TOURING SINGAPORE

September 16, 2016

Singapore

 

 

Given that working schedules in Sembawang Area Ship yard are conflicting / constricting for me to fully roam the place unrestricted. For now most of my free time in exploring the whole island is limited only during night time hours, Here in Sembawang and Yishu area - there are only two malls , ( one which I even hesitate to even call a mall at all ) . Sun plaza Mall and the other Northern Point Mall.

 

Shops in these malls are very small compared to shops in the Philippines, even the electronic stores and book stores here is lacking of selections. If I were to compare a typical "National bookstore" shop and "CDR-king" shop in the Philippines is at least four times larger than the ones here in Singapore. Even schools here like I saw in the primary school and probably grade school is smaller and compressed.

 

Anyway Sembawang and Yishu area in Singapore is a province,  but for a province it is well develop and urbanized compared to the one's in the Philippines. The whole area looked more like "The Fort" or Makati area in the Philippines , full of tall buildings and condominium type of housing, and shops that don’t actually looked like shops at first look. 

 

In their metropolis area , comes the fun part. Their malls are bigger , such example is the Vivo city mall which I explored , based on its size - it about as close as the size of SM Mega Mall perhaps even bigger. There is also even an underground mall on subways here due to the lack of space and in one instance I found myself litterary lost in the labyrinth  



Singaporean dollar, local currency used in singapore



my co-workers



the well known and iconic singaporean merlion, saw it by my own eyes



local water fountain set up, took the opportunity to refill water stock pile i have

 

GOING TO THE SHIPYARD

journal entry has been put on hold until further notice due to sensitive topics

JOB AVOIDANCE

BLOG ENTRY: September 06, 2016 Tuesday

Location: Singapore anchorage

 

On the past couple of days without the "repair crew" around , things here have been quieter and peaceful, and more time for me to pitch in and do work unhindered. Somehow I had no worries leaving my equipment behind, and it doesn’t go missing suddenly.

 

It has been busy and a lot of work is still yet to be made with the lack of man power around, but I think it’s the best rather than had a lot of trouble with the "repair crew" . Before I'm not confident leaving my stuff behind even on the locker room, sooner or later some guy from the repair crew would grab it without my knowledge and by the time I know something is missing, - it all too gone and too late.

 

In the recent days that they were gone, working on deck has turned to shit lately, and both the Indian chief mate and Myanmar Captain has been increasingly annoying on work that even the DNV - GL surveyors find them mistreating. One such example is that they don’t give people here a proper rest and break time, and only allowed people here only 15 minutes rest for the whole day. Even the meal breaks were being violated and coffee or water break time is cancelled, people here are being overworked for petty meaningless reasons, that don’t even qualify as urgent or important. Even the DNV - GL surveyors are complaining about this. 

 

Seriously these pathetic ship officers, being so "company dogs" that they intentionally neglect MLC rights and violate seafarers contract terms (such as I mentioned earlier about meal breaks etc.). If they keep this maltreatment up to their crew and the DNV - GL surveyors, sooner or later it will back fire with them - and when it does, I'm going to be there and laugh at them. They deserve the worst punishment ever , and their lower than scum, their very lucky and fortunate that this ship is travelling in the far east international labour laws like MLC and ITF doesn’t have a firm reach and no visible enforcement. This is one of the harsh realities of being a sailor , Chances are most people you encounter as sailors are bad people. There are a few good people but a majority of them are scum (both filipino and non- filipino's). I hope kids or people who read this blog understood the dangers and get the idea , that being a sailor is one of the worst jobs on the planet.

 

Going back to what I was discussing over, The Indian Chief mate and the Myanmar Captain kept dumping us with work orders that its getting impossible to complete a task for five minutes without being interrupted and being dumped again with a new one. This treatment is getting worse as the day passes and eventually I'd be fed up and be changing tactics as a result and apply some forbidden one's like "Job avoidance" . Ethically job avoidance is not a right thing to do (as like any other jobs out there as I know), but if I weight my situation right now and justify it - probably it's the best thing action I had to make as of the moment. They treat their subordinates like crap and keeps pushing and stepping on them , then it's only a matter of reason and logic that I should do the same. As like Captain Betts told me once "you sow, what you reap" .

