WHEN AND WHERE PART

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DEADLOCKE SITUATION

EVENTS HAPPENED ON JANUARY 25TH

Being stuck in the hospital is a dragging situation for a week now and there is no sign yet that it will be over anytime soon. I guess being inside the hospital starting 10 pm till 12 noon the following day babysitting mom is stressful enough, More stressful in the sense is mom is not cooperating at all., As expected amang rodriguez hospital is doing nothing in treating their patients and just gave mom an oxygen tank bottle for her to breathe.

 

The whole hospital area is littered with patients , even on walking spaces - the patients are line-up outside in hospital beds , and on my perception the whole place looks like a 21st century makeshift bomb shelter hospital bunker like you see in the movies.

 

Another week came by and it was still the same, It was mentally and physically grueling being there , I only sleep roughly two hours each day and some of the days none at all. It was a blessing that I bring along my tablet PC on the hospital to keep me from getting bored to death on doing nothing during on my "guard". Basically the public hospital hasn’t done anything significant yet to medically treat mom , they just simply change her oxygen bottle once in a while and that’s basically sums everything up for the whole day.

 

Anyway I don't expect much in a public hospital these days in the Philippines, Medical care here as like in any third world country is extremely cruel and self-serving. On top of that medical staffs like doctors and nurses, certainly don’t live up to their names as being "life saver's" and believe it or not they have total disregard for human (Filipino)lives - CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT !??

 

Speaking of which a few days ago, one of the nurses in the female ward apparently ripped me off and stole a pack of medicines from me. Well she didn’t exactly "grabbed" our stuff without permission , but what she did was tell me to hand over our supply of medicines I had and said that since this is a hospital ward, all medications must be first hand over to the nurse station - for them to give to the patient. Being clueless on what was going on and that I haven't been on the hospital in years now, I handed it over in good fate - the whole medicine pack, not knowing what was going on. Two days later I found out from my younger sister that they never gave my mom any of the meds I turned over on the nurse station - NOT A SINGLE TABLET AT ALL, and it gets better when I heard from my younger sister that nurses here in the public hospital often steal meds from patients and profit from then by selling the meds they stole.

in the public hospital , you see people die right of youre eyes. infact everyone on the whole medical ward see's a person catch his last breath live.

A WEEK OF DARKNESS

Previously - word from Career Ship management has made work as a sailor to a grinding halt and the worst part is that they gave no definitive date on when will be this "floating status" to be over. From the looks of it , it won't be over for a while. NSB for now doesn’t guarantee that I'd be back there (or be back at all) once their cadetship program is over.

With no assurance on when will I be back , it further pushes economic and financial strain on my house and soon I have to think or resort to ways to get some cash. I came up with a couple of plans , nothing solid for now and it will change depending on the situation. Nearest I could think of is to return back to the BPO , given that it only takes a small amount of money to get there compared to being a sailor . If it gets worse then it's possible that I have to look for work on a different shipping company altogether and ditch out Career Ship Management - and it will be easy for me given that my U.S. Visa is still active and I don’t have any financial obligations so far in Career.

I had all the time to think about my situation , but for now I'm occupied in more pressing internal matters

Can't believe it that 15 years , My house is once again will be plunged into darkness - literary. I have no idea and do not know what’s exactly is going on, but I was caught dumb folded on the morning of January 15th when a personnel coming from the electric company visited our house and said that they will have to cut off the electric supply of our house due to unsettled bills. I was in disbelief at first and was hoping that it was all a big mistake, unfortunately when I checked the paper from the technician it confirms that, house will be disconnected. The Technician said that he wanted to speak to who's is in charge of the electric bill. I hurriedly went back inside calmly and told my dad that he should speak to the person from the electric company, To my dismay my dad was unwilling or simply too caught on the surprise that I had to shout numerous times for him to go outside and approach the personnel. Figuring that it was taking too long , I also went outside to see what's going on , it was by stroke of luck that the technician gave us a 24 hours before he pulls the plug and left - probably out of empathy on seeing my dad.

Immediately i sent an SMS to my sister informing the situation on the house, 5 hours later I received a reply via SMS and told her everything. She says "She'd see what she can do on the situation" . Up to now a few hours later I'm still having anxiety problems about it. The funny thing about this situation is that my mom and dad doesn’t seemed to mind or even bother that the electricity here in the house will be cut off, they did the usual thing they do every day.

Eventually It was found out that the technician that came to the house isn't exactly a technician at all or even associated to the electric company, turns out that this person was some sort of scammer and was trying to rip out the house off by stealing the electric meter installation. Apparently from what I learned on my sister the , Electric meter installed on the house has some sort of monetary valued if stolen and sold which attracted con's and planned to steal it. Recalling back the electric metered installed on the house has been unchanged for 17 years and it's still analogue compared to today's digital electric meter.

The second time the con man arrived , I locked the gate and said that I have to verify first his association with the electric company. Immediately called my younger sister for help and they had a conversation on the phone (I set it to loudspeaker). On the conversation the con man failed to identify who he was and his association to the electric company, and when my sister mentioned that she's going to call her classmate during high school who now works in the Electric company. The man made excuses and hurriedly left .

