PARABLE OF A FOOLISH FILIPINO SAILOR

"love your job but don’t love your company because you may not know when your company will stop loving you"
-Dr. APJ Abdul kalam
 
 
Recalling a few years back, some co-workers of mine kept babbling that I should love my work, they even insisted and argued to me that I should fanatically work hard FOR THE COMPANY. Now years later I'm glad I had proved them wrong, and that being so called loyal to the company could be disastrous - if not deadly overall, but anyway its for them to find out for themselves that they are wrong and I was right. What matters for me if I stand up on my ideas and don’t give a shit on those shitty sailors.
 
Coincidentally I was reading my blog in the net and saw what was written on my comments section. Apparently on this so called "Christian Remoto" didn’t like my post on my blog and said in "you know, I pity you. Pero di mo ba naisip na marami kami taga CSM sa mga blogsites mo. Ako taga jebsen pero may friends ako sa career at relatives sa senator. Di maganda ang mga blogs mo tol " …
 
Translation (You know, I pity you. But haven't you thought that there's a lot of CSM on your blogsites. I'm from jebsen but I have friends on career and relative in senator. Youre blog isn't pretty bro. )
 
Of course being familiar that as a Filipino sailor , conflict is always in our nature. I replied. "So ?? Anu gusto mo patunayan ? Tapos kana ? Kung ayaw mo blog ko - wag mong basahin bobo ! Ang hirap kasi sayo masyadong kang sipsip sa companya, yung tipo na sunod sunuran na parang bobong aso"
 
Translation ( So ? What are you trying to prove ? Are you finshed ? If you don’t like my blog - then don't read it dumb ass ! The problem with you is that you're an ass kisser to the company , the kind who obeys mindlessly like a stupid lap dog) .
 
Anyway I'm no stranger when it comes to these kind of idiotic ass licking Filipino sailors and as a matter of fact, "Christian Remoto" is a classic example of a foolish sailor. Always blindly obeying without ever thinking of where and what he is. Little does he know that Filipino sailors are contractual workers - meaning they're expendable. Any time the company sees an employee has outlived its usefulness, they can simply throw it away like yesterday's breakfast. NO MORE NO LESS - that is the rule in any capitalistic company.
 
From what the poor fool says , he's been from jebsen so meaning he's in a different company , now the question is since when did he cared on csm ? Frankly these idiot doesn’t even have an idea on what the fuck is actually going on CSM affairs and the only thing he does is piss off he's own kind.
 
 Anyway sailors like "Christian Remoto" are nothing more than a bunch of disgusting ignorant hypocrites who will never be wise enough to understand. They are simply too stupid and too pro company, plus the fact that he lacks civilized manners.  
 

AS FOR CHRISTIAN REMOTO , WHOEVER THE FUCK YOU ARE . WHY DON’T YOU  FUCKING CRAWL BACK TO YOUR COMPANY AND SUCK SOME COMPANY DICK, YOU PATHETIC SPINLESS COWARD, maybe the company will give you an award one day for the best company asshole licking employee of the year. !
 

ONLINE JOB HUNTING

It's very obvious that despite the advancement in the internet and social media when it comes to job hunting, the maritime community here in the Philippines is still backward when it comes to this and rarely use this advancement in looking for employee's. In other words the term online application system is not effective as it is compared to other job Industries like in the BPO (call center).

 

Here in the maritime community , despite some companies here have an online application system on their websites - none of them have an effective means of using it effectively. As a matter of fact they don’t even bother to contact each and every applicant that submits an online application form in their website. The cause is either their lazy or simple ignoramuses, who knows ???!. Fact here is that the online job searching for sailors via internet is ineffective and pathetic compared to BPO companies in the Philippines.

 

In the BPO community (or industry), Companies there have all the time to follow each and every applicant that passed their application form online regardless of the volume of applicant they received online, heck even some of them conducts interviews on the phone. Their so efficient in screening online that if you would compare it to the maritime industry online job application system (in any company). The maritime communities job hunting system online would be pathetically embarrassing.