 

In other matters

 

Lately I had been discolouration of my eye area, apparently this might be the result of too much sun exposure lately. The rest of my face is ok given that I wear a balaclava mask (facemask) when I go to work , except for the eyes of course because it's the part where its open

 

To smoothen out the discolouration , I had to experiment on wearing a coloured safety glasses for now to at least remove the dark spot on my eye area. The area is so dark that when I remove my mask I looked more like a raccoon.

 

 

 

REPAIR CREW EXITING

Journal Entry: September 04, 2016 Sunday

Location: OPL Anchorage area, Singapore

 

 

While in the middle of the whole De-mucking ops here on deck, There has been a quick news that the "repair crew" will disembark this ship on September 05. The news was really sudden and big surprise but not totally unexpected - after all their contracts have already been finish a couple of weeks ago and its long overdue that they should return home. While the Repair crew is rejoicing that they will go home soon, most of the people wonder here on what will happen on  the work they will leave vacant. For short there is a huge vacuum on some of the task here and we're wondering who will fill in on those. Actually it's not that big loss that they will disembark, as long as they can solve the problem about the work on pilot ladder and gangway - not to mention the mooring operations issue, I think everything will be fine despite the downsize of the crew.

 

Personally, Im relieved that I'd be getting rid of A.B. Paulito Cordova for good. I had already had enough on his berating and rebuking attitude, that he's mere presence on the work place is annoying enough. Basically he's just another one of those typical asshole's sailors in the maritime community,.  I disliked people who think themselves to be high and mighty, and lectures me about things about work, on top of that, conversation with him lasting for more than three minutes is highly impossible without him insulting and scorning me. I'm really glad that he's going home and good riddance !! This ship will be a little bit better place for me without him around.,

 

(Scorn means open disrespect accompanied by intense dislike)

 

Aside from that , another news I heard was that O.S. Marden Luib received a negative feedback from his evaluation report to the office (also known as "appraisal" report in seaman terms) written by Chief Mate Dsouza. In response and protest as well O.S. Marden Luib didn't sign the paper, and left it to our local company to figure it for themselves - after all it is his right to question under MLC law any negative comment reflected to his in a bias way.

 

As for A.B. Edgar tiu and O.S. Rosendo Molina, they're apparently don’t want to leave yet but just got dragged along on O.S. Marden's request to leave. It's obvious that O.S. Rosendo won't be coming back due to the poor job offer CF sharp (and norstar principal) gives , However in the case of A.B. Edgar Tiu - there's a rumour, I heard from BOSUN Rodrigo that there's a possibility that he might return, in the special circumstance that there's at least a need for two new additional crew members to work on the deck.  It's up to Edgar if he take the offer despite poor working conditions and environment here and salary problems this company and principal offers - if the rumours are true.

 

In other news.

 

It has only been hours since the "repair crew" left this ship and , total disarray has come in due to the lack of manpower. Our Indian bosses seemed to not know properly on how to handle people and basically even suggesting that we should be on another 6 to 6 hour watch. It's a good thing that it was changed and my work schedule was back again to "day work"

 

In relation to this, 6 people came and from what I saw they're some sort of DNV-GL surveyors, conducting a some sort of survey. Some of these folk were actually from the shipyard making estimation and close up look on the overall status of the vessel. On first glance one of the personnel from the shipyard made a comment that the deck area is in very bad shape and estimated that this ship will have only at least 2 years of life span left before it gets scrapped, the accommodation area along with pipes and such are in very deteriorating condition - no surprise because this ship is 20 years old now. For now while writing this, they're still evaluating on what will be status for ship repairs.

