June 28th
2015
Ship has a
new captain before it transited to panama canal, some say that this so called
"romanyov guy" is a much better compared than this "Sorin"
guy , others say he's equally ruthless and that this ship is in no better
environment with him around. Specifically electrician felix rodriguez and a few
other say we should be careful with this new captain and that as much as
possible try to avoid greeting him with a smile on our face and try the serious
look.
Anyway it
won't make any difference anyhow - after all I'm just now on my third month
here and another three months more and I'd be going home back in the
Philippines.
By
Saturday, I was surprise that the work put on us by chief mate was
"mopping" . I mean mopping on a product tanker ? (mopping means
taking the water out of the cargo hold), typical this work is done on a
chemical tanker and I haven't heard of such a thing being done in a product
tanker, but irregardless work is work.
The work on Saturday had us going back and forth on each cargo tank and
we were doing work even until midnight - worst part of it , were not being paid
here on the overtime work or extra efforts. I mean not on career nor NSB
principal. They say it's only a normal cargo operation. Going back apparently from what I heard this
ship is going to Venezuela (yet again) to load some jet fuel and specifically
this cargo is very sensitive and the charterer doesn’t want any water mixed in
on the cargo.
On Sunday
June 28 this ship left at the panama anchorage after almost a week and headed
off on the next destination
THIS IS THE MAINTENANCE PHOTOS WERE DOING FOR THE PAST FEW DAYS
In other
news…
As soon as
we left the anchorage, we received note from CSM, saying about that 25th of
June is apparently "seafarers day" and says that up to now there is
still a shortage of qualified sailors worldwide and that they are employing 150
new cadets this year.
The bottom
line of the note says "everybody has to learn - everybody has to
train" and the stuff that says to
congratulate us on our lovely hard work onboard their manage fleet.,
End of
note.
Never
really mind on what the note says , but upon reading it I cannot help but feel
resentful on the situation on the maritime community of the Philippines for
numerous reasons. Honestly the note is just full of plain old crap, and
certainly hiring 150 cadets this year is not going to help the tens of
thousands of stranded maritime students , trapped with little resources and no
hope of employment. What good will it bring and certainly the 150 slots for new
cadets will apparently fall and be monopolized by few elite people who have
high associations - definitely not basically for the good of a common aspiring
college student .
The funny
thing about the maritime community here is that they always kept jabbering on
the need of ship officers, and at the same time ridicule aspiring college
student sailors. They never realized the value and importance of these college
students that before you become a ship officer - you have to be a rating and
deck cadet first. I'm not going to enumerate anymore the reasons why a person
should avoid being a sailor - and frankly I'm already getting sick and tired of
convincing people (and kids) to avoid this job like the plague, and in some way
it breaks my heart seeing kids being deceived by propaganda and latter finding
out years after that all the hard work wanting to be sailor was just a scam.
Maritime
community in the Philippines begs for attention and respect, and yet they only
get a lot of ridicule from the public because of their questionable conduct.
They demand sailors, and yet they scorn and literary threw out college students
(deck cadets) out of their shipping offices (talk about rude!!!) . The maritime
community got what it should deserve - a lot of disrespects from the public.
My advice to the newly
graduated high school students and current maritime college students ? Take my
word ! Don’t let yourself be fooled by honey coated words and false propaganda,
that of a life of a sailor is glorious and lucrative - you're better than that
! Avoid this college course and if you're already enrolled , try to shift as
much as possible.
