GETTING A SCHENGEN VFS STYLE

( C.P.O. means "Claus Peter Offen Tankschiffreederei" , which is a german company) 

 

For the moment "MCA" signing part on my medical is being put on temporarily hold for 24 hours , to attend on a more urgent matters like getting a Schengen Visa. CPO Crewing manager assured me that a liaison officer will be attending me and my co-worker "jayson" while were at the VFS Visa Company in Ecopark building in makati, In fact he said specifically that we don’t have to bring anything at all when we're going there and that the liaison Officer will be bring all the paper documents needed. For security purposes were also told that we shouldn’t bring any back packs or bags as well.

 

I came to Ecopark building very early since traffic in EDSA highway is very unpredictable and I had to be in VFS at exactly 10am. My co-worker "Jayson" arrived early as well because he lives far south like Cavite area. At first there was a bit of confusion given that there are two 7-11 stores nearby, I don’t exactly know which of the two is the actual meeting place. Good thing "Jayson"  clarified that it was the 7-11 store on the ground floor that was the meeting place for us and the liaison officer.  The Liaison Officer was very brief on his instruction and gave us our documents , he said he cannot accompany us inside with the security around and that only visa applicants are allowed inside.

 

Once inside it was the usual stuff like in any Visa application company (or embassy). Full of people minding their own business. Frankly European Visa is not strict when it comes to its applicants compared to the U.S. Embassy, Security checks are very light and very comfortable for any applicant. According to what our liaison officer told us we should proceed to the VIP processing section after going thru the I.D. picture booth. The I.D. picture booth was not exactly that "functional" as its wasn’t flashing when it took my picture , as a result I had the most embarrassing I.D. photo ever taken in my life, I literary looked like a retard version of Mr. Bean.

 

The VIP process section as I describe , is nothing more than a small lounge with snacks and a drink area with just only one attendant checking the documents. We only stayed a couple of minutes there but it was very comfortable , after that we proceeded to booth number 3 for the payment and after that we went on to booth number 6 for biometric data capture (actually it's just a finger print section). After that it concludes our Schengen Visa application, and we went outside to tell our liaison officer that were already finished with the Visa application. He told us that we had to wait a couple of days and he'd be carrying the documents we have back to the office. Based on what I read on the documents before we handed them to the liaison officer, it looks like that the Schengen visa I'm going to have is a bit inferior to the one's issued by Career Ship  Management. From what I read it’s a 3 day transit type visa compared to before that it’s a thirty day one , anyway a Schengen Visa is still a Schengen Visa.

 

"Jayson" and I rode a jeep and headed west direction towards the main EDSA highway, After that we parted ways since I'm going to back to my house and him on NAIA terminal 3 to fetch a relative.

 

On Cubao, I took the change in getting some cash by exchanging my 100 U.S.D. left on my wallet to the foreign exchange booth. I got from the exchange on that day is 4,585 PHP and will use the money to patch up my PSCRB seminar cert.

 

 

CLEARING CLINICOMED

 

 

Joenar wasn’t exactly happy to find out that I ended up on another principal instead of going directly to Vladimir Reyes. The problem here is that the miscommunication that happened between me and the security guard ended up me going to the recruitment office rather than directly to the 2nd floor office. By the time I realize something was going wrong , the CPO principal operations manager already got his hands on my paper and I could no longer pull it out and give it to Vladimir Reyes. Anyway I'm partly to blame on that part and had no excuses on it.

 

As soon as I handed over my papers to the CPO Operations Manager , I was immediately put to the CPO crewing manager and had been given a task to clear the medical exam A.S.A.P. , On the same day , I spent the time searching for the location of this so called "CLINICOMED" clinic somewhere in malate area Manila. The only clue I got was that the rough sketch of the place, that it was near "aristocrats" restaurant , Malate Church and Malate high school. Took me sometime to finally locate it and saw that it was on the same building as "BAHIA" shipping agency is. Unfortunately on my search I had to walk starting from T.M. Kalaw all the way to Quirino Area to search the clinic.