Funny in the sense that if you're really are associated and work for the electric company , why would the man leave in such a hurry.

After the small trouble , another bigger problem awaits ..

On the early morning of Wednesday , January 20th . We had to rush mom on the local public hospital due to complaints about her breathing, we didn’t take it seriously and assumed that Mom was just making a ruse to return to the toxic environment of the hospital - like she did a lot of times before. 

We did disagree of her returning to the Rodriguez Hospital on numerous reasons, The most notable why we don’t want her to the hospital is because they won't treat her there anymore and that she will be just put on hold in that place indefinitely without any cure or remedy. In other words Government Hospitals would be more of like a prison rather than a place for treatment, and not only do they refuse to give treatment but, will held you off against you're will until you paid them off. Imagine paying money for nothing or paying money for detention. Anyway eventually mom had her way and we had to put her on the hospital, and as expected mom is being held there and the hospital refuse to give any treatments , they only thing they could provide was the expensive oxygen tanks for mom to breathe - beyond that there's nothing more.

It's already a fact that mom's condition is terminal and there is no cure, the only remedy we knew is "Kidney dialysis" , which is a last ditch effort - beyond that line , its death. Being in a public hospital and seeking treatment there doesn't help either, Not only are the doctors and staff are rude but generally care little about human lives and on top of that The whole facility is run downed that there's a possibility that a healthy person would get infected and catch a diseases sooner or later there.

Mom insists in staying and being in the hospital without any knowledge of the repercussion of what will be our condition there, she doesn’t have any idea that being in a Philippine government hospital is one of the worst places on earth for medical care. A little slice of hell on earth in the Philippines.

DISC IMAGE

Never occurred to me that my sister would catch up and get me a new star bucks planner . In fact I thought that getting that darn planner would never materialize at all, hopefully my sister proved me wrong and on the morning of January 03 my sister came to my study tablet and gave me this small star bucks paper bag and inside it was the long waited (and highly desired) collectible star bucks planner 2016. My eyes lit up like wild fire the minute I saw what's inside the paper bag and got my hands on it. Of course I immediately posted on all my social media accounts that I got a new 2016 star bucks planner . Facebook , Twitter and even Instagram. This seems childish but it always brings me a smile on  each year to get this notebook, no matter how shitty or crappy year I had.

So what's the difference of the new 2016 SB planner than last year, first off the new planner they issue is a bit of a setback compared to last year , with a much smaller space and a lot less paper inside it. So basically star buck fans were not very happy to see their beloved planner to be downsized after that much trouble in collecting the stickers first , and as a matter of fact - up to now the new 2016 planner is still being distributed, (compared to last year that it sold of early). Regardless of the disappointment of fans, I'm thankful that my sister gave me one and she went on that trouble just to get one, - it's kind of a tradition that started way back in 2011 that my sister yearly gave me this. Given that I myself is a prolific write I enjoy every bit of material that is given to me that I can write on during my spare time, given that my situation being frequently trapped on a floating gas station  

Aside from that …

Lately I had been studying and digesting a lot of information about financial investing , since I'm planning to start an investment account later this year. I had to be patient in reading and at least understanding on every detail I need to know before I venture on this uncharted area. For now I had to painstakingly understood on a lot of jargon terms and terminology which give me a migraine every time I try to understood it. Anyway it's obvious for me that it may take me a while to fully understand what's going on.

Thru tremendous searching on the net , I stumbled upon a blogsite titled "investor Juan" which teaches some terminology and basics about investing and how to make your money roll, now of course it's not exactly a certified rule book but it gives idea's on what to do about the money.  (just type and search it on google)

Another thing I will write about is the recent discovery I made on how to hide pirated installer DVD / CD's from airport security. And yes I computer science this shit up for the convenience of the whole OFW out there.

As we all know in airport security basic's, this is one of the prohibited item's that should not be brought along on the trip (at least on the airport) and anyone caught possessing such item carries a penalty of a few thousand dollars to a few years of jail time depending on which country you got caught. Now for my perspective since having a pirated DVD / CD's are the lesser evil on the long list of prohibited items on airport security , I decided to share my discovery on how to get past airport security, and in general carrying pirated Cd's without actually carrying a physical pirated DVD / CD's inside my luggage.

Remember that the data inside the CD's are more important that the physical CD's themselves. Of course I have to apologize on this part because this requires and average to advance skill in computer to pull this off , which as far as I know mostly Filipino OFW's have poor or below average on computer skills which includes also Filipino Sailors, so basically this will be difficult to be understood for a common OFW.

Anyway here's the thing , all you need is this.

LAPTOP / COMPUTER that has a DVD / CD Drive

External DVD reader / writer (in case you're computer doesn’t have a CD drive)

Pirated DVD's or CD's (Stuff that you will copy data from)

Any CD copying software (in my personal choice is daemon tools pro advance)

A little brain power (seriously)

Steps

1 install any Daemon tools pro advance virtual disk drive on your pc . Compatible with windows 7 , 8 , 8.1 and 10, this creates a virtual disk drive on the computer's hard drive which in turn will be needed later on to read the copied data.