 

The principle why BPO online job hunting is so effective is the fact that they have a saying "Time is money" and in order to save time, effort and money to job seekers, an online application is even encouraged - in literal sense they actually do not waste a person's time. The Maritime industry here in the Philippines sadly doesn’t live and practice those ideas and sadly put their applicants on the horrendous wasteful inefficient process. Probably they argued that "the more a person waste his / her time in the waiting area, the more he / she is interested" . The problem with the maritime community here in the Philippines is the fact that they are very slow and refuse to accept new idea's especially on the job seeking and job hunting experience , let alone the efficient use of those new methods. As a result employment process is clunky, time, effort and money wasting.

 

      

SPECULATION

All that I'm going to write are just speculations, rumors and mostly theories on what is going exactly on my current predicament with my company.

 

*For some time now , I have been here in the Philippines for a very long time given with the length of my stay , I had been thinking a lot of thing on why Career Ship Management hasn’t called me yet. One speculation I have is that that the principal I have (specifically CSM) wants to haggle on my salary, after all the salary being offered to O.S. on my previous principal was 1268 U.S. dollars , while CSM pays only 905 U.S. to their current O.S. which is at least 300 U.S. Dollars less - may not be much to some but if you translate it in Philippine Money its more than 15000 Php and cumulate that to about 9 months then the loss of income would be as much as 135,000 Php on the whole contract, The dirty tactic their playing is that their trying to put me on "indefinite hold" status in order to bow to pressure and accept the one sided terms. Probably they figured that  putting me 6 months or more without any income would force me to yield and accept the job offer of being paid less. In either case if this is the scenario than I could tell that CSM or Career Ship Management is an opportunistic and exploitative sassy bastard ! . I speculated this because I heard rumors lately about one of my co-workers "THEO"  has already been assigned to the ship CAPE TAFT which I recall correctly is one of the ships that has a similar pay rate as in CAPE TEXEL (ship I was assigned before the recall). Now the question here is that, I came in the Philippines first and how come my co-worker who just arrived on the latter gets to be in assigned first on the ship very similar to mine ?

 

*Another likely Scenario I came up is that, someone or something might have sent the office a bad report and that I'm being excluded because of this. At some point Mr. Nidoy might have something that he is not telling me. I recall back a few months earlier that CSM refused my transfer back to their principal and that Mr. Nidoy even called on my phone and asked if their was any problem I had with CSM, I replied to them that I don’t recall any of it and he's guess is as good as mine. Bottom line is that whatever is the reason why I'm staying here , coincidence or not - there is something blocking my progress.

 

*Another likely scenario, On the first week of 2016 I reported to Mr. Nidoys office and asked why I was pulled out on the line up. He said that the reason why I was pulled out was that my job position was replaced by Chinese workers and that CAPE TEXEL will be dominated by foreign crew.

 

*Why just leave if the employment conditions of Career Ship Management are becoming less desirable ? Leaving and resettling on another company is much easier and quick compared to earlier "deck cadet" years - as long as my U.S. visa remains Valid and intact , it should post no problems however coincidentally 2016 - 2017 memo from the MARINA (government agency handling maritime affairs in the Philippines) require all sailors to renew their certificates every 5 years starting 2017. To simply put most of my documents have now only less than a year of validity and sooner I will have to renew it. The hindrance from me leaving the company is because of the cost of renewing these certificates, The solution I had been thinking of in this kind of scenario is replacing my certificates with cheaper versions of the same kind of training certificates , another solution if there is no funding is I will have to take a local land base job to generate funding.

 

*Another likely scenario, is that Career Ship Management might be punishing me after some fiasco's that I had dealt with in the past , like my refusal to be assigned to Cape BARI and refusal to be dispatch on short notice in CONTI Guinea, and the latest was my questioning of being returned back to CSM , an d assigned to Cape Texel. I do admit that I had been at odds with Career Ship Management every ship assignment or so , but my only complaint on this matter if this was the scenario is that they should have told me directly about this - so it would be sparing me a lot of time figuring things out and spent the time wasted in looking for another company.

 

For the moment while writing this , I had been in the Philippines for 4 months , 2 weeks and 5 days already. Or equivalent to 142 days.

