END OF BT SEMINAR

July 14, 2018

Seminar in ZRC took very quick and 2 days was very fast if the company I'm hanging with is interesting. I had always thought that this seminar with just go along professionally and go along with our own lives without any attachment, guess I was wrong on that part. Probably because the class I encountered with was majority of it coming from passenger crew and that the crew there tend to be more civilized than cargo related crew.

On the second last day of the seminar (Monday) ., everybody had to come along on the attendance because "Mr. Benigno" was reassigned to a different class to teach., no more easy going when it comes to the seminar. Unfortunately for the class the instructor that was assigned wasn’t as lenient as Mr. "benny" and was a totally douche when it comes to handling people ., ABOSULTELY NO CELLPHONES around entirely even during breaks. Some of my classmates were unlucky and got scolded over this cellphone policy.,  A lot of people don’t like Mr. Santiago around and more than half the class hates him.

Turns out why Mr. Santiago was such a douche was because he's came from the infamous PMMA ( Philippine Merchant Marine Academy) and folks coming there typically lack in manners, I myself avoid these people like the plague. Of course people from the passenger crew don’t exactly know the real deal from folks coming from PMMA., for them this person is just imaged as a person with attitude problems.

Anyway luckily for us at the class ., Mr. Santiago gets only to be an instructor for only a couple of hours, he will be replaced after that by an assessor which basically will handle the exam for this seminar.

As expected the exam for the seminar was easy , everyone passed. Exams on this seminars should be taken lightly after all , I haven't seen any person flunked his / her seminar exam.

Now that the lectures on this seminar is over ., the practical exam will be followed on the next day. The practical part of this seminar is very easy , it has no exams and the only objective to accomplish here is sign the attendance sheet. The only problem I see is that I have to carry some working clothes for the seminar and that I have to wake very early to be on the meeting area , so I won't miss out the bus.

Its unfortunately that I won't be able to ride on the metro train this time and I have to commute from marikina all the way to ermita malate area since the LRTA trains isn't open yet at 5am. I did make it in time and almost all of my classmate did arrive as well except for two folks "Leni" and some other guy who will directly go on the training site.

We arrived on the training site at about 7am and immediately we dressed ourselves on working clothes for the drill,. The instructor on the site told us on what to do in the drills and such and what we should expect. The first drill we had was the fire drill , it was easy and just went by in a snap. And after that we took on a small break.

During the break I found out that one of my classmates came from the dreaded PMMA school , and I said to him that for a PMMA kid , he's a bit more friendlier than the rest of his kin

Now the second drill exercise we had was difficult on my part normally because I cannot swim and swimming drill for me is such a pain. Even with a life jacket I can be easily distinguished from the class because of my inept skills on water, good thing for me this will not be a problem on this seminar despite me having to jump on about 4 meters in height to the water and swimming my way toward the floating platform.

At about 2pm , the whole drill exercise is finished and we proceed back to the training center via bus., we waited for an hour or 30 mins for our certificates to be released  and after that we headed off in our own different ways     

BASIC TRAINING IN ZRC

July 08, 2018

Seminar on "BASIC TRAINING" started out over a week ago in ZRC., and honestly It took me by surprise that this seminar is the most interesting of all seminars I took so far.

Hanging out with cruise line crew Trainee's is much more entertaining than folks from cargo crews and honestly they are more liberal and easy to talk with compared to trainee crew coming from cargo ships which are plagued with Ego problems (tankers, bulk , gen cargo etc) . They're so liberal that they are not afraid to speak out on what inside their minds and they just act normally as what folks back in land behave. I could really tell the difference from trainee's coming from cargo ships to trainee's coming from cruise line / passenger ships.

 They have good social views favoring reform and progress. Personally I like my fellow cruise line trainee's here in this class and they are not bound by the autocratic environment (which is typical in cargo ship crews). It didn’t matter to them what is the background of a person, as long as were working together. Reminds me a lot of my time when I was still working back in the call center., People there are liberal and respect each person's civil rights.