2 put the pirated CD / DVD on the CD tray of the computer or external drive.

3 Run the Daemon tools and choose the option "make disc image" , or anything similar that copies the disc.

4 Store in your computer or any external storage device like , hard drives, memory cards etc.

Presto now you have a disc data that doesn't have a physical CD. Just remember that in order for the data to be played you have to "mount" the data first to the virtual data drive , then play it there via any media player or any other programs that plays the disk.

Overall by virtualizing or whatever you call the process in copying an image disc , it greatly reduces the possibility of an OFW being searched or detected in their luggage some pirated DVD's or CD on the airport , because there's no CD's inside in the first  place - well at least physical CD's, it's now  just only disc files inside a compact hard drive. This is the practical application of my discovery to a common OFW's perspective.

In other news …

January came and I was figuring out what the hell has happened on Career and why haven't they called me yet, more thing that adds to my puzzle was the recent call made by Mr. Nidoy. So I decided to drop by a week after new year and see what the hell was going on,  When I came to visit - I immediately checked the IVRS system and see if the "line-up" for me on Cape Texel was still active . Unfortunately it isn't and I went next to the processing counter to confirm if I was removed , it checked out. The last objective of my visit is to know why and had to see Mr. Nidoy on the explanation, He told me that the reason why Cape Texel was scrubbed was on the fact that Filipino crewmen there got laid off and replaced by Chinese crew and there are still figuring me out on what ship will I be reassigned. The main bottom line is that I'm in a "floating" status, no line up's awaiting and definitely extended on vacation.

I do have faith that career will sort this shit out for me in due time and that it will be in enough time that I won't take another medical on it. 

MYTHS ABOUT PINOY SEAMAN'S

We have seen this posters numerous times already , so many times that it's no longer making any sense at all. This poster I saw on the internet is really interesting however this barely scratches the surface of the reality on being a Filipino sailor, It does provide a general detail but not the specifics and leaves a broader room for interpretation. Some of these facts reflect positive and others negatively and some doesn’t provide the reality.

LOADS OF MONEY - true on a financial basis that if you compare it via Philippine standards , Philippine money is way less than that of a U.S. Dollar (or even a Euro). Believe it or not purchasing power in the Philippines is bigger than western countries , and salaries for sailors are based in foreign pay (in U.S. dollars). In the Philippines a 900 U.S. Dollar for Salary for a sailor is a very big money but if you compare that salary in the united states - it is just only equal to a salary of a local fast food worker. If the Philippine peso had an equivalent to 1 : 1 to a U.S. dollar (currently its 45 : 1 dollar exchange) , You definitely don’t want to be a sailor anymore , chances are the 900 U.S. dollars would only just be an equivalent of 900 Philippine Peso , and you absolutely know how limited a 900 pesos goes in the Philippines .In other words LOADS OF MONEY because of the fundamental law of dollar exchange rate against the peso, it's how weak the Philippine economy is.

Sailors have loads of money not because they are paid high , but by because of the exchange rate from Philippines versus foreign money. The salary of a sailor actually is equivalent to that of a construction worker overseas.

By the way salary is based to the rank of a sailor , Deck cadets are paid only dirt cheap !! (or none at all)

ALCOHOL 24 x 7 - liquor is absolute cheap in some cases , even way cheaper than a can of coca cola soft drink and not even the tough restriction of anti-alcohol policy is not enough to deter a sailor from drinking. Alcohol ban is implemented on board a ship but not a practice , more like a "necessary evil" in this community. For short - yes it’s a 24 / 7 drinking galore !

GIRLFRIEND IN EVERY PORT. - not exactly a girlfriend, but counts as a relationship in some extent, like sexual relationship that money is involved in the middle. This phrase is somewhat misprounced , the actual term for this should be "every prostitute in every port". This is typically true especially if a sailor is stationed near south America, where sex trade seems to be very common (and suspect even legal). Thing here is this, ITS ALL ABOUT HUMAN NATURE - AND THIS INCLUDES SEX. All of them have been exposed to months not seeing any female at which includes their wives and real girlfriends in the Philippines, which results to them resorting to "paid" sex. Now a days this just happens only to sailors who get stationed in south America or in Asia .

Seamanloloko ?????  Being direct -  YES THAT IS ACTUALLY 150 PERCENT TRUE !!

ALWAYS SEASICK - This has two meanings , one is biological and other is psychological. Biological in the sense that there is no apparent cure for seasickness. A persons only best bet to alleviate this is that to hope a person's body gets adjusted (or adapted) real quick on the environment. This may takes weeks or a month especially to new sailors, for the veterans - only takes a couple of hours  to adjust and not that severe. Psychological part is that it means that sailors are lazy and use "Seasickness" as an excuse to get away from work, even though they're already been sailors for decades.

