MESSAGE FROM A FELLOW MIGRANT WORKER

Wasn't feeling well on this past couple of weeks , from my ever recurring allergies.  Somehow this allergies I had been having are being more a bother rather than an annoyance. In  any case I didn’t write on this not to discuss my health problems but talk about a message I got from fellow migrant worker. 

When I opened my face book to read the usual threading post , I was surprise to have a message from someone I don’t even knew. At first I was wary, doubtful that I would be getting such mail. I even had thoughts that this would be a "hate" mail coming from my fellow Filipino sailors in the social media, who were simply either jealous to other peoples efforts (crabby mentality) or too blindly "loyal" to their faction companies (a.k.a. "butt kissers", sipsip ) and I already received hate mails from the past .

After a couple of days ignoring the mail , I finally decided to read it and when the first letters came out on the screen it was not as what I expected. It turns out that this was a message from fellow migrant worker and honestly i don't really know what to say or what to write about his message,. It's really uncommon that people do appreciate my blog and work, even more uncommon is receiving praise from a fellow migrant worker telling me to keep up on my work and appreciate my writing

I haven't thanked him fully on his message., and if I did, I don’t really know where to start since I don’t really know his exact name and there is no words to express that someone out there really does understand the life of not only a seafarer but an OFW as well. It's the least I can do to at least thank him here on this blog entry I make.

Whoever you are, you have my respects not only as a fellow OFW but as a fellow Filipino., We are paying the price working overseas because of the mistakes of our fore fathers, who instead of fixing our country , left it in more broken state than it was before.

Here is his message untranslated from our local national language in Filipino.

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Bro! Una sa lahat, Maraming Salamat sa Inspiration na nabibigay mo sa akin araw araw, binabasa ko from the start of your journey sa work mo from being a call center agent to your life as a seaman. Pinahanga mo ako sa laban mo sa buhay after all the struggles sa life mo, you kept your honor and dignity as a man, maski madami ang di nakakaunawa sa principyo mo. Astig ka brod! Isa kang bayani sa akin kasi ako man ramdam ko tulad mo yung araw araw na struggles in life, sa work, mga ka trabaho na mga kupal haha, at hilig pareho tayo, video games! Magkaiba lng tayo ng lakbay, ako landbased ofw ikaw sa gitna ng dagat mas mahirap yung saiyo wala sa kalingkingan kaya kung ako nahihirapan sa work dito sa abroad (saudi as i.t) mas mahirap naman saiyo. Kaya bilib ako dre sa iyo! Tuwing hapon pag napasok ako at nasaharap ng computer ko, iniisa isa kong basahin ang entries mo, nakaka inspire, similar kasi tayo sa ugali, ma pinsepyo at talagang minsan hindi nag papaawat or hindi nag pipigil ng nasaisipan natin at talagang pagnakita atin ang mali, talagang nag rereact na. Madami talagang butt kisser sa company, crabmental na pinoy at sila talaga ang iingatan mo, kasi pwede ka talikuran anytime at pahirapan pa dahil sa inggit. Anyways mahaba na ito, at napadaan lng ako at hinanap ang fb mo para masabi ko sa iyo na nasa 2015 year na ako sa blog mo at patuloy na nagbabasa ng lakbay mo sa buhay. Ingat ka dyan palagi kapatid. Hangga ako saiyo tol. wag ka magbabago sa principyo mo, ikaw ay ikaw at yan ang respeto ko sa iyo. Totoo kang tao sa mundong puno ng kasinungalingan. God bless sa iyo at family mo. Always bro!

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SMALL STEPS

Only a couple of days left before my vacation should officially end, and somehow I'm not really that optimistic of going back to work and in general be trapped again on a ship full of coconut worshipping people. Frankly I'm really not that eager to go back soon on seafaring, and wish that my vacation would be a little more longer.  In addition , My previous employer TCC is not that comfortable to work with ,to say the least and I'm not looking forward to work with them soon if the need is not that desperate.

To be fair with my current employer , they're no angels but compare to the everyday horror that tormented me on UPL - Shell. I'd definitely rather choose hanging out with TCC than with them.  But in general and given with free will and choice, I would opt for neither of them.