I envy them and wished that the environment on how people behave in cargo ships should be like this., if that ever happens - then being a sailor in cargo ships is  a lot more meaningful and a lot better to live in. I'm very lucky to have that 95 percent of this class came from the cruise line / passenger ships.

Within two days this training seminar is going to end and I will certainly have mix positive feelings about this class., Overall I wished that I should have known more of them better  and longer before reality check comes in on me.

C.M.P. COMPLETE

For the moment, I'm currently in disposed on finishing phase one of my employment plans. Which is updating my training seminars. The first seminar I took is "CONSOLIDATED MARPOL" subject which is basically a compressed series of training seminars before. Years back getting  MARPOL certificate in the Philippines is per "annex" , which meant getting the whole subject thru six certificates (which is more costly because you pay the whole training six times) . Glad that now they have compressed it and not only do I have to pay it only once but the cost now in getting this has drastically been reduced, no thanks to stiff and fierce competition among training centers.

Now I only got the certificate by 850 PHP in ZRC training center located in Ermita manila (just beside U.S. Embassy). Fairly good price compared to my previous training center which is PNTC that cost around 6,000 PHP.

Honestly the whole training was a pain in the ass., because of its cheap price. They scheduled me to a night class which later on the last day shifted to a morning class, and ended me staying only on the house for three hours. Aside from that there's also a plague alert when one of my fellow trainee's arrived in classes with a high fever and rashes., Thankfully the instructor sent him home early and as a bonus he won't have to take a remedial class for it. 

Anyway due to budget concerns ., I will only take two training subjects. "Consolidated MARPOL" and "BASIC TRAINING" which is previous called "SOLAS" ., Only the important ones. The rest if there will be any trainings I had to take, will probably be announced on the next company I'd be hanging out with. If with luck ., I hope they won't announce any more new trainings.

Consolidated Marpol subject is now finished and the next subject will be Basic Training. It will take roughly another week and a half to finish this whole agenda before I move in on the next phase which is job hunting.

ANOTHER CHAPTER

It's been a month since my arrival in the Philippines again , and roughly about two months or three since I wrote anything.

For the moment I'm still trying to get the settling feeling and making myself comfortable now that I'm back home again. During that time I didn’t waste any minute in upgrading and replacing most of my equipment that I had on my luggage in preparation for the next ship work "tour". Well most of my equipment was replaced but the electronic equipment I will be carrying on my next ship work will be relatively unchanged, because I wasn’t able to upgrade them during and after on my previous ship. So it’s a huge possibility that the electronic equipment I have will be just simply be carried over on the next ship work I'd be into (in a different company).

On other news aside from the upgrades and overhaul on some of my gear., My separation with the UPL - Shell company was met with hostilities., especially with the crewing manager Jasmine Salvador which even threaten me that they'd have me being BLACKLISTED ., and denied of a sea service certificate.

Now black listed for what ??? I'm not sure what they'd put up but as far as I'm concern ., I'm a so called "contractual employee" and once the contract is over , I can freely leave the company - No strings attach ! . Besides I didn’t even spoke openly that "UPL SUCKS" in the social media like what I did in Cf Sharp. Heck I didn’t even sign on anything that might put me in debt or owe them money. So basically they got nothing on me and have no leverage on how they can trap my ass. Just to add they're so called threats are illegal to begin with and I could complain anytime on the department of labor about this issue.

Obviously that old shit bag is making hallow threats, Anyway that shit stick can threaten as much as she wants and it won't stop me from my decision in ditching  her crappy company. It makes me even thinking more that my decision is right all along.

In the end it was relieving that I finally got rid of them for good., Those bastards even took my marshal island seaman's book along with the Filofax holder with a shell logo that they gave me half a year ago. Anyway its fine on me since they're Filofax sucks and it's too bulky for my back pack anyway

As far as I'm concerned , I'm not going to change my mind over leaving them - even if I'm threaten or they have perks that I really wanted to have. The risk is greater than the reward for me if I stick around with them a little longer.