DEALING WITH PIRATES EVERYDAY - The fact here is this , not all sailors nor even a majority of them get to be stationed on pirate infested areas. Only a small population of Filipino sailors get to deal with this and in only a short amount of time, not every day. In reality this is overly exaggerated accounts. The only thing you have to deal with here is the rude and lack of proper manners of fellow sailors - in particular our own kind .

There's a saying : "the fiercest and most cold blooded maltreatment comes from one's own kind" . That's how Filipino seaman's are in the actual work

GET TO SEE THE WORLD FOR FREE - this is the most common (and oldest) propaganda you see when you study the course Bachelor of Science in Marine Transportation. Most kids who study being sailor get confused with this 90 percent of the time, plus add more to the confusion is the quasi false "militaristic" kind of education propaganda and voila you got tons of enrolees per sem. Little do they know that after that a lot of injustice and maltreatment awaits them after they finished schooling such as NO GUARANTEED JOB ASSURANCE AND SECURITY (YOU WONT GET EMPLOYED UNLESS YOU HAVE A  SPONSOR - backer for short) , UNDERPAID, OVER WORK AND EXPLOITED, AND WORST NO ACCESS TO A LAWYER OR LABOUR UNIONS.  See the world free is just only half right since a ship goes around on all sorts of places, technically a sailor is basically imprisoned and trapped inside for the whole duration of the contract with little or no chance of going to shore and most of the time you're not even allowed to go out . If there is - its only less than 5 hours overall. In reality it’s a slow painful death like prison.

Being a sailor in the Philippines isn't exactly the most secured job around, its CONTRACTUAL WORKER.

GLAMOUROUS LIFE. - There is another misconception about being a sailor , true indeed that most of the sailors can afford stuff that most people can't in the Philippines. They can afford that not because Filipino sailors salaries are paid high from the start but because of the Philippines PESO versus U.S. Dollar Difference (as what I mentioned earlier) . In the Philippines that U.S. dollar (or european euro) salary converted may mean a lot and can go a long way, In the U.S. and Europe that salary received by a sailor is nothing more than the standard pay for construction manual job which is not even enough to buy a thermal underwear for winter on the local store there.

6 MONTHS LAND AND 6 MONTHS AT SEA - Typically seafarers contracts ranges from 6 months to 10 months working in a ship, though there are some reports that Greek employers hold their crew even longer that lasted for years (and from what I heard the longest was 2 years) . Now if a person pictures himself being into prison on the that duration then you'd definitely know how ugly working of a sailor is., And after spending almost the whole year being imprison on a ship , you get only a relief of two months before again going back into prison er.. I mean working back on a ship and repeating the horror again - it's like being in an environment with no TV, No letters, No internet - nothing to keep yourself occupied beyond work . That is the usual cycle of life of a sailor - rinse and repeat , you will miss and skip a lot of important things in life during that time like your marriage anniversary, you kids first birthday , etc. and as a result of being an absent and never there , a sailor's life is nothing but a dysfunctional one.
 

UNEDUCATED FOOLS -  This is somewhat half right.  In some extent almost all Filipino sailors did have a formal education on the college level, But if you ask what kind of studies did he / she received in college or what kind of teaching methods are used and in practice there , then I could say it's very limited and totally unrelated on the actual job practice. One such sample is that most sailors often tell as an excuse is that they study celestial navigation, marine engineers etc. - those lectures in reality doesn’t even come close compared to what doctors , lawyers, teachers or even engineers study on the course of his / her college time, as a matter of fact you can finish the this so called "college course within less than a year" (if your brain intelligence is equivalent to that of a "doctor" or even a lawyer) . It's even debated that the college course of a sailor (bachelor of science in marine transportation) is not "bachelor of science" at all , in fact European countries consider education on sailors to be technical and vocational type - (doesn't even pass for a four year college course) 

As a sailor , a functioning brain is highly unnecessary on the job practice. If a sailor has a brain , it's definitely not used for logical and analytic thinking like some other professional jobs do or even used for work at all. - Its only used for keeping him alive (like breathing and heartbeat pulse, similar to a zombie or a mindless insect drone). And if in a special case a sailor has some brains, chances are he / she should hid his talents otherwise some other co-worker sailors will get jealous because of this (see their primitive prehistoric brains ;) )

FIGHTING WARS - This problem is not directly related and more of an indirectly problem. Earlier so called pioneers in maritime education in the Philippines came from fundamentalist militaristic schools (sort of like during the 1950's era were seafaring job wasn’t even heard of back then). Despite this job being entirely civilian , it is often and always get confused with the branch of the military (navy).Being a pinoy seaman in reality has nothing to do with the military. We're not soldiers, were not a foreign legion , or even come close to an armed militia . Seaman is nothing more and is always a construction / maintenance worker , of if you put it it’s a non-military and purely civilian work .If you look closely the closest classification of a  "seaman" are more related to construction workers based in the middle east (and cousin based on my observation) , the only difference is that instead of dry desert , a "seaman" is on wet water surroundings and inside a huge machine (known as a ship). Both of these class of workers have the same type of equipment and even job hierarchy , and yes seaman also has a foreman and is just called in a different term called "bosun".