 

In other matters,

 

Most of the "de-mucking" crew that have cleaned this ship have been gone now and only a few are left to finish just to finish off the remaining fuel oil tank left. Unmistakably our Myanmar Captain here, supposedly received a message from the Norstar office informing that there's another crew that will arrive to continue the work and to clean up the ballast tanks. Based on our Captain understanding  it’s the 100 plus "De-mucking" crew and kept continued persistent demands to extend the work not only on the cargo tanks but to the ballast tanks as well. The foreman of the "De-mucking" crew said that he received no such order from their company and will not continue the work. He said clearly that our principal (Norstar) should talk first on his company to order them to continue the work , otherwise he cannot authorize such work order to his crew.

 

Despite the annoyance and insistence of my shitty Myanmar captain, The foreman of the de-mucking crew had his way and it was only right of him not to authorize any further work without any official statement coming from his local agent . For now any word put up by the captain should be considered just a "rumor" and they can't dictate or pressure the foreman - he doesn’t have any power to do so.

DE-MUCIING CREW

Journal Entry: August 31, 2016 Wednesday

Location: OPL Anchorage area, Singapore

 

 

There's an old saying by psychologist that if you can't talk something about it, then at least write something about it. I live on that saying given that sailors even up to nowadays still don’t have the freedom to talk freely, if one does - he / she will be subjected to an onslaught of retaliation either from the persons, foes, co-workers, organization, affiliation or any other group that was mentioned negatively. Opting also on the Social Media to discuss something is as dangerous as well, Basically there's no more secure place on the planet to talk about something other than inside a person head, On my case of course I cannot depend my safety on the having a journal on my computer and blog on cyber space. If I do wish to write something openly , I have to consider writing within a minimum safe distance from what I'm discussing to avoid the "social fallout" that will come after ., And there we go ,I am writing about something.

 

I'm glad that my blog is not that popular in cyber space , so there's at least some sort of privacy maintained and that the overall risk of back firing what I discussed or posted is lessen. I take full responsibility on what I post on my blog whether it will reflect me in a positive or negative way., either of both no one can order me around or make me retract what I post here. They can coerce, harass or blackmail me all they want, they can even fire me from work or outcast me socially , but it won't make me stop telling my story and the truth, and like I said on my introduction "I'd do it my way, and I'm old enough to get it my way" . Of course I know and fully aware that this publishing blog may lead me to "blacklisting" from the POEA or Manning agency , but that’s not the end of the world for me - the end of my seafaring career but not my life.  

 

For the moment, this whole epic tank cleaning operation is getting near now on its end, probably it is only a few days till the whole enchilada will be finished. Frankly it's about damn time they did finish this whole thing, it's already about two weeks and still ongoing. I wonder most of the time of on what goes on in the head of these people that it took them this long to clean up a few cargo tanks , I remember a few years back when I was in the chemical tanker, "tank cleaning" operations only lasted a few days to a few hours. Anyway it's their style and I'm just riding along on what they’re doing.

 

Recently on work …

 

Some water on the cargo tank are being pumped out and directly thrown at sea,. If I thought a couple of days ago pumping oily water out of the pump room was bad enough, then wait till I get a load on what happened on the following day. They are seriously pumping out above the deck and into the sea The water riddled with oil inside the cargo hold, and for some reason maybe out of stupidity , they think that the water inside those cargo tanks is clean and clear. Jeez what a total set of imbeciles !!! , I sometimes wonder how did they get their chief mate license in India and ship captain license on Myanmar. I mean with that kind of thinking ???, I'm seriously thinking that these retards will get the whole crew and ship in trouble with the authorities one day. (and when that day comes, I'm going to be as far to them as possible and renounce any association with these Mongoloid's)

 

Midway along the work , I even got an ugly insult from his lordship Chief mate Dsouza when I was unable to immediately understand on what he was pointing at on how to cleaning the floating smidge of oil in the water, The whole insults goes saying that "Do not have any oil tanker working experience - something like that" even implying that he's lordship is "superior" . On my saying Inside my head, I don’t give a fuck on this insult and berating , Funny on the fact he insults me by telling that "I don’t have any oil tanker experience" and yet when I look at his decisions in work tactics , it looks like he's was just a new comer Chief Mate, most of his decisions were impractical and a majority are pointless, and I don’t have to need a license just to tell how stupid his work tactics are. To make is short , he doesn’t have any idea on how to manage people, let alone on how to properly done and finish work. Now I'm starting to wonder why the Europeans (and generally the "whites") hate Indian workers, even my late dad said the same thing, that they are a lower class of people with lower class mentality and manners - very crude even for Asian standards.

