interesting of any kind.  Last stop was on the metro east malls (sta. Lucia east grand mall , and Robinson's mall)

There I found some interesting things to buy - mostly civilian clothes , First off was the new back pack I bought specifically designed for travel and bigger capacity for luggage. Reason why I bought it was for that in case of an event where two of my check-in luggage will get lost on an airport, I can still continue my work on-board a ship without any problems. In other words , its extra space is meant for some working clothes. The back pack was so big that when I compare the size to one of my Check-in luggage it was nearly almost the same size.  In Robinsons mall I bought a new outfit to replace my aging "embarkation outfit" which I had been wearing four years now.

I recall a few years back that my personal clothing brand will be "Bench" , unfortunately on recent years it seems that the quality of material they have been using is getting poorer and found out recently from my younger sister (last year she work on the clothing line , as a store supervisor) that those materials they were using were made from china , which explains of their poor quality. In relation to this I'm not exactly recommending buying clothes on "Bench" anymore and will be phasing out my remaining "bench" brand civilian clothes on my closet (or even my gear used on work). My alternate choice will be either "folded and hung" brand or "Penshoppee" - As this has the same price but better quality of goods  . My sister tells me that I shouldn't patronize "bench" anymore as it is now becoming more accessible to commoner's and forgot its target of exclusivity on the upper class people.

On the next few days I went on shopping for a few more equipment. Earlier I was choosing if I could get a Motorola GP328 two way radio or a spy eye glasses, I opted the spy eyeglasses and bought it on a surveillance shop store in Ali mall cubao. Spy eyeglasses are way cheaper than buying a two way radio, a brand new Motorola GP328 cost something about 16,000 Plus PHP even the parts of that radio cost 2000 Php on the least - while the spy eyeglasses cost about 2,500 Php.

New "Embarkation outfit" id be using on my new next upcoming ship replacing the old green type , out fit looks more similar to a heavy metal band member. Black jacket came from JAG clothing store (cost is 2000 PHP), Folded and Hung Denim pants ( cost 1000 PHP) and checkered grey polo shirt from penshoppe (cost around 565 PHP)  

Comparison size of my back pack to my 2nd travel luggage, quiet huge right ?

Nylon string i bought on DAISO JAP store on the local mall , cost only 66 PHP , used as make shift hanger for laundry inside my cabin.

Set of underwear i bought on bench , cost about 549 PHP , Seriously this will be one of the last products of bench id be using. on the near future i'd be using a different clothing brand for my clothes. Bench materials are very poor

GOT DITCHED

Behold the amount of money on my leave pay !!!

Almost 3 weeks have already passed since I arrived, Now given the circumstances of my situation , it is imperative that I get my leave pay and settle a few house debts as well as renew my GTF seminar documents (now BTOC) and renew my passport.

Last December 26th , I was informed by the accounting department to check my "leave pay"  status via IVRS system. Now that’s the problems starts, I can't exactly remember my IVRS number and were I wrote it.

Recently I had called career ship management over the phone to ask about the status of my leave pay to my dismay it was meet with rudeness by the person who answered the phone, (Damn bitches fall below the standard customer service skills) . So I was left with no other choice but to go there personally and check it out, I made plans to personally go there at the office but I fell asleep and missed the scheduled time on Thursday. (leave pay inquiries are only open in the morning), so I had to reschedule on Friday.

Original plan was to get the IVRS number (employee number) and check and see if my leave pay has already been processed. Really was such a hassle hurling my way again , but I had no choice. So I took the bus and hurled myself all the way from marikina.

Got my IVRS number from reporting counter in career and tried to call via the local pay phone to verify over the phone about my leave pay status. To my dismay no one was answering the phone , I tried a couple of times on different areas with a payphone and the results was still the same. So I was left with no other choice but to go in the office myself and verify it to the accounting department

I went to the accounting department , and they had me to wait an hour and afterwards I was called again in the accounting and told that the cheque for my back pay will be ready at around 2:30 pm. It was around 11am at that time and I had about four hours more to try and go back again on the accounting depart. Since there as a lot of vacant time I decided to drop by on the local mall around and see how it looks like. On my way out I accidentally bumped into O.S. Ronnie macalawa and got some gossip that he'd will be reassigned to Conti Ginea ship by february.