The reason why pinoy seaman (or Marino) get confused often to the military is because of simple common terminologies shared in work,  (I admit these technical terminologies is used in the military as well) . Beyond that there is nothing similar in anyway at all in being a seaman to a navy,

If we get to sign up on a contract, were given a set of working clothes and some protective industrial equipment - nothing more nothing less , Definitely not firearms , NO BDU's (battle dress uniforms), Not anything that blows up stuff or hurt people. 

GREAT SWIMMERS - Not all sailors are actually swimmers or even good in the water to begin with. Some sailors (such as myself) cannot swim at all , probably because we knew that once were in the water , that will be the end of us . So as much as possible we stay out of it. Working as a sailor you don’t get to actually get to work submerged on the water , you get to work on a ship which is basically floating on a water called sea - point here is that swimming skills are not necessary.

NOTHING TO DO AT SEA - being a sailor, a lot of people are basically wondering on what are we actually doing inside the ship and are lead to believe that were are just doing nothing there but sit out fat ass the whole during the duration of the whole contract, and to make it more misleading is that pictures on sailors fed back in the philippines are mostly stuff related to barbecue grills and food, making people think that were just there to eat , sleep and waste time.

Of course the ship is a 24 / 7 workplace and a lot of times you get to work on the weary hours of the night, and since it’s a 24/ 7 workplace it means that most of the time there's no holidays and the work sailors do are maintenance construction work 

LAYING OUT PLANS IN INVESTING

10 am when my hand phone rang, it was a call from my company. Expecting that this might be the time were they will give notice that my time in the Philippines is up and had to depart, I picked up the phone. Surprised that it was Mr., "Nidoy"  asking something about my appraisal report , I told him that I'm not aware that I had one , and if I do it should have been forward to the company by now.

The explanation why he has to ask for my appraisal report (called also evaluation report on other companies) was that the CSM superintendent recently disapproved my transfer. Mr., "Nidoy" gave no further details why I was turned down by CSM,  and asked if there was any past misdeeds I had done, I said I don’t recall anything as far as I know of, and his guess is as good as mine. He added also on our conversation that if it would be ok for me to return back to NSB if things went sour on CSM. I said it won't cause any problems if I would be back in NSB. Before the conversation ended Mr,. "Nidoy"  gave an assurance and said he'd look further why I was thrown out by CSM and the conversation ends on the phone .

At the moment I'm thinking of possible scenario's. One scenario why CSM turned down my transfer was probably because I have a much higher salary cap than your typical run off the mill O.S. and if they wanted to accept me in CSM , my salary should be terribly downgraded - in other words I'm too expensive to CSM. Another scenario is for whatever reason they just overlook my papers - a simple mistake.  Anyway Off the record , after the conversation I was relieved if I would be returning back to NSB. The conditions there were more favorable compared to CSM. In fact I'm earning more money there. However the problem if I'm returning back in NSB is that currently O.S. position on those 6 ships is currently occupied by deck cadets and it's possible that my stay here in the Philippines would be prolonged given with its current situation.

In other news …

Lately I had been studying and analyzing the possibilities of investing, Specifically the so called mutual fund and "stock exchange" thing. I haven't fully understood the ins and outs of this kind financial system yet but of course it will take me some time for me to finally decode its secrets or at least understood it fully. I had to prepare early for my retirement given that being a sailor in the Philippines isn't exactly a stable job given with its numerous vulnerabilities and sooner or later I will get out of this job . 

I had my eye on BPI bank (Bank of the Philippine islands) for some time now and plan to establish a mutual fund there when I get back again from work. Like I said it’s a big unknown for me in venturing this and I'm not going to fully support this project until I had fully understood it pro's and con's. I'm going to establish it in BPI but with only bare minimal requirements for now. If this project provides a good yield then I'd expand it further. From my understanding I had to open first a BPI account and then establish a mutual fund which the initial money it will take is at least 20,000 PHP, from there - once its establish , its anything goes.

Establishing a mutual fund will also be kept secret from my family members, to avoid them having any mismanage idea's . No further information will be leaked. 

DEFINITION OF A HERO

"Hero - A person who fights for a cause"

Couple of days' time, I will be leaving this spoiled country behind temporarily. I won't be seeing the terrible traffic of EDSA , corrupt government officials , and the terrible 32 percent of income government tax . (means more than 1 / 4 of your entire income for a month is taken away by the Philippine government)

Life in the Philippines is difficult for any Asian country. So difficult because of economic depression that has been raging on for decades, and I think I'm not going to see that the Philippines and its Filipino society will not get any better in decades to come - or at least on my entire lifetime. For now the trend in the Philippines is send its people to faraway lands, some end up in the middle east , some in the united states , few in Europe, others in Asia, but all of them wind up doing slave work or very manual jobs like a second class citizen. Funny thing that the Philippines has all the ingredients to become a much better utopia than most Asian countries but end up short on a lot of things. The main conclusion and bottom line is that Filipino's cannot govern themselves, and most of the national wealth and power comes from aristocrats and the elite - and its only for their personal use and not for patriotic gain . Not exactly a true democratic country if you look closely, but more of like a monarchy or aristocracy kind of country