In any case ,I estimate going back again for work wouldn’t take that much effort this time and only left for me to finish are a few simple task like finishing "MISMO" and replacing paper certificates that I lost during my disembarkation on my last ship. In fact I could have already finished the task right about now if I wasn’t hampered with a few mistakes ( like lending people money )and it will serve a lesson for me on my next vacation that I should not lend money to people even if I knew them personally.  People's hearts tend to be fickle especially when it comes to money , and I don’t want to repeat those mistakes that people won't even bother to pay their debts

Anything else besides that is only minor and can be resolve even if I didn’t totally finished it. Speaking of which I haven't finished yet in completing all the anime  downloads that I have to. Starting from the list letter "A" all the way to letter "Z" , I have only made my way in to the letter "G" criteria, so basically there is still a ton for me to work with and download before I get to finish my anime collection. I do hope that before I go back to work , I have already significantly downloaded at least half of the anime catalog on the website.

A lot of people might be wondering on why I'm so much obsessed in collecting media like movies, anime, TV series etc., while I'm still in here in the Philippines. The main primary reason on why I have to do this is because is the fact that since my job requires to be isolated for a majority of time , if not all of the duration of my working contract., I have to have some form of entertainment to reduce the feeling of my work from being in a prison like situation, and at the same time it provides me security to stay inside my cabin all that time and that I don’t have to socialize to toxic people. I'm personally lucky that I became a seafarer in the digital age , and that such huge storage devices for media like hard drives are already common compared to sailors atv least 20 years back.

On my point of view being isolated and shut in is not totally that bad, as what other sailors might perceived, In fact it's totally the opposite in reality and that a Filipino sailor would be better off alone remaining to be Isolated and disconnected from fellow sailors onboard (specifically fellow Filipino sailors). From my personal experience in this work for nearly a decade, socializing with fellow sailors is the worst possible idea a person can think of. There is no assurance that the he or she won't have a toxic obnoxious attitude and will not be a threat latter on., Shunning and practicing isolationism is the right thing to do rather than socialize with toxic people.     

Don’t get me wrong socializing and interacting with people are good , but how can we tell they are trust worthy especially to our own kind (Filipino Sailors). Socializing and trust are two different things , if a person is not confident or trust his surroundings , it would be better off going solo.

During the course of a Filipino sailors career based on my experience. He can only find very few friends on work, only enemies and more obnoxious bosses and co-workers  

M.I.S.M.O.

        (MISMO VIDEO GUIDE I SAW IN YOUTUBE)

Just a few more days for me to wait before I get off on my ass again. Hopefully this should be interesting enough for me in the coming of days ahead.

Speaking of , there have been some changes on MARINA . Apparently from what I have been hearing lately , Marina has apparently shifted in going "Digital" when it comes to processing employment papers for sailors in the Philippines and they named their digital systems of documentation "MISMO" (in English translation from Tagalog local language here, it means "Instant").

In a technological innovation perspective, "MISMO" is a very good idea - that is if the Philippines is a first world country to begin with. In theory "MISMO" system would have been a very effective and efficient way on how to deal the logistical problems of processing working papers for filipino sailors - But like I said, its IN THEORY…..,

Unfortunately it's not and from the looks of it the systems is adding (or feeding) more of the problem in processing documents than solving it. "MISMO" is basically a good invention with a poor implementation scenario.  Apparently instead of processing the documents in a much faster rate , it turns out in reality that the systems is handling the processing of papers on a 450 percent slower than the usual rate. It takes roughly about a month to finish a single set of documents and probably even longer if the seafarer here has to deal with multiple sets of documents.

In any case on my part , I haven't personally gone on that part yet and more likely in had to deal with it later on since I have at least two sets of paper documents for MARINA to register. For now , my only agenda is to recover my brand new passport since I just renewed this last month. After that , it’s the part where I have to deal with this MISMO thing. And then after that I have to report back and show my face around  to my employer for my next ship assignment. On that part , I'm not looking forward in meeting TCC principal again and it would be better if they assigned me to a different ship owner, TCC for me has some issues - serious issues on their working policies.

Changing discussion topic here …

So how prepared am I in case I get reassigned again and be "deployed" on the next ship???

Basically I'm pretty much well prepared and ready. I have already prepared in advance the tools and equipment I'd be needing for the journey and plus keeping my luggage in check within the 20 kilogram limit per luggage (only two luggage are allowed , and one hand carried). The only thing missing on my luggage load out is the medicines and my electronic gear (which there's nothing missing or left out on my electronic equipment , I just simply haven't pack it up yet on my backpack)

For the meds I need , theres no rush rush need for it and most likely it will be completed later on. The meds I will be carrying will depend on what kind of environment the ship will be station with , like for example on what happened on my last ship assignment were the ship is mostly station on tropical weather . In that situation my meds are mostly composed of anti-dehydration and anti-heat medicines to keep me on my feet. If by bad luck I get assigned again on TCC, then I'd just simply reorder the types of medicines I used last time.