Made my short walk south to the nearest mall , about 10 minute to 15 minute walk south and there I was visited the metro walk mall.  Seriously there isn't anything to say much about that mall, that mall was basically cramp and the cleaning maintenance was very poor and overall it was a rundown mall. After spending at least two hours roaming on the mall. I decided to go back. I spent a couple of hours just simply hanging out on the local fast food store till 2:00 pm

When career ship management opened its office. I went directly to the accounting department to claim my leave pay cheque, only waited for an hour before it was release. During the wait I received a SMS message from my former co-worker, messman Montoya. He was asking on the SMS if I was claiming my Leave pay cheque. I confirmed to him that indeed I'm already on the accounting department right now to claiming it - I replied via SMS that he has to wait for an hour for me to confirm if my leave pay cheque is now available.

I was surprised to receive this message on the fact that , I never informed anyone in my shipping office about my new number not even my former co-workers, and I only got this new cell phone number after we parted ways in the airport . So for short how the hell did he got my number ? Anyway doesn’t matter , short after the SMS my name was called by the accountant and said I had to fill out some forms and had this confirmed to our shipping superintendent Capt. Galang. Had no problems having those papers signed to Mr. Galang , he only asked on what date am I processing my paper, I only replied that I'm using my leave pay to update my papers and I was off again. Finally I received my leave pay check and was surprised to see that NSB principal is much generous on leave pay compared to CSM, the amount that registered on my cheque was a whooping amount of eighty one thousand nine hundred twenty seven pesos. A really huge sum for a work that only barely lasted six months.  I got the cheque and left career ship management to cash it and also informed Messman Montoya that the leave pay cheque for CONTI Greenland was already released.

Out of the stroke of bad luck, it so happens that when I arrived on the main city of manila there was a city wide holiday called "Feast of the Black Nazarene" and so happens they closed all the public transportation roads city wide. The Jeepney dropped me off a few miles away from PGH landmark (Philippine General Hospital) and had to walk all the way to the bank, by the time I arrived it was already off office hours. So I had to walk again on the nearest transportation available away from quiapo area, unfortunately the nearest was a few clicks away from PHIL TRUST Bank and had to walk .  On my way I stumble hoards of people doing their religious devotion to the black Nazarene feast. I took a few pictures on the occasion.

By the time I arrived, I took rest in the nearby ISETAN mall in recto and waited for my old friend C.Pabalay to do a few errands along. It was already about 5:30 (meeting time) , when there still was no sign of C.Pabalay. Sensing that something might be wrong, I logged on my facebook and saw the message , confirming I'm being ditched out for reason that some friend got an accident and was hospitalized and then after that got followed by bitchin from relatives. WHAT THE FUUCKKK  ??! And C.Pabalay is letting me know this on the last minute ?!! Everything was already arrange on the errand and this comes on the last minute - were supposed to be having fun now and I got abandoned.  I was obviously furious … And I'm sure that if anyone will be put on my shoes will feel exactly the same dismay and annoyance over C.Pabalay.

I know that the last errand got C.Pabalay into trouble but It won't change anything and will make matters worse knowing you abandoned your friends. Now if someone will be put on my shoes , how would a person feel if he was backstabbed like that ? Anyway it's C.pabalays choice , but the abandonment of friends , will really impact on the reputation especially on the trust part. I'm saying this because we've been friends for seven years now , and was ditched off in 30 seconds and this is the third time

Being a coward and abandoning people, is one of the worst things I hate on a person, simply disappointing and rock bottom low - you might be in hell but you don’t treat your friends like that ! There's simply no justice in that treating them like crap ! C.Pabalay may not be updated but I'm keeping scores on how many times I was ditched out - and for the records it's been three times, and its already enough. By the way to add more insult to the injury, C.Pabalay blocked my FB profile . So I can't see C.Pabalay FB profile or even reply a message - I was very pissed on what happened. Anyway why should I even bother to send a message , what's the damn point ! I don’t want to waste an effort (or electricity on my cell phone battery) on a person who couldn't even stand up on decisions and value friends.