 

The following day , I made the usual preparations like any other medical related exam I had before like prepare my previous chest x-ray plates, go on fasting etc. Unfortunately for me I wasn’t able to get a stool sample. I took the LRTA -2 train in the morning and rode a jeep going to T.M. Kalaw street, after that I walked all the way to the location of the clinic

 

I entered "CLINICOMED" on the third floor , The place was decent and not that all hectic compared to previous medical clinics I had been before, and the best part of it was that they had a free Wi-Fi for their patients which made the waiting time for me to be nonexistent. Going to the registration area was not a problem and the staff was courteous and friendly, I did have a minor problem on the "mug shot" part in the registration given that my name was very long and had to squeeze writing it to the small whiteboard plaque.

 

Basically when I looked on the med test that I would go thru , I saw that ECG and Ultrasound diagnostic was not part of the PEME. Good for me in the sense that they won't detect any heart problems for me in case I have a minor electrolyte imbalance (i.e. Dehydration). The test was plainly the basics. On the exam , the thing I have to worry about is the X-ray part here. Apparently since the PEME is based on the MCA-UK kind of exam ,Meaning only x-rays 1 year and up will be recognized as for comparison and as for me, good thing for me I had around both my 2012 chest x-ray plate and march 2015 plates, that can be used for comparison. For the dental , I asked the dentist directly if there was any problem at all on my teeth , he gave me a direct answer that there is nothing to worried about.

 

The following day , I went back to CLINICOMED to check if there was any problems during my medical exam - plus I also have to recover the important chest X-Ray plates and submit my stool sample (poop sample). On the reception, the receptionist told me to see a doctor for the medical results. Upon entering and letting the doctor read my medical , she said that I have pending medical exams, namely Urinalysis needs to be repeated because trace amounts of "albumin" , I.Q. Test results was low and lastly is submission of poop sample to the laboratory. The latter was very easy and just submitted my poop to the lab, The I.Q. test was moderate and just plainly copy the answers on the master sheet and  I'm all set. The repeat urinalysis took me sometime to clear because I found out that retaking that exam cost 150 PHP

 

When the first I heard that retaking has a cost , Immediately went to the cashier and asked how much would it cost. She said it will cost me another 150 PHP on my wallet, being informed I immediately grabbed my wallet and checked my pocket to check if I had some money left for it. Incidentally I had exactly the money needed - not a peso less and not a peso more . However if I did paid the retake of the exam , it would mean for me that I have to walk all the way from malate church to marikina sta elena, as it will leave me penniless literary. I immediately sent an SMS to my sister to advise me on the situation and ask help as well. Her reply on the SMS was this , Proceed to use my money to retake the urinalysis exam and she will send me 200 PHP via money transfer by noon to cover my expenses. I took the urinalysis exam and waited until 1pm for the test results. Passing that means that there are no more pending sections on my PEME and that I'm already "fit to work" category. According to my sister passing the urinalysis means I have to piss first then drinks (or more like drown) lots of water before taking again the urinalysis.

 

Aside from that , I also recovered my chest x ray plate from CLINICOMED

 

At about 11 am , I received an SMS that from my sister that she had wired transfer  the reserve money I needed. I had simply had to find the nearest wire transfer money store (like western union) to collect the money. After 30 mins I had got the money and had to wait until

 

Upon success , I went to CF Sharp office to report for the contract signing and general info about the allotment forms, From what learned CF Sharp provide three allottee slots for the sailors relatives and their salary / payroll system is electronic based and relays heavily on Debit / visa cards. To put it simply - they rarely hand out money onboard the ships and sailors have to check their money via nearest ATM once they reach shore (implying that shore leave is essential to keep the money checked). I asked the crewing manager on why this is the case, he said that there was an incident involving piracy and to avoid the crew from getting robe (at least in the physical way) they devised the money to be in electronic form e.i. in ATM / Debit Cards. Anyway Aside from two allottement ATM's I have to open, The crewing assistant also said that I'm required to open a DOLLAR account for this in BDO bank to which my salary will be put there once I'm inside the ship. According to what I heard the minimum maintaining balance of the BDO dollar account is 100 U.S. dollars. Obviously I don’t have a hundred dollars right now and the management said that I could get a cash advance to lend me the money to open up that account.