 

Be as it may - that he's his Indian lordship thinks he's superior, as far as I'm concern I'm no company dog nor a company whore like him and the captain. They can shove Norstar company up on their ass, and for the record on his primitive brain - THIS IS MY THIRD SHIP , THAT I WORKED IN AN OIL TANKER !!!

 

In the afternoon , Pumpman Obina asked if I could tag along with him down below in the pump room ., Blindly I said yes and was relieved that he asked, Seriously I'm glad that I could get some time off from the "toxic" berating environment on the deck and a little change of working scenery would do the trick, a breather from all the annoyance from the Indian chief mate.

 

As usual the Pump room is flooded again with water mixed with black sticky oil, and it's no surprise that we had to pump it out a thousand times by now. It's basically the same old routine work, and for now the water below the pump room is more colored black than the usual., as in coffee creamer black.

 

The following morning …..

 

I was awoken on the vibrations from my cabin, and felt that the ship is actually moving. Immediately I looked outside and saw that indeed the ship was moving , but at a very slow pace. The ship must have heaved anchor and moved when I was asleep, and was not informed. Anyway I'm glad they didn’t , because if they did - it will only result that I don’t have any decent rest and they're ruthless enough to let me suffer from over-exhaustion. 

 

At about noon time , this ship dropped anchor still somewhere in the anchorage area of Singapore to wait for the De-mucking crew that will arrive to clean up the remaining sludge inside the cargo tanks. By the time I ended my working shift , I heard from O.S. "mark" that they have already arrived and is now setting up shop on the deck area. When I got back on my midnight shift, these de mucking crew were resting for the big day of work for them by tomorrow.

 

On noon, Chief mate Dsouza made a deck crew meeting on the ships office to inform us on what to do. It was discussed that the working shift will retain to be a four to four hour work shift , instead of being originally intended by chief mate to be a 6 to 6 hour shift. Pump man Obina and BOSUN Rodrigo will remain to do day work , Despite Chief mate insisting that Pump Man will go on watch work (good thing Pump man talked his way out). 

 

On the first day , things were doing well. Regardless that I had to wear the lame orange norstar uniform because the superintendents were around and have to tag along with them on their inspection with those cargo tanks. The De-mucking crew were doing their usual business in removing oil and muck on the cargo tanks and such, as a matter of fact they were so busy that they looked more like built a makeshift town above the deck area.

 

Originally we were not supposedly to enter nor meddle with the affairs with the De-Mucking crew. We were just there to basically watch and see them work and of course guard the accommodation space so that those guys don’t steal anything inside, Unfortunately recent update told us by Chief Mate Dsouza said that we should now check the progress of the De-mucking crew and enter the Cargo tanks frequently every now and then, even added that if we have any complaints about this then we can kindly ask the superintendents about this. The details why we have to meddle is that apparently one of the superintendents that came in complained that the "De-mucking" crew were working very slowly and that nobody in the deck even bothers to make rounds and check to see what are they doing. Of course that is "according" to the superintendents, or am I mistaken and thinking personally that this is just a personal excuse made by our "company dog" Myanmar Ship Captain (perhaps even the Indian Chief Mate) just to make our working routine more difficult. When asked by Bosun Hector Rodrigo if entering of these tanks and meddling with the affairs of the De-mucking are "paid" , Chief mate Dsouza replied "he will still consult the captain about this".

 

"STILL CONSULT ?!!!!" What the fuck does that mean ???!!! Excuse me do I come from their country and order people around to work for free ?! This just simply meant that they want us to do more task on our work FOR FREE, - what a pathetic excuse !!! I think they're just telling this to us because they want to impress the superintendents and having their presence around gives them a big hard on. Damn Company dogs !!!      