To cool off my anger , I decided to go on shopping and play arcade games myself. Really had a blast on the "punching" arcade machine, which of course I wasn’t exactly using my fist to play , but rather kicking it to relive my anger - (poor machine got all the beating from my foot)  

CLOTHES FOR THE EXPAT

Had already been here a couple of days now and yet I feel as if like I was dreaming. I'm here physically and yet somehow the sensation of being in the Philippines is a bit far as if like I was detached somehow on the surroundings.

On the past few days I was busy tending to the equipment and gear I will be using on my next working assignment. My work was centred on my 1st check in luggage , which is basically houses my personal clothes and a few working gear equipment.  I had to try which civilian clothes I will wear for embarkation, normal casual wear, special / social occasion wear,  and disembarkation / hotel / airport wear. Clothes of sailors should be divided into that four categories. TAKE NOTE THAT THIS IS CIVILIAN CLOTHES AND NOT UNIFORM.

embarkation wear sample

Embarkation wear is mostly the clothes I will wear when joining the ship, mostly it's just a street casual clothes , with plenty of pockets (preferably a jacket of some sort) and comfortable enough to move around very quickly especially on making way on changing airport terminals and such.

Working / Normal casual wear maybe a bit technical for this blog, but in plainly speaking this is just normal house clothes like t-shirt , shorts and flip flops. Nothing special or fashionable on this clothes category.

example of Special wear

Special / Social Occasion wear , refers to sets of clothes I will wear on a social gatherings like grill parties (if allowed), birthday parties, International holidays like Christmas and New Year. Basically this type of clothes is something close to casual wear , as long as it's clean and decent. Another occasion it will be used is the "Shore leave" - were I get to go outside the ship for a few hours.

Disembarkation / Hotel / Airport wear . Refers to set of clothes I'd get to wear . Mostly this is a formal wear or at least semi-formal wear in appearance, Rule in wearing a formal clothes (if a sailor has one) is that never hold back on what will appear nice and respectable - after all this will be the last time they will ever see me.

In other news related to working gear…

For now, due to lack of funds . Card board box cutters are the only equipment's that are replaced 

Did had little progress on work related equipment, One reason is funding. For the moment I lack the funds in purchasing the equipment I will need for my next working assignment - in fact up to now  I haven't even replaced the equipment that was considered destroyed on my last work. Probably I still have to wait until I get my "Leave pay" as funding.

In news around my house ….

For the moment, my younger sister ran an errand for me in getting a Phil health card (government health insurance). I just gave her an "Authorization letter" , two valid ID's namely my passport and "Seaman's" book and voila ! , after a few hours visiting the government health insurance office. She was able to get me an I'D card and know my Phil Health number after all these years.

Presently having an active Government health Insurance policy isn't exactly a priority and the only reason why I wanted to get one was because for my mom's sake as beneficiary. Unfortunately my younger sister brought in the news after she got my I'D that our mom's will cannot be covered by the health insurance , she said according to government policy here in the Philippines , it does not extend to immediate relatives. A big bummer on the news.  If somehow that if my health insurance covers our mom , it would be a big help in extending the coverage of her "free" (or in reality discounted) dialysis sessions. Such a shame Phil-Health doesn’t cover that.

As for the rest of the days , I had been doing almost a lot of unimportant stuff like catching up on re run shows of "walking dead season 5" or watching movies that was released last 2014.