 

On the Office booth, it was kind of the management to let me have a cash advance of about 200 U.S.D. and I took the offer because of two reasons. One is of course to open a U.S. Dollar account for payroll uses , the second reason was that I need the money to patch up for the expired documents I had which is PSCRB (now will be patched to be rPSCRB). Aside from the discussion about rPSCRB and BDO bank forms , another thing that was discussed was that I had to renew my Schengen visa (European visa and It's imperative to renew this A.S.A.P according to the crewing assistant) , Get a schedule for their in-house which is anti-piracy and PDOS and Some minor documents I had to get like NBI certificate and Phil- health.

 

For now my next objective is to get a Netherlands Schengen Visa , on eco plaza makati city.

 

 

BDO ATM / DEBIT CARD Terms and Conditions pictures I took in CF sharp (FOR PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE)

 

       

JOB HUNTING SORTIE

On the morning of March 28th , I set out to look for a job. Travelling is less costly (and less stressful) from marikina going to intramurous manila than marikina going to Evangelista makati. So I'm at least comfortable , I had already done a lot of thinking a few days back and I'm already sick and tired of deliberating over and over again on whether I should look for work or not after being put on holding status for 5 months now. That long wait for me is already justifiable enough to do some action rather than wait, Besides both options for me are uncertain. Uncertain if I could get a job and uncertain that my current company will ever call back at all. Frankly despite my advances in the maritime career , I don’t have the self-confidence as I had on a land based job (specifically BPO kind of work) , Probably because majority of the attempts I made in the past was met with disappointments and disasters.

 

My intent date to look for work was on the 28th but due to suffering a bad cold and cough, I had to postpone my sortie for 48 hours, until my health improves. On Wednesday , My health seemed to be ok and went to intramurous Manila. I came to the company at around 10:00 and I was literary a walk in applicant. Due to my little mistake with the guard (actually a misunderstanding which I will later apologize to my contact / sponsor there) I was put on a different principal that the one I was intently aiming at. As a result I had to do a longer version of the application process than the shorter one, In any case I went on the process of being interviewed repeatedly and taking two types of computer related exam, plus the trouble of being checked out for background checks. It did not pose any problems but however it took me a while to achieve my objective.

 

After achieving the Objectives. Some of the staff on the company asked me that if it's possible for me to be mobilized within 24 hours given that I had a U.S. Visa, I told them it's not exactly possible on the fact that there are a lot of things to consider first. I enumerated first that I don’t exactly have my passport yet and it's still on the current possession of my current company , aside from that I'm not sure if some of the documents I had are still valid , plus even if both of these are ok, I still had to deal with the medical clinic along with some other paper works like allotment slip on banks. So basically my answer was a big no , but I said it in a gentle way. The last part on my sortie was I had to talk with the operations manager which asked me a few questions, incidentally the room was a bit dimmer and the guy was creepy and scary kind of guy. Which the funny part of it was that the interview looked more of like an interrogation.

 

Before my sortie ends I was ordered by the to retrieve two things. One is the evaluation report and the other was sea service certificate (which is equivalent to "certificate of employment" document on any land based job).

 

The following day I went to Career Ship management, I wasn't comfortable in telling the company that I'd be leaving but of course there is no other option and I have to bid farewell to them. When I arrived I went directly to Captain Galang the operations manager and said my predicament. Captain Galang was very professional and friendly on our discussion certainly a real example of a good superintendent , Compared to other superintendents that I know from the past who are nothing more than a bunch of nasty sons of bitches. Captain Galang was very helpful and even pointed me on the right direction on where I would claim my documents and even put on a good word to the company I'm transferring that I'm scheduled to be promoted to A.B.

 

I recovered the few remaining documents they have in possession except the Certificate of sea service which I will recover by Monday. After that I'd be directly  submitting it to the company I'm transferring at. As for the confidential / evaluation report , It looks like that I won't be getting a copy of it at all because of some paper work problems from the principal (apparently they were lazy on the paper work).

 

On my way home, at the bus. I received a text and apparently this came from one of my most recent haters on my blog , "Chris rematotot" errr "Christian Remoto" . Anyway the text as usual is nothing but full of shit just like as his name is. Apparently even threatens me to report my blog to the company which I doubt because guys like him don’t have any balls, besides good luck to him if he ever does that, and he can give my regards to the crewