ENTRY DATE:
August 07, 2016 Sunday
Location :
Fujirah Oil Tanker Terminal berth 6, UAE
Staying in
fujirah for a week was difficult, Aside from the temperature scorching
temperature of 48 degrees Celsius. I had problems as well on early counter
measures in combating the heated environment.
Earlier my
primary measure in cooling myself was to wet and wore my coveralls, But lately
it seems that this countermeasure was not effective in the long run and as a
result, skin rashes have been instantly appearing on almost every part of my
body and the most rashes I got for now is on my legs. Probably I surmise that
prolonged exposure to water and moisture (from my clothes) causes some sort of
bacterial skin infection which in turn causes rashes. As a result to this
unfortunate side effect from my early tactics, I took in a few antibiotics and
stayed away from wetting my coveralls for a while. Despite the setback , it
pushed and discovered another counter measure to combat the heat - the
"dry method".
Basically
this new method is more simpler and is generally more acceptable to my
crewmates than my first method, however despite its simplicity it too has its
limitations - and I shall explain later. First off the "dry method" I
had discovered is nothing more than just getting fresh cooler air and this time
the source is the pneumatic pipes that is so common on every ships piping
system. Basically its just as simple as open a pneumatic socket and put the
inside your coverall sleeves and open it then adjust the air pressure , letting
the cool air coming out on the pneumatic pipe to circulate throughout inside
the coveralls thus cooling the whole entire body without the risk of rashes and
infection. Despite the innovation, it has limitations and the most noticeable
is the range. Meaning you can only operate within the area near the air pipes,
the range can be extended if there's an air hose around but the range is still
limited and there's a chance it might get snagged while moving around.
The third
method revolves around a combination of my first and second method , however I
haven't tested it fully and only the first and second method have been tested.
Anyway aside from that this ship is also plagued with a problem , the most
simple and yet the most important of all - clean drinking water. Apparently
this ship's so called water purifier is overworked and cannot support the water
needs of 27 crew members, so in the end - most of the time this ship doesn’t
churn out fresh drinking water , leading to speculation that if this stay in
UAE will be longer , the whole crew will have dehydration problems later on. To
complicate matters our lovely Myanmar captain is such a dick and refused to
give the crew extra water rations , resulting that most of the crew had to buy
supplies on shore and nearby duty free shops. I myself bought some extra
supplies to keep myself away from dehydration / starvation problem.
Thank god
that the visiting indian superintendent , kicked his Myanmar butt earlier when
he refused to give us our salaries. Now that we have some money , it would have
not been possible at all and basically I could be dealing serious problems
aside from the problematic weather here.
During the
shore leave , I discovered one thing useful. Previously I thought that having a
BDO dollar debit card was useless, well turns out that this dollar debit card
was not useless at all as earlier I thought it was and in fact CAN BE USED
IN STORES THAT ACCEPT VISA / MASTER CARD. To simply put I can use it for shopping ,
as in cashless transactions. Thank god and I'm relieved that this piece of
plastic card is not only a decoration to my wallet and could be used to shop
some stuff off on duty free stores.
I wonder if
I can use this to purchase stuff on the airport ?
In any case
. I bought some badly needed supplies around for me, Some chocolates , Gatorade
(as anti-dehydration) along with shower gel soap and of course the most
important of all was internet sim card and top up load. I also bought a few
non-essential stuff (actually low priority stuff) to upgrade my existing
working equipment, some of these are a new Stanley multi tool pliers, a new
"wenger" tumbler, a multi socket electric travel adaptor and a brand
new binoculars (which replaces my obsolete CDR-king one).
Some of my
crew members also bought in essentials like water, Gatorade, shampoo etc.
toiletries that are missing here on the ship (and there is no bond store),
Given that our pitiful myanmar captain doesn't bother considering crew welfare.
Shame that some of my crew members have to result in buying their own
necessities out of their own pockets to get things around, NECESSITIES that
Norstar ship Principal and its Captain should have provided in the first place
and according to MLC .
Anyway this
discovery on visa debit usage opens up an opportunity , in a way that it means
that I can order stuff not only on shops that have VISA / MASTER CARD - but
also order stuff online as well. To make it simple I don’t have to wait for a
long time to get imported stuff or wait that any ship I will be assigned with
goes to Europe or America, Now I just simply look for the online order like
ebay or stuff like that and search the item I want there and presto ! .
In relation
to my recent shore leave. Bosun Hector Rodrigo borrowed some cash from me via
debit card to buy a computer, well actually half on the actual money and the
other half was debit card. Well I don’t mind lending a hand anyway to some of
my crewmates and besides they're not a threat at all here, So lending them some
cash is no big deal for me - as long as they pay up before I leave this place.
Actually I was going to use the money to buy a new tablet office computer for
my sister, but it ended up the money being borrowed first before I could
actually buy anything at all.
As for the
work related news
Given that
this ship is already 20 years old by now, its now surprise that during loading
operations a lot of piping systems has been having problems and literary
leaking on its connections , one such example is the hydraulic system which one
of its pipes had a huge leak near the manifold area. The leak was so huge that
small buckets would quickly be filled up with hydraulic oil and we had to use a full human size SOPEP
drum to contain the leak. Aside from the hydraulic leak, Pneumatic pipes have
been leaking as well and on one occasion the pneumatic pipe used to heave and
slack the gangway on the starboard side burst leaving the gangway stuck for the
time being until deck fitter Amiel lorzano fixes the problem.
It's
amazing that this ship still passes vetting inspection despite being a floating
rust bucket. I mean - everything is falling apart here and the only thing
keeping it from being totally scrapped is because of its Filipino crew efforts
in maintenance (which is not being treated fairly and being discriminated by
these Myanmar whore captain). Probably i suspect that the only reason this ship
passed is because the vetting inspector was Indian and they somehow bribed it.
Anyway
lastly during the unmooring operations I made a few mistakes because of the
confusion this cocky Indian third mate was yelling at me to do this and that
which result in me getting uneasy on work. To add more problems on the matter
is that not only is the third mate annoying but Pump man Obina is also making
the same bitchy attitude as the third mate, I simply can't focus on my work and
concentrate if these cock suckers keep yelling at me. So in other words I had
two problems dealing with aside from un mooring operation, . I had been on six
ships already and people like that are one of the worst people to work with -
they are really pathetic, certainly lacking of civil manners and simply cannot
teach or lead people. Their tiny idiotic brains simply think that the whole
work is a competition and not cooperation, Anyway as a result I will keep in
mind to stay out of them as far as
possible when it comes to mooring / unmooring operations.
