With a
sudden turn of events , Messman Christopher Cemina's Father died and he
requested to be repatriated and had to argue on the management over the phone.
Given with the circumstances., it was all of a sudden that our wishing optimism
on going home because solid when the management finally agreed to send us home
along with Messman - they did agree but not without serious problems., as if
like they are taking it personally.
Good thing
for me I had already prepared my luggage and that I had been ready incase a
situation might arise that we had to disembark on very short notice - I wasn’t
wrong about that and that is what exactly happened on me. We already knew that
we are disembarking but apparently nobody here on this ship bothered to tell us
on what time or told us in advance on the specific.
Instead
what happened was that ., they intentionally told us to finish our work first
and literary tell us on the last five minutes that our replacements are coming.
So what happened on me during that time was that I immediately came rushing
from the deck towards to my cabin to remove and change clothes.
I hurriedly
grabbed my clothes and luggage
After the
surprise disembarkation (which the indian officers didn’t even bother to
annouce us earlier) ., we immediately went to port security - there I was
bothered that there might be open luggage serches - good thing mess man cermina
assured me that fujirah luggage searches are a thing of the past and all that
was going to do was simply put all of our luggage's to the x-ray machine.
Simple as that.
After that
we proceed to the immigration office of sort ., which I found out first hand
that getting a UAE Visa takes only a couple of minutes . Contradicting on what
earlier the principal Norstar was telling us that its takes weeks to arrange a
visa for the crew . To simply put they were basically lying and was not even
planning to send us home even if we have already finished our working
contracts. During that moment , it didn’t bother me to know the truth and what
matters at the moment is that we are all getting home.
After that
., our agent managed to get us checked in to a local transit hotel for a few
hours before our flight . The flight tickets shown was "Philippine
Airlines" which is notorious for giving very poor service to overseas
filipino workers .,
At the
airport ., It was unexpected for me to encounter "over weight issues"
on my luggage - in fact I haven't encountered this kind of crappy treatment in
years., I can imagine that even my hand carried luggage has to be exactly at
least 7 kilograms and they had to weight exactly - as they have a weighting
scale both on the checking in booth and boarding booth to check each passenger.
Anything beyond that weight - the helpless OFW will be forced to throw away
stuff on this so called "collection bin" (which is conveniently
located just beside the board terminal) or pay an extra cash for the overweight
fee's which is gimmicky in nature for the Filipino flight carrier to suck more
cash on his fellow countrymen .
On my
situation I was forced to throw away a lot of stuff because during 15 minutes
before boarding time ., my back pack was weighted on a scale and it registered
17 kilograms ., I was even on the verge of throwing away two laptop computers
because of this annoyance and if not for the pity of one ground which advised
me to just pay the excess two kilograms.
Philippine
Airlines may sound Patriotic pride to some ears on our fellow filipino but for
an OFW , it is best not to trust even your own country and travel on this
flight carrier . Travelling on Philippine airlines is very uncomfortable and
reflects on how money hungry and a scammer (Filipino Chinese)businessmen are.
Can imagine that if I would compare Philippine Airlines to a local provincial
bus say like victory liner - I would definitely prefer riding a bus any day
rather than taking a flight on any plane of Philippine Airlines .,
Philippine
Airline is simply Horrible when it comes to the accommodations., No on-board
entertainment (the TV screens on the seats) and the whole cabins is so run down
and I could imagine that probably Philippine Airlines just buy a pre-owned 2nd
hand planes from a garage sale somewhere. In Any case Philippine Airlines
should be avoided at all cost by a filipino OFW and traveller as much as
possible ., otherwise the unsuspecting traveller will be surprise on how
uncomfortable and unpleasant theyre travel is.
Two days
have passed since my arrival in the airport, and once I got back to the house ,
I was greeted with a creepy silence of a place I once called home. Mom and Dad as I had written on my previous
entries has passed away last year with only a difference of 4 months apart, It
has left a huge silence and void here, as well as a space in my heart. The
place feels familiar yet it is different
I woke up
as if I was in a different universe..
On my past
two days I had been trying to be busy and caught up, resupplying and rebuilding
my gear and luggage that I will use on my next ship. I had to replace some of
the obsolete gear and swap it for a much light and more durable one and totally
scarp out the totally unusable ones, aside from that update my multimedia of
movies and anime. For now it's still a lot of work and I haven't even finished
it by half on updating the new movies that came past 2016. As for the anime's I
had been busy on buying pirated copies and then ripping off the CD's and saving
the data to the external Hard Disk Drive (HDD) - I'd continue updating my anime
library as much as possible while I'm still here.
As
for my leave pay its still being though on how can I get it, I'm not exactly
sure if calling over by the phone to get
my leave pay will be a great idea - or it will work at all. The only thing I do
know is that CF Sharp will not be happy to see me when I show my face around in
the office. For the time being , I'm managing the limited resources I had on my
wallet and grabbing anything that might help me around. Incase CF Sharp is not
willing to pay me back on my months' salary along with my leave pay , then I'd
be forced to abandon it or go there personally and claim it (in the expense that I'd be massacred by the fleet
manager).
Frankly I
still consider going to CF Sharp office just to claim my leave pay and final
wages , far too dangerous and that something bad might happened on me when I
show my face up, After all its already an establish fact that CF Sharp plays
dirty in the maritime community here in the Philippines and to add more on
their dirty cards is that they got a corrupt workers union on their payroll
called "United Filipino Seafarers" lead by the Seaman Mafia Leader
named Nelson P. Ramirez. Its only on my right mind to assume the worst possible
thing to happened to me when I show my face up.
Recently
I had my health checked out in private hospital (Marikina Valley Medical Hospital)
and diagnostic clinic ( St. Ignatius,
Centro Medical ) , I had been having
abdominal pains for the past 4 months and it's really a discomfort and I need
to know why. After a couple of test , I was lucky that they didn’t find
anything - so I guess it means I'm still good on working in this cursed job as
a sailor.