As a normal Filipino citizen, and one among the so many overseas Filipino workers. I am bound by this very tiring cycle. Honestly they call us "the new heroes of Philippines society" but I question that government statement and refuse to acknowledge it up to now, from what I recalled a hero fights for a cause , and basically that’s the question us Filipino OFW's should ask ourselves. WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR ???! AND WHAT IS OUR CAUSE ?! . For all I knew OFW's are out there for purely selfish personal reason's and not for patriotism, because on the main fact that jobs here in the Philippines are almost non-existent and pay very little (remember the 32 percent income tax I mentioned on local employment). Its already an establish fact that Filipino workers do help the national economy, in some extent (or a lot of extent). But the problem is what does the government do to help sustain itself ? Basically our Philippine government is helpless in doing anything aside from extorting money to its citizens. It as far as in every definition available is unstable and cannot survive on its own. Let's face it !!!! The Philippine Government cannot provide its citizens any stable form of security. If the Philippine government would be a parent , everyone could say that their doing a piss poor job as a parent.

The government simply give the title "new heroes of Philippine society" even without thinking on what it is actually. They say those things simply to distract the fact that its citizens are just cattle where they can get the source of income called taxes. As for us Filipino overseas workers, we had all the time in the world to ponder our meaning of existence and didn't question why are we called that. we simply content ourselves in thinking that thru slavery work we can be called hero's. Despite heroic brands they call us, we are less heroic than we sound - and far less heroic on what OFW's actually do. OFW's are not special in any way - not even special in our own unique way. The simple truth is that the Philippine government sold us out, and they're not content in just selling us, they want more from us, Stripping us of anything they could get their hands with.

Are we actually hero's for patriotic cause or simply just innocent victims who got caught in the middle of decades long economic depression ? Ponder this things as an OFW.

THE THING ABOUT CHRISTMAS IN THE PHILIPPINES

The thing about Xmas in the Philippines , is that you're god son's always kick down the door and ask for Christmas gifts . I'm still researching on what part of Philippine history did it started , I dont recall in history class that Filipino's are doing this during Spanish era, or even america period . hmm i think it must have been during after world war 2 that this started.

Anyway point here is that every year , god fathers are always plagued by this Philippine tradition 

PAMASKO PO NINONG !!!! , and put youre hands up in the air where i can see them :D

THE TRUTH ABOUT CAPTAIN PHILLIPS

Can you imagine that your worst boss  in real life would be pictured here as a saint and a hero ??! WHAT THE FUCK ???! why don't they just stab my heart with a stake huh ?! anyway sailors are meant to be deceptive in the first place , only shows their character that they don't tell the truth. Maybe one day when my biography gets the big screen or Hollywood , i get to choose the actor to be the heroic one like alden richards (from eat bulaga tv show) etc... nah !!! that idea is pathetic hehhehe   

In a few days' time we will be saying goodbye to 2015 and will be greeting 2016, Amazing that one year just went by in a snap and being in prison with the ship for six months was tolerable.

Lately I had watched the film, known to sailors as "Captain Phillips" . This film is well known to any sailors around the world especially Filipino sailors and believe it or not it was nominated on the Oscars, this film was based on the height of Somali piracy few years back. In this case it was a ship named "Maersk Alabama" was attack and its American captain was held hostage and on the later was rescued by the U.S. navy

The film was average and mediocre at best on my perception but it took my curiosity to at least do a background research about it. The thing I never expected was the film should be at least historically accurate, well unfortunately it turns out too far from the historical accuracy of the events nor even the portrayal of real life characters in the movie is entirely based on a person's single bias testimony. Anyway the film was made purely for cinematic and money making purposes only and does not cover the facts and reality - just like the film "brave heart" (starring Mel Gibson) 

The film features Captain Phillips who is being pictured as the heroic captain who has no fault , brave and a dedicated sailor. If it were not for his actions the whole crew would have perished in the hands of Somali pirates.

For the people reading this , I will not go on describing the film and let the people watch the film themselves and analyze the facts from cinema, what I can say on the summary is that it was not historically accurate and doesn’t even come close to facts. What I'm going to write now is the reality of the situation. First off Captain Phillips in reality is the "asshole type" captain (horrible bosses - least to say), he wasn't the hero of the day and it was not even his efforts why the crew was saved, people onboard that ship figured out during the pirate attack that it was best that they don’t listen to the captain and hid in the engine room, (in the movie it was ordered by Philips that they hid in the engine room)

Fact is his attitude was so obnoxious that people refuse to be assigned on the ship he's stationed at . He doesn’t even fit the criteria for a diligent captain and ignored the safety part on putting up anti-piracy measures which already existed back then (putting up barbed wire) . In the movie there was not a single Filipino sailor around , when it fact in reality there was a Filipino crew. Another thing in the movie portrayed was that his crew is nothing more than coffee break lazy workers who are comfortable hiding in the worker union's protection and he is the only one who seems to be concerned about the pirate attack during that time (in reality it was the other way around). Anyway I don’t think the producers of the movie has nothing to do with the wayward story , basically they just based the story on the warped perception of reality by Mr. Phillips - even if it was bias , unfair and totally unrealistic, not to mention deceptive. The thing here overall is that people should think about is that if Mr. Phillips testimony is inaccurate and unreliable then its only concludes that he's credibility is poor and reflects his character to be really an arrogant asshole shitty kind of captain .