NATIONAL BREAKFAST DAY

National breakfast day - Frankly i never even heard of this holiday before ever in my life, but according to the McDonald's promotional commercial on T.V. they will be giving away free McMuffin sandwiches to the general public nationwide  - AS IN FREE FOR ALL on march 14, 2016 6am to 7am. The General public was very anxious to hear about this announcement and have been waiting for weeks for this. I myself can't wait on those free sandwiches and wanted to try out they're so called McMuffins. There's an old saying that "the best things in life are for free" so I got myself One McMuffin on that day , may not be much since Philippine Sandwiches are half smaller than the ones in foreign countries , but the thought of giving without asking anything in return to someone you don’t even know weighs more in kindness rather than the size of the sandwich.  

 

Praise McDonalds for being true on its commercial on giving those sandwiches for free on the general public, I was afraid that they might turn out to be like some kind of scheme, like any Philippine government social worker propaganda on T.V (or any Philippine government agency in general). where they only tell a partial truth and majority was a fabricated lie. Hopefully my suspicion on McDonalds turned out be wrong.

 

As for Jollibee , I'm pretty sure they a "NO COMMENT" on this matter.

UNCHARITABLE CHARITY

Wasn't exactly enthusiastic nor even delighted to hear about this so called PWD's invitation (person with disabilities invitation from the local social service) coming  the town hall from the start. However since I gave my word that I will attend their invitation when the social workers visited a couple of days ago, I decided to went ahead - after all this for my dad's sake, and dad's was actually the one invited and not me - I'm only serving as a guardian and tag along on dad since he could barely walk.

 

As expected, the reception and treatment we got from the municipal hall of cainta rizal was pathetic and mediocre at best. It’s a good thing that we came there as a group along with other PWD's (people with disability) and there's a cab that fetched us to and from the municipal hall of cainta Rizal. To summarized it looked more like a PWD field trip rather than a social service kind of help. We did get help from the social services department on medical assistance part but they just handed out 20 pcs of pain killer tablets (all generic) and told us not to bother them again.

 

The same thing goes when our group was asking financial assistance from the staff on the social services department, office of the mayor. They told us that they can't help us and that the mayor wasn't in "his office" ( what ?! The mayor is not at work during office days and office hours ??? ). Probably the mayor is not interested at all meeting people with disabilities and senior citizens 60 yrs old and up - all are voter's in his domain. In any case personally I never liked the idea of "financial assistance" on the fact that it sounded more of like begging rather than helping , but either way help or not. The mayor was no public servant.

 

At early afternoon, a cab came in on the Municipal Hall to fetch us back and return our group to their homes.

 

Like I said on my previous blog entries that public service in the Philippines is none existent and pathetic, a person is lucky enough to find a friendly social worker. Almost all of the Filipino social workers are hostile and loathe helping the poor (and even the local citizenry). They are totally unfit as a public servant and boggles my mind on why they even end up as charity workers in the first place. As much as possible avoid asking help from them and a person is better off without them.    

PROBLEMATIC POSSIBILITY

Seems that every news I get lately about my work keeps getting worse than ever. Latest news I heard from one of my former co-workers thru social media is that there's a refresher course for PSCRB training Seminar and Career Ship Management Requires its crew to take that. "Theo" says that folks in the office required him to take that course and he's surprised to learn that Career hasn't informed me yet about this. I told him that the company must have forgotten to tell me about it earlier and will probably inform me on the latter.

 

Now the problem about this is that if ever Career Ship Management required me to take this (or decided to inform me on the latter) is that it will take me for a while to be able to accomplish that, and upon my research on the internet the cost of the refresher course, amounts to about 3,000 Php excluding the cost of its MARINA COP and other expenses. Overall I estimate it could be 4,500 Php . This price tag is no big deal a few months ago for me , however present situation I have is that I'm currently in a pinch right now and it's not sure on where the hell would I get the funding for it, if ever that would be the case. Bottom line is that it’s a hassle and problematic for me if Career Ship Management decides to impose this on me.

 

Another problem, I have to deal with is the re-medical exam issue that kept resurfacing. Apparently from what I read on the social media, medical certificates are good only for three months if I'm still stuck on land and valid for two years once I get onboard a ship (for legal purposes only and not employment) , if whatever case I never got deployed beyond the three month period , then its already expired and have to retake the medical screening again, which bottom line means another hassle for me.