ALTERNATE REALITY

So what has changed during the past six months I was away ? Geographically - it's very little the roads and streets are just the same as it was even on the shops in the public market are unchanged at all , I had a feeling that my surroundings are the same but very different somehow. Though the environment is not alienating, it is somewhat different from where I left off - not like I woke up on a totally different universe but more of like the same reality with a different scenario.


For now I'm trying my best to catch up on things I left off six months ago, It made little progress but at least I'm not totally socially disoriented on what's happening around me - I try to fit in as much as I can. Anyway this vacation will be just short lived for me ,as the financial needs back home have already grown to triple the size that it once was in only six months As what I mentioned earlier on my entries most of the funding is put on medical needs.


As per usual procedure on my company, any crew returning to the Philippines must report back to the office 24 hour after arrival, So on the 26th of December I returned ( as much as I hate it ) to settle things and at the same time deliver the remaining two packages left.


Was a very quick visit on the office , probably because most of the crew employees of career are too lazy to report and conduct business after Christmas or maybe that some of them even think that career shipping is closed at this time. Anyway whatever the case.  it took me only about two hours of stay to accomplish getting my final wages on the accounting department, update my next job objectives at the reporting booth, and report back to my respective department superintendent ( which to my luck wasn’t  Mr. Ho thankfully).


During the report Me and Oiler Lague was asked if we have in any way have an "Appraisal" report (kind of like a letter of promotion). Me and Oiler lague both said we don’t have one and the superintendent was puzzled we why don’t . He didn’t enquired any further when we both said we don’t know as well why we don’t have any appraisal reports given to us when we disembarked. After that he just only said happy vacation and that was it.


I got back to the reporting counter to clarify some few details and was told that both my passport and GTF certificate document were already expired and had to be renewed, as well as after that I had to have that GTF certificate be "COP" with marina. The receptionist at the booth told me that "GTF" certificate (general tanker familiarization certificate) no longer exist and is now replaced with a term "BTOC" (basic training on oil and chemical tanker).  So to sum up the next primary agenda I'd be dealing with is this


1. Renew my passport
2. Take BTOC certificate at the local training centre to replace GTF certificate
3. Take BTOC COP Certificate at Marina office.
4. (OPTIONAL) TAKE ATOT Seminar
5. (OPTIONAL) TAKE ATCT Seminar
6. (OPTIONAL) TAKE COW/IGS Seminar if there is still enough money left


Unfortunately for me, last I heard from O.S. Bilbao. BTOC seminar now cost at about 7000 Php plus on the wallet. Pretty expensive for only a week's lecture class  and will only be usable for about roughly 5 years. Definitely way impractical !!!!


Sailors always brag about earning a lot of money on work  but it turns out now that the huge money he / she earns is just ending up (and legally "Robbed" ) on the deep pockets of training schools and government agencies like M.A.R.I.N.A. ,  being a Filipino sailor in the 21st century is basically impractical and expensive - too costly for a job that is just equivalent to a "menial labour" category 


Upon the receiving my remaining wages from Career shipping last December 26th via cheque, I had to wait a couple of days for it to be cashed out  on the 29th of December due to bank holidays.



On the 29th of December I did try to cash out the cheque , but apparently since this is the only day in this week that the bank is open , all of the work load intended got dumped on that day as well. Resulting that the whole bank was swarming with customers ,


Worst part on that day at the bank was  I had been to be put on the on a long queue line just to cash out this piece of paper and when I got there, there teller on the booth told me at the last minute that I was put on the wrong booth and had to go to another booth just to sort the cheque. Seriously I wasn't laughing that those dumb fuck tellers haven't told me sooner about this and had to wait for two hours just to be informed that I was in the wrong area. The badass part of it was that the teller tells me (or implies) to have it deposit first on an account , preferably a Bank of Philippine Islands bank account. What the fuck !!!! - I don’t have a bank account ! She added also that I can't deposit this cheque to my sisters BPI bank account since the cheque is named after me - so it definitely means that I'm the one who should open up my own bank account.