People should seriously ponder about this….

For me, if this was the case then captain Phillip's got what he deserves - to be abducted and beaten by Somali pirates. Anyway its no surprise for me that the tale told in the movie is a far cry of facts, what I can tell first hand as a sailor myself , is that generally sailors and to be specific Ship Captains are one of the worst kind of people in society - and expect them not to be telling the truth, .

People will never get to understand sailors, and will never know the truth about it. What I'm saying is that not all sailors are bad people and not all of them are good either, in fact generally mostly sailors are more generally inclined to being more of a bad people than good.


THE FACTS I HAD READ IN FACEBOOK (repost from new york times)

New York Post
NEWS
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Crew members: ‘Captain Phillips’ is one big lie
By Maureen Callahan October 13, 2013 | 3:34am
Crew members: ‘Captain Phillips’ is one big lie
"Captain Phillips" star Tom Hanks with Capt. Richard Phillips. Photo: AP Photo/StarPix, Dave Allocca
It’s made for Hollywood: the story of an average American family man, captain of a cargo ship in dangerous waters, his vessel overtaken by armed Somali pirates demanding ransom, saving his crew by allowing himself to be removed from the boat and taken hostage.

All of this is the basis for “Captain Phillips,” starring Tom Hanks as the titular, real-life hero. The only problem, say some members of the real Capt. Phillips’ crew, is none of it is true.

Capt. Richard Phillips, they say, is no hero, and the film is one big lie.

The Maersk Alabama leaving the Port of Mombasa, Kenya in 2009.Photo: AP Photo/Sayyid Azim
“Phillips wasn’t the big leader like he is in the movie,” says one crew member, who, for legal reasons, spoke with The Post anonymously. He worked very closely with Phillips on the Maersk Alabama and was alarmed by his behavior from the beginning. Phillips, he says, had a bad reputation for at least 12 years prior, known as a sullen and self-righteous captain.

“No one wants to sail with him,” he says.

After the hijacking, 11 crew members have sued Maersk Line and the Waterman Steamship Corp. for almost $50 million, alleging “willful, wanton and conscious disregard for their safety.” Phillips is a witness for the defense.

“The crew had begged Captain Phillips not to go so close to the Somali coast,” said Deborah Waters, the attorney who brought the claim. “He told them he wouldn’t let pirates scare him or force him to sail away from the coast.”

‘REAL ARROGANT’

Phillips had taken command of the Maerskin late March 2009. Left for him, says the crew member, was a detailed anti-piracy plan now used by all ships per the International Maritime Organization. Should pirates get too close, the crew should cut the lights and power and lock themselves below deck.

“He didn’t want anything to do with it, because it wasn’t his plan,” says the crew member. “He was real arrogant.” Phillips says he knows nothing about such a plan.

Over this three-week period, 16 container ships in the same region had been attacked by pirates, and eight had been taken hostage.

As the film opens, Hanks, as Phillips, is seen assiduously tending to safety protocols. “Let’s tighten up security!” he orders. “I want everything closed, locked, even in port.”

Phillips has admitted that, on board, he got seven e-mails about increased piracy off Somalia — each exhorting ships to move farther offshore by at least 600 miles.

The Maersk was 235 miles off the coast, says the crew member, though Phillips has since rounded that number up to 300.

“I couldn’t tell you exactly the miles,” Phillips tells The Post. “I don’t know.”

In 2010, Phillips told CNN the Maersk was 300 miles off shore; published reports from that time had the ship at 240.

Phillips ignored every missive and later admitted he didn’t share these warnings — though they were not sent exclusively to him.

Meanwhile, another crew member was tasked with keeping track of every ship in the region that had been attacked. Using the e-mails, a chart was built. On it were the names of each ship, the dates and times they were assaulted, their latitude and longitude, the ransom demanded.

When presented with this data, a crew member says, Phillips ignored it, too. In the film, Hanks tells his crew — depicted as lazy coffee guzzlers who fall back on the security of their union-protected employment — that their job is to get the cargo ship from Point A to Point B in the shortest, cheapest time possible.

In fact, says this crew member, the Maersk veered off course by 180 degrees south — this was during the first attack, on April 8. Phillips denies this, and says the boat only picked up speed.

“We had two pirate attacks over 18 hours,” says this crew member, not just the one shown in the film.

The crew didn’t know whom to fear more: the pirates or Phillips.

According to this crew member, during the first attack, as two pirate boats came into view, clearly chasing them, Phillips was putting the crew through a fire drill. In the film, it’s a security drill.

“We said, ‘You want us to knock it off and go to our pirate stations?’ ” the crew member recalls. “And he goes, ‘Oh, no, no, no — you’ve got to do the lifeboats drill.’ This is how screwed up he is. These are drills we need to do once a year. Two boats with pirates and he doesn’t give a s- -t. That’s the kind of guy he is.”