 

For now I'm going to stay silent about this issues since , I haven't heard any news lately yet from the company. The longer I stay here , the more problems arise that I have to deal with.

 

In other news …..

 

I accidentally stumbled upon a special collectible BSP coin. It looks like a normal 5 peso coin on first look , but upon closer examination it revealed that it's an "OFW" themed commemorative coin. I took pictures of it to show it here on my blog what it looks like.

 

 

 

In another news….

 

I'm going to make a few movements within the coming of days, and have asked my younger sister that I will be borrowing money from her soon. My sister agreed but unfortunately for me, her salary is still as far as the 20th of this month and it meant for me that I have to sit tight for a couple of days until my sister gets her salary for me to borrow money. 

 

If ever I should get the funds, I'm going to secure first an X-ray chest plate and an NBI Clearance (law enforcement work clearance) which is needed for local employment.

STILL FAR FROM STABILITY

Things are returning again to normal , at least close to normal and the recent problem on mom's black listing in the dialysis clinic is now close to being solved , thanks to kind donors from mom's school mates.

 

As for my employment problem , it is still on going and yet to be resolved. There is some progress on the past few days and my "contact" on the company took a look on the reason why I'm still stuck here in the Philippines. From his search it turns out that Career Ship Management as of the moment have too many sailors around and less ships, resulting that some crew they have , are still up to now in indefinite hold status. From the looks of it , they have a lot of folks in the waiting line , One of my former co-workers few ships back  said that he's in hold status for 8 months now.

 

For now I'm in a loophole situation, I could choose to leave career ship management company and try my employment elsewhere but there's no guarantee once I get there that working conditions (and salary) will be favorable on my side, aside from that there's no assurance as well that document requirement will be the same. However if I sit tight around in Career - there's a possibility that I'd be stuck here for 8 months or even longer (no job and salary). To summarize both options have a positive and negative side , and I'm still weighing on what is the best decision I would make. Of course there's a third option that does not conflict on the two options I have above. Third option is to have a local job , which solves my short term problem.

 

The plans I have are good enough (or at least close to good enough) but are hindered by financial problems. A total road block , why my plans are very slow to implement. In the meantime for now all I could do is get my seaman's book from the office and patiently wait on what will my situation come in next.

 

In other news ….

 

Lately I had been having problems with my HP Gaming laptop, and from the looks of it , the old problem that’s been plaguing my computer a few months back has resurfaced and I had spent a few days trying to solve and remedy the problem. Previously I recall few months back that my HP has a nasty habit of shutting down, at first I thought it has something to do on battery related issues given that when I opened my laptop to check on its internal wirings , I saw that one of its three power cell was already "bloated" and damage. Upon further checking I'm unable to replace it or remove the battery as a remedy because its batteries are not detachable and wired directly . (for short batteries are internal and not external),

 

Now it seems that the power cell issue was not the case at all on why my gaming laptop is malfunctioning in the first place. Like I said the problem reoccurred few days ago and it happened when I accidentally didn’t notice that my HP laptop wasn't plugged on its electric adaptor and was running on its batteries. Given that one of its power cell batteries are corrupted , the power didn’t last long and suddenly shut my computer down. I tried to plug it to the power adaptor and press the on switch but to no avail, it wouldn’t start. After several minutes attempting , it did switch on but I couldn't play games and if I did attempt - it would only be met with immediate shut down.  These went on for a couple of days and it was an agony turning on my laptop as I repeatedly press the on button. If the laptop did switched on , I could only use it to run office apps and not play PC games - function only a netbook does and not a gaming laptop should do.

 

It was a hopeless case and I figured that if I'm going to replace this PC , it may still take a year because of economic issues I had at the moment. Then I did recall something after a few days, that after I successfully switched on my PC after numerous attempts , a black screen appears telling that HP thermal guard switched off my computer due to heat temperature issues. Thinking that hit something on my brain and figured that this has something do on the thermal issue. I search for a day about the possibility that I could switch off HP's thermal guard drivers in some way. I had looked on its manuals and found no direct resolution on how to do so and there was no possible way - at least switching off its equipment.