Does she have any idea how troublesome it is to open up a bank account ? In other countries it may be simple but here in the Philippines it’s a lot more complicated and have more "rules and policies" that it's much more practical not having one.


Since the previous teller wasn't helpful and don’t have any idea on how to deal on my situation, she asked me to go to another  booth to solve my problem



Again I had to wait another a couple of hours just to get my name to be called by the teller. I told her about my predicament that if ever I could cash out this cheque and convert it to Philippine Peso. Good thing that this teller was able to resolve my issues and handed me the money, however the poor customer service of Bank of Philippine Islands was so poor that it was already past 12 noon when the transaction was finished .


Soon after collecting my remaining salary, I went to my sister located on the local "BAYAD" centre nearby were she pay usually pays the house utility bill and immediately gave her the 10 thousand pesos to back up on other urgent financial matters. The rest of the remaining 5k Php I had will be spent in upgrading / replacing equipment I had for work.


After cashing out the check, I went back home to help our mom get some paper clearance from the local town hall (barangay hall) needed for her charity request for a few free sessions of her medical dialysis. Mom is very frail and could hard stand up - good thing we had a wheel chair around handy for her, she sat on the wheel chair while me and my younger cousin pushed the wheel chair towards the town hall. We got on the town hall which is just only a few couple of meters away from our house and got some of the paper documents called "Certificate of indigence" . This form will be forward to the local social worker to a municipal office, to give us from "Free" session of dialysis.


Right after getting the papers, we headed back to our house. I'm concerned about my mom's health, I had no idea that it was this bad - she never even walked at all and was strapped in the wheel chair all the time but when I looked at her when we got home. She was gasping for air and really looked exhausted, she fell asleep within minutes. A year ago she wasn't like this, in fact she was so active that she just walks here from our house all the way to the public market (about 3 kilometres far) - now I fear for my mom's health, I'm not sure on how long will she last and how fast her health deteriorates. It's very obvious that she's no longer fit to travel or walk alone in her situation.  I never imagined that one day mom would end up like this - very frail physically , her face covered with sorrow.


Words that my younger sister told me a few days ago , still fell hard on me every time I look at our mom. I'm still in disbelief …….


Changing the subject ….


I had no idea what exactly means of the word "INDIGENCY" but after looking at it on the dictionary this was the actual meaning of that word (noun: suffering from extreme poverty). After reading what it says , I had 100 percent idea on what indigence is.


Obviously me and my sister is far beyond the thing called POVERTY, but the thing here is this , we had to pose as dirt poor citizens - so we can get access to government health care (normally in some countries this is universal and generally available to all regardless of social status, however in the Philippines it is very restrictive and not available to all citizens). I know that this sounds deceptive that we are getting the supplies meant to the people in need more, but I had my reasons besides there is no effective health care system at all in the Philippines - They say they have but it's all just government propaganda not the grim reality.  


Government hospitals in the Philippines are one of the worst in south east Asia. Life there had no value and the doctors are simply cruel and cold blooded people who think they are gods and decides who live and who dies. Doctors that have serious legal and ethical issues, enough even for the Europeans or Americans to be horrified.


If one day I'd end up dying at some point in my life , I don’t want to die in a Philippine government hospital - I want to have at least a little dignity and respect on my last moments in existence , I don’t want to be strap in a government hospital bed being cursed, mocked and laughed at by arrogantly feeling "high and mighty" Filipino doctors or seeing government nurses right next to my death bed,  gambling and betting on how long I can live. Dying in a Philippine government hospital is one of the most bitter and shameful death known to man. There is no honour in dying there


If I'm going to die one day, I want it to be in a private hospital - were I can die in peace and be treated with honour worthy of esteem and respect on the last few moments of life. 