At first, Phillips maintains this is a lie. “No,” he says. “The mate called up and said, ‘Do you want to stop the drill?’ They [the boats] were seven miles away. There was nothing we could do. We didn’t know the exact situation.”

But is it true that he ordered the entire drill completed anyway?

“Correct,” Phillips says.

“Yeah, seven miles. What’s the dif?” the crew member says. “I saw them, and they were closer than that.”

The Maersk eventually made a narrow escape, and Phillips ordered it back to its original route.

One of the crew mutinied — he refused to do it, instead going below deck, sleeping with his boots on and his flashlight by his side, waiting for the inevitable.

At 3 a.m., the pirates radioed the boat to stop; Phillips had left the stern light on and the bridge open. At 7 a.m., came the third and final attack: Four armed Somali pirates stormed the Maersk.

The crew was on their own. “Phillips didn’t say what he wanted to do,” says the crew member. “His plan [was], when the pirates come aboard, we throw our hands in the air and say, ‘Oh, the pirates are here!’ The chief engineer said, ‘We’re going downstairs and locking ourselves in.’ One of the mates said, ‘Let’s go down. We’re on our own.’ ”

They hid in the engine room, in 130 degree heat, for 12 hours. Phillips and three other crew members were held at gunpoint, yet Phillips tells The Post things weren’t that dire. “The ship,” he says, “was never actually taken.”

Aside from the movie review , I had heard another news around the Philippine maritime community.

UFS also known as United Filipino Sailors , apparently got trashed by this so called COMELEC EN BANC on its candidacy for political representation of sailors. I'm not exactly sure on how UFS got denied on their petition to run for office but those are the words of COMELEC , Anyway it's not that bad or shameful if UFS didn’t make the cut - it's not exactly the end of the world anyway and to be frankly honest , the maritime community would be better off without any political representation in the government than having one, the same goes as having a bad representation is much worse than having no representation at all .

For the record The last political party who represented the maritime community turned out to be such a disappointment (I'm referring to "Angkla" political party)  and instead of helping out the maritime community and easing up the burden of sailors , it turns out that this organization  added even more problems than solutions to the maritime community. And thanks to them everything is in the maritime community is in a god awful shitty mess and being a sailor in the Philippines is much more complicated and impractical.

Anyway despite the disappointments that UFS ran into , it doesn’t stop them from helping people. And a little rain on their parade won't be a setback. AMOSUP doesn’t even come close to UFS in confronting and discussing issues related to the maritime community in the Philippines. 

Screen shot photo i took in wikipedia confirming if the film was shitstoricly errrr..  i meant historically accurate 

CROSS PLATFORM

There is some trouble lately on the internet connection, for some reason "Smart communications"  lately pulled out its unlimited prepaid internet connection and replaced it with a much less disappointing 800 MB per day offer called "SurfMax" . Not a very good news for me given that I use torrents for downloading of some stuff I need , in particular PC games. Frankly I'm having a hard time finishing those downloads because of it.

In other news related to my work …

For now things are going smoothly and in fact, I had just finish all the necessary working papers needed. I am now just literary waiting for my time to be called up and wait for the dispatch orders coming from my company. However despite being ready there is one part of my working papers that is somewhat questionable, Specifically my Schengen visa (European Visa) - from what I recall its was supposedly to be expired this September and I had to renew this visa. I'm not entirely sure that my next ship still requires a Schengen visa but what I can say is that my U.S. Visa is still active and that my Schengen is expired, Maybe I have to go back to my company and verify about what will they have to do with my Schengen visa.

As for my equipment , I had just finished customizing all my stuff and all it needs to do is pack it up on my 2nd luggage. I had finished sewing my reserve coveralls and putting extra pockets on its shoulder , aside from adding a zipper function. On my water canteen , I had added a company patch to it so it won't look too much like a military water canteen and look more like a civilian type

Another thing about my equipment lately is that I kept inspecting it every now and then to keep insects away (specifically ants) from building a hive inside my luggage. It's annoying for me that animals and insects have an automatic behavior that makes them go to my luggage, and the bad part is that they always destroy something on my luggage. Last year it was my sisters dogs that keep chewing on my electric cords and other parts of my luggage , and the year before my cats were sleeping and leaving their fur  behind. For this year its these ants that got inside my luggage and nearly chewed off (or drilled holes) on  my "ateneo" collectible jacket. I got rid of the jacket and washed it but it looks like that these ants are not only after that but are even planning on building a hive inside the bag.

the outfit that the ants chewed off 

On my electronics equipment lately I had made a discovery about a certain android operating system emulator for windows. If I recall correct the website is called www.bluestacks.com , and can be downloaded on the internet. I haven't fully tested it out yet but it shows promise in playing all the android apps that can only be played on the cell phone and tablet. For now the thing it can do is back up my contact list on  my phone and do basic google related apps, Another thing that I noticed on this program is that requires an Wi-Fi or internet access to be played, without it basically it can't do anything else.