One thing I forgot to mention , One minor change will be put on my arrangement in my luggage equipment. On my earlier years most of my electronic gear is stored on my hand carried bag (back pack) . It was fine like that but unfortunately there's no assurance that hand carried luggage will always be "no weight" limit at the airport and given on that kind of situation, I don’t want to end up throwing some brand new flashy media player or computer on the trash bin just because I had to cut weight on what I'm carrying.  So for now most of my electronic will be swapped and put on my second luggage bag (personal items) and in turn some stuff on my second luggage will now be put on my hand carried bag.

It will give me comfort that if ever my hand carried luggage will suddenly be scaled for weight at the airport , The only stuff that I'd just be throwing out will be just some clothes and unessential stuff , not the expensive high end flash stuff.

BACK AGAIN TO WRITING

After months of suffering from "writers Bloc" ., I am now back again on writing and updating my blog. I guess its inevitable that id be back from writing anyway after months of being away.

On those months that I was missing from writing , I was heavily occupied on playing video games, the war multiplayer type of video games like "call of duty :Modern Warfare" franchise. I was deeply engrossed on playing it with my coworkers that for the past months I was at almost playing with them every night and that the only Breather and relief from playing that game was when the ship would be near Australian territorial waters  because everybody is busy hooking up on the internet in social media.

The game was deeply fun and addicting that , I even went thru the effort of making the sequel game ( Call of Duty: Modern Warefare 2) copy I got to be playable on LAN connection. It was very rewarding that I got it to work and be played on the local LAN, however despite my much effort on making it playable to LAN. My coworkers never liked the idea, thus we still got stuck in playing the old version of the game in the end till my final days on that ship.

in my final days onboard that ship , was almost smooth sailing and had no problems that I encountered at - In fact the new Bosun is more lenient than the previous one, to the point that I can now LAX on my day to day work. No more are the days that I have to be careful on what I was doing, basically the whole remaining days were trouble free.

My departure on that ship was sudden but not totally unexpected., It was a good thing that I had a contact on one of the crew relievers and that I was already informed by them that they will be arriving soon. In fact if it weren't for their early tip, I would have pack my luggage in a hurried fashion. It was really helpful that I had those contacts and that the information that our beloved Chinese captain was notoriously inaccurate (that cunt only informed me less than 24 hours that my reliever crew would be arriving and the day before that , he clearly said in the meeting that no crew change will be done while the ship is still in port . )

Before i left , I got a good sum of money around as pocket money for things I wanted to buy at the airport. When I disembarked I was dressed really well that I got attention from people onboard., Maybe I dressed so formally that everybody  thought I was attending some sort of wedding or something.

It never bothered me to dress like that , and I had the confidence of wearing it because of two things. One is that the weather in Australia at that moment was pleasant enough for me to wear a formal coat , (although it would have been better if I disembarked at night time hours since the temperature there would have been much cooler like 9 degree's ). The second reason is that I'm not planning to go back again to TCC principal - EVER !! So I'm not holding up on what dress I have to wear since this will be the last time they will be seeing me before I will move on to the next. I don’t think personally that my stay in TCC principal would be enjoyable and I never wanted to settled down on the far east campaign permanently . I still want to be stationed on work in the Atlantic area of the ocean and roam around Europe and the America's. Its pointless to be just hanging around in the pacific,

 

Mean while

Nearly a month has passed since I arrived here, and I had already almost finished the replacement, repairs and upgrade on the equipment I would be using for my next ship assignment.

I would say that my equipment has a lot of changes and would be almost different from the ones I would be using on my previous journey. Almost all of the equipment that I ordered came from an online store (lazada) , and since I,m ordering this on an online store , I don’t need to go to different places just to search those items and I virtually just stayed on my house to wait for it to come and never went anywhere.  I do hope that the equipment I got online is more durable and that I didn’t not practically wasted 15,000 PHP on online items for improvement.

Speaking of cost , it took me only roughly about 25,000 all in all to upgrade my equipment's which includes also some items that is not work related at all. Comparing the numbers on I used to spend before , I could say that my expenses have been very efficient. In fact it's so efficient that the whole payoff I got on this trip could have me going for about 6 to 9 months' vacation. If my sister didn’t  plunder some of my money and used it for her upcoming wedding, I could have lasted on six months' vacation. To sum it up , she got at least almost roughly close to 40,000 PHP in total now. I remember earlier as soon as I got here , She was asking as  much as 50,000 PHP from me which fortunately I turned it down and reduced it to 25,000 PHP instead, Otherwise the total money that would be lost would exceed far more than 80,000 PHP or simply saying its as far as two thirds of the total money I have earned on this journey. I had to turn down and reduce the money she was asking .