LANDFALL

"It is my responsibility and duty to keep my family together and alive, it is my burden to know that I cannot. They must make their own future. I can guide them . Give them the tools to survive . But I cannot control them . Their choices will be their own as will their consequences"

<<-Excerpts from my journal , personal log "Unknown Filipino Sailor" >>

As predicted My arrival on the house was meet with a lot of unresolved issues. Not exactly personal ones but financial ones, I do not question on what's the situation as a matter of fact I'm very grateful that my sister took those steps in borrowing money from numerous loan sharks in order to preserve my mom's life and will help her in any way I can financially.

I had a lot to thank for to my sister that she has maintained mom to be alive, and it was her efforts alone single headedly,  that mom is still vertical despite predictions by other medical doctors that mom will not last more than 48 hours way back six months ago.

Unfortunately despite my younger sister's heroic efforts, it could only "stem the tide" on our mom's deteriorating health. My sister gave me the exact specifics on the situation on what's really happening , it was a very dismaying news that despite our grand efforts - mom's health will continually deteriorate slowly to the point that she will succumb to the complications of kidney dialysis and multiple organ failures. My sister dropped to me the news like a hammer - Moms health (or life span) will be only as good as it is for about 5 months to a year, Maybe if medical care will be maxed out it will be about a year.

In other words , It is a burden to my heart and hard to admit that my sister told me that our mom is in deteriorating health - at a rapid rate. I asked my sister if she has any evidence to prove about her claims, she told me that she has already consulted a number of doctors (the "2nd opinion and 3rd opinion" rule) and they all came up with the same conclusion, Rough estimates from doctors say that it will be at least maximum 5 months to a year before mom totally succumbs to this disease. I admire my sister for giving me an honest detail on the situation and having the courage to accept the fact that mom's future is somewhat limited and grim - something that I myself is still in denial over the facts.  Maybe I was thinking (and hopeful) of the Hollywood style happy ending of "riding this out in the sunset"

one of mom many surgeries, Frankenstein style

Aside from the badly destroyed kidney, mom has already sustained considerable damage from other organs. Her lungs has been affected with pneumonia and infection. Half of heart has been badly destroyed as well and led to her recent cardiac arrest last November, aside from that she also suffered a blood infection which up to now, she is still recuperating from it. Mom also a couple of surgeries on implants placed on her right arm (which made her right arm totally unusable) called "fistula" , which is used as an outlet for the dialysis machine. Aside from the arm she also has an alternate "outlet" implant on her neck, which now has been removed a few days before I arrived her at home.

To simply say it , Mom underwent so many surgeries to keep her alive that she looks more like a Frankenstein now minus the bolt and nut on her forehead. her body has already wintered away from the rigors of surgery, Frankly I'm not exactly sure on how much more stress her heart can handle

In other matters ……

As soon as I made land fall in the Philippines, I had now taken immediate steps in preparing for my "working assignment" and that is to buy some gear and supplies needed. Aside from that I was also tasked (though unwillingly) in being a courier delivering some baggage's bound to the Philippines. Despite the hassle I had accomplish delivering the money to Electrician Chaingan wife by hand, delivered two bags of chocolates to O.S. Bilbao's Brother and a bag of hotdogs (yes hotdogs !!) to Mr Galang (head honcho of the tanker department in career)  .

Honestly I don't really get the point why we Filipino's have a nasty habit of dumping our excess luggage to other Filipino's and oblige them to make a delivery, and to make it worst they don’t even bother to compensate the person for the delivery efforts !

I think it's unfair on my part in the sense that I had been trimming down my luggage to below 40 kilograms to avoid over baggage on the airport and yet these people have been getting reckless and dumping me with their excess stuff. If they have problems with their luggage then they should have hired a Fed-ex delivery service or DHL, instead of pestering me and occupying my reserve space.

Anyway despite my ramblings , my situation is not that as worst as it was on my time in BOW Ophelia where 80 percent of my entire luggage was from the other crew and only 25 percent were actually mine.

I guess for the moment I'd be having some silent time and contemplating on the things that went before on this year.