Entry log is July 10, 2016 , Sunday
Weather has
been very beautiful and comfortable over the past week, now that this ship will
be in south Africa in a few days - reminds me of summer time season in Europe.
Sadly
despite being comfortable now , next week and so will be very uncomfortable as
this ship approaches UAE area. As what I recall a few years back during my deck
cadet years, the weather in this area is blistering hot and surely the last
place I had in mind in visiting. I still very much prefer and like the weather
in Europe than in Asia or in the middle east. If I had known earlier that this
ship will be trading on the middle east and Asia , I would have simply avoided
and turned down this contract from the start. Anyway I didn’t discovered it
only until latter - and besides that CF Sharp lied to me POINT BLANK about this
contract.
In other
news on work
Finally
have completed sewing all the pockets needed for the coveralls, at least all
the pockets for my weekday coveralls (Mondays to fridays), So that brings a
total of 5 coveralls - I still need to sew one more pocket for the Saturday
coverall.
For the
record, this is the most numerous coveralls I had used on all of my previous
ships. I had now a total of 14 coveralls inside my cabin and this excludes two
more inside my luggage. To break down , I had seven "active"
coveralls I use currently (one's which have pockets on the shoulder area) and
another seven which I kept as reserve or for emergency uses. So why all the
numerous coveralls ? Simple - since laundry here has a schedule and there is no
assurance that it would open up anytime soon , I figured that boosting the
number I had on my equipment makes better chances of being always ready and
equipment will always be available for me to use. It's all just about numbers
of how many I have on my arsenal.
Another
thing, people might ask is why the hell do I sew pockets on the shoulder area
of my coveralls? The reason is very obvious that it's for functionality, and
that I don't normally carry stuff inside my pockets around in the pocket chest
area of coveralls , somehow putting things there makes me carry stuff in a
bulky fashion and I had a hard time moving around with something heavy on my
chest area plus the fact that equipment's I place on my chest pocket tend to
"slip up" and easily fell off. So I figured by accident way back on
CAPE TALLIN ship that putting pockets on my shoulder would make the weight
unnoticeable - and it did and in addition it never slipped out or fell on that
area.
In other
news.
Dubai dry
docks is cancelled although the ship repairs will not proceed in this area, it
doesn’t necessary meant that this ship won't be going there in Dubai for a
loading and discharging operations. Problem with the cancellation on the ship
repairs is that this ship will not be equip with internet access, which meant
no access means no contact on the outside world especially with direct
relatives - a major bummer and set back on the communications part.
Lately
there has been a ruckus here on this ship about the home / special allotment
not being forwarded to our relatives. In other words to simply say, our
salaries have not been paid on time. This caused an uproar amongst almost all
the Filipino crew - knowing that our hard earned salaries for a month's hasn't been paid yet.
According to our principal Norstar , they have not been informed yet by CF
Sharp that they were supposedly to pay the crew of their salary thus resulting
that no money was forwarded. As for CF sharp , they have no comments or words
yet release about this said "delay" and just kept quiet adding more
to the confusion and bewilderment on some of my crew mates if they're doing
anything at all to resolve this. My crewmates have already made a letter and we
all signed it about the issue on our delayed / special allotment predicament,
probably to inform the Norstar or CF Sharp that they have a problem regarding
our payroll.
It’s a good
move made by our crewmates but there's no guarantee that CF Sharp will even
bother to listen or take action.
On Other
news
the safety
meeting on crew did not exactly resolved issues about this ship which includes
the payroll, even the bond store was not even discussed carefully and leaves
much doubt and skepticism. Apparently the "bond store" here was not
exactly a bond store at all and turns out that captain was implying more of
like a "personal purchase order" rather than a tradition bond store,
heck it was not even discussed clearly about what kind of payment will be the
purchase - if its either by personal pocket money or via salary deduction.
Nevertheless whatever this turned out on the "personal purchase" it's
very obvious that bond store here is totally non-existent and certainly will
not be available at least towards halfway on the contract - making living
conditions here more troublesome with the lack of proper supplies.
With this
left and right consecutive disappointments, a lot of my crewmates now are
grumbling openly about the policies here in this ship and in general in CF
Sharp. From my estimate at least more than half of the crew are very
dissatisfied on what's going on and the treatment CF sharp gives to us here, A
majority of us even decided that after this - we don’t even consider making
another contract on this worthless pathetic company, and would be better off
elsewhere on another company. Most of us here say that there is nothing
positive to talk about on norstar and CF Sharp.
On my end
here for now I'm doing well on the fact that I came here fully prepared and
fully supplied, my supplies here is at least sufficient enough to last for
months.
In another
news
O.S.
"Mark" will be moving in on my cabin AGAIN, because this ship will be
expecting visitors which resulted to him being booted out on his own cabin (his
cabin will be used to accommodate visitors). I don’t mind having a roommate
around although I still prefer being alone on my cabin due to privacy issues,
but for now there is no choice and having a double "decker" bed on my
cabin gives the impression on our chief mate that it can accommodate two people
- bad and unfortunate for me.
Good thing
this will only be temporarily at least until this ship reaches fujirah U.A.E.
which is three weeks away (estimate is end of july)