In other News

Its been months again and I can't seemed to write about anything at all. Maybe because I was all too busy in gaming that I didn’t notice time went by just like that and I didn’t even bother paying attention at all in updating my blog. Honestly there's no progress on what I have been doing other than sit around and play "Stellaris" on my gaming PC.

Since I have been all hooked up in playing "Stellaris" all this time., I might as well describe it here on my blog entry. First off "Stellaris" is a German made game and its an "RTS" (Real time strategy) kind of game and not a turn based one. Story revolves around on how to build and manage a  stellar empire and conquer an entire galaxy and fight other civilizations out there - galaxy wide, and yes there are space battles here , command and conquer style.  Basically the player here would be building hordes of Fleets and a huge army to maintain a military superiority and at the same time manage civilian structures on a planet.

Story wise , the plot looks more similar to BattleStar Galactica (TV series) or Halo (Video Game francise). The player would be commanding fleets of ships and protecting the settlements, Game is more on civilian management than simply warfare overall.

For me i had been playing this game for at least 3 weeks now and i haven't triggered (or unlocked yet ) the galactic crisis scenario which basically means fighting of some sort of doomsday event with military might. I'm not exactly sure why I haven't triggered that event yet maybe I needed to wait more or maybe I have to unlock some things first. In any case up to this moment, I am still waiting and figuring out on how to unlock it.

THE GRIM REALITY

Most college kids (studying maritime a.k.a "seaman") don't really know this info and few people spoke openly about this system , those who speak and question this working practices are either hunted down and ostracized or worse totally black listed and forever banned to be a seafarer.  .

This is just a repost on the article i had read on a maritime news site , its up to the reader on how he / she will interpret this

https://marine-cafe.com/filipino-maritime-cadets-as-modern-day-slaves/

This illustration is actually half true, In reality its not exactly lasting for months in servitude. In the grim reality its actually years , as in two long years or maybe even longer .

Filipino maritime cadets as modern-day slaves

by Barista Uno | Jul 2, 2019 | Manning and Training, Seafarers' Rights and Welfare | 0 comments

Filipino maritime cadets as modern-day slaves
Most people will find it hard to imagine a maritime cadet being tied to a rope as in the circa-1848 watercolour drawing (pictured above) attributed to Afro-Peruviain painter Francisco (Pancho) Fierro. The indigenous slave depicted is balancing a plate on his head as he follows a Peruvian soldier on horseback. The truth is that the things Filipino cadets do as unpaid office help for the manning agencies and seafarers’ unions in Manila are no less egregious.

What could be more demeaning for a would-be ship officer than to be ordered by a secretary to go out and buy pizza for the company staff? Or to be made to wash dishes and clean the office toilet? Yet, many go through such indignities for the chance to go to sea and complete the 12-month shipboard apprenticeship required for graduation. It could be many months before they finally get the big break.

Anyone with an ounce of moral discernment will see that making cadets work without pay is not only exploitation. It is a form of slavery. Surprisingly, manning agents and even some seafarers find nothing wrong with this shameful practice. They say working for free in a crewing company or a seafarers’ union is voluntary on the part of the cadet. Moreover, the cadet can learn certain office skills he or she can later put to good use as a ship officer. Those who make such stupid arguments overlook or ignore two important points.

First, the cadets who serve as unpaid flunkeys are forced by circumstances to do so. They have very little choice. The International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW) requires aspiring officers to complete one year of apprenticeship at sea. Alternatively, they can join a vessel as able seaman, wiper or oiler. However, they will have to serve in these capacities for three years versus 12 months for an apprentice officer. That is assuming they can be hired in the first place.

Second, there is a huge difference between servitude and internship. The latter is a legitimate practice accepted around the world and in many professions. It enables the intern, who may or may not get paid, to gain some work experience or satisfy certain requirements for a qualification. Buying pizza for the office staff (some cadets to it whilst wearing their white cadet uniforms) can hardly be called internship.

Interestingly, cadets who are taken in as slave labour by manning companies are referred to as “utility”. The use of the term even by certain academics is very telling. Like the infamous buzzword the human element, it shows how language is used to objectify seafarers and rob them of their humanity. But what else can one expect in maritime Manila with its crass commercialism and decadent culture?

~ Barista Uno