 

Later I searched google using a public wifi for answers. What I found was HP devices did have some sort of thermal sensors on their computer and that It can't be accessed using software. In other words I have to manually cool the sensors in some way. Given with the idea, I went home and tried an experiment. My experiment was to put an small fan on its vents to at least let cool air in , therefore cooler air inside means that sensors will indicate that temperature has been lower and will not hit the automatic shutdown.

 

Thankfully my experiment work, and it seems that I still have a few more years left using this computer and I don’t have any more problems in switching my laptop on and off . The best part is that I could now play PC games as well, I tested it in playing Elder Scrolls 5 : Skyrim and Metal Gear Solid 5 and no problems were encountered, never had an incident were it had to shut down.

 

WAKING DREAMS

It been a long time, and yet I'm still here in the Philippines. Specifically its been almost four months now ( arrived at Oct 26th last year ) , and I'm starting to think all sorts of stuff on why there's no sign yet coming from Career Ship Management and I'm starting to suspect that there's something wrong going on why they haven't put me on any "Ship assignment" yet.

 

Recently I talked to one of my former co-workers via face book on what is his suspicions. Its glad that I talked to one of my former co-worker and our discussion  made me think on what is actually going on , or the very least gave me an idea. To start with apparently "jay carta" told me that Career Ship Management has nasty habit of putting things on hold for a very very long time for their crew, and based on what he said it's around at least six months , (some were rumored to be even put on hold as 8 months to a year - as from what I heard from A.B. "Patrick dondonilla" ). In any rate , it obvious that there's a possibility based on our conversation that I might be here longer , and recalling back what Captain Nidoy said is that during my latest visit - that "apparent Validity" of the med certificate is as far as a year , which meant indirectly that they could put me on hold on that long. The more that made me suspect was that I recall on my last visit in the shipping office that they're were still deploying O.S. sailor's on CSM principal and in fully controlled CSM ships , while I'm left out here on indefinite floating status, in other words - what makes me so different from them right ?! It only concludes that O.S. deployment were never a problem from the start, never was.

 

After talking with my former co-worker "jay carta" ,everything makes sense now why I'm still here and some of my co-workers are already there. There's are a lot of things that Career Ship Management isn't telling me right now (Specifically Capt Nidoy) on what exactly is going on, and probably the main twist on that is that I'd find out on the latter, which I'm already helpless on that point. For now it's difficult for me to determine what is going on in my company nor figure out their intentions , they haven't told me that I'm no longer needed and they haven't told me that I'm still needed - so basically I'm in limbo right now.

 

Nevertheless whatever be the case, it's about time I would take action on what is happening around me . Sooner or later I had to deal with this and it would be best I should deal with it soon rather than later where the problem will get worse. The main reason for now why I'm kept from leaving is because of personal issues back home, coincidentally me and my sister are currently preoccupied and battling with the financial debts (I will write later)plus taking care of  mom,. Without that factor, I could leave the company anytime I wish and at will without any serious problems or complications , and I'm sure anybody on their right mind would be doing the same if they're already here in the Philippines for more than four months. As a matter of fact everyone around me is telling me that I should ditch out Career Ship Management now.

 

Overall , I've done some thinking about my situation and concluded that I guess it's about time I moved on in life again and probably Career Ship Management already ran its course. If this is the case then it meant that it's just a natural cycle on career as a sailor about moving in , moving out and moving on. I'm never afraid to lose my job, and there's no hard feelings or anything personal if I'm no longer needed by CSM nor NSB , it's just simply ran its course - just simply I had to find another company to transfer and that’s it.

 

For now, I'm refraining myself to posting on anything in the social media until I sort things out first and frankly to stop any embarrassment that I'm still here in the Philippines, and avoid a jinx altogether.

 

IN OTHER NEWS…
 

A black list came by recently at the hospital informing that mom cannot be accepted in the clinic until she fully pays the 30,000 PHP debt. For the moment my sister has already gathered at least half of the needed payment for it coming from donations from mom's school friends on high school , The other half is still being figured out. Either way for the moment mom cannot undergo dialysis treatment until its resolved.

 

Last Sunday it was a blessing that mom had a dialysis for one last time , and its crucial on the fact that it needed to at least buy my sister some time to solve the bills problem, at least give a week more of time before things went to hell again.