 

Anyway despite all the negative, it does come an opportunity for me to gather data on how inside the cargo hold tank looks like. It would be great for me to take pictures or even a video inside one of these cargo tanks. Since the public is already familiar on how a deck area looks like but got only a few glimpse on what is inside in the cargo tanks.

 

In other news

 

Looks like that O.S. "mark" will be moving in again on my cabin temporarily., as usual the reason is the lack of available cabins for the visiting Superintendents for the dry dock. From what I heard this ship will be expecting six superintendents (and this includes the annoying superintendent "Si thu Thwin" ), Well there's a vacant room being left behind by Fitter Lorzano when he returns home but it looks like that BOSUN Rodrigo has already got his greedy eyes on that space - So it leaves "Mark" no other choice but to tag along until Ship repairs on the ship yard will be over (which is for a month). Anyway I don’t mind having a roommate around and got used to the idea here that I'm sharing a room,. Besides Mark is a easy to get along with and I have no problems with him.

PREP FOR DRY DOCK 3

Journal Entry: August 29, 2016 Monday

Location: OPL Anchorage area, Singapore

 

 

 

The four to four hour working shift now has been implemented and as usual, most of the crew here are wondering why the sudden change. Basically this four to four shift was unnecessary at all in the first place and most people here are just standing around doing nothing on those four hours, including myself. 

 

For me, I never cared about this and the only thing that mattered is that I finished this working contract as soon as possible. It's not my call on that, and probably the reason why the management here decided that a four to four hour shift would be implemented was on the fact that they wanted to retain the number of people working but wanted to pay less on the overtime., Smart but not that clever.

 

When my work shift started, were now "entering the cargo tank" phase, which mean that chief mate is looking inside the cargo tanks and seeing if the tank cleaning methods were effective, but before entering those cargo tanks we had to use a chain block to open those cargo hatches as it got stuck because of heavy corrosion. Its hinges have apparently had fused badly on the rust and it was a tedious work getting them moving again.

 

Late on my watch , there has been another change on the schedule. This time the four to four schedule still remains but there a "retention" on my afternoon shift which I had to start two hours earlier.  For short I'd start work after coffee break which is 10:30 and work all the way up to 4pm. Tsk, honestly I couldn't figure out what's going on in the managements head here, and the new work schedules is no different from the 6 to 6 hour shift previously, and the worst part on this so called "retention" is not being paid at all., as in free slave work for the all mighty. His lordship - the "company dog" Myanmar ship captain .

 

In other news on work.

 

I would like to include on this journal entry that our lovely captain has been making questionable decisions lately , such us making us dump oily water coming from the pump room. Although he is saying it "indirectly" such as we have to take a look if the water is oily enough then we should dump the water  to the slop port side cargo tank , and if the water is clear enough it should be dumped to the deck directly to the sea. The captain wasn't exactly bright , and doesn't figured out that the water in the pump room is mixed with black oil as like being put in a blender , separating oil and water is absolutely impossible.

 

As a result, they came with an idea that we should "filter" out the most obvious part of the oily water - The black oily blobs, the black thing that floats, based on the perception that oil is light than water . So he used cotton and a lot of rags to filter and scoop floating oil particles. Anyway despite all this talk it doesn’t change the fact that technically this ship is still dumping oil at, and that they're lucky that Far East region (Asia pacific area) doesn’t have an effective enforcement of maritime laws, like in this case MARPOL. As a perception of an expendable rating like myself, doing a lot of prohibited stuff is much easier in a third world country ( and region) is way a lot easier to do than in European or in the America's (atlantic region) , in my case and what I'm experiencing Captain Wai Phyo Aung (myanmar national)  and Chief Mate Sydney Santano D'souza (indian national) know fully the consequences of dumping oil at sea especially in anchorage area and yet they made a willfully disobeyed on the MARPOL law. Why ???? Because these company dogs wanted to impress the company by saving money on the "cleaning crew service" that will de-muck this ship. They care more of pleasing the company than obeying international law or even crew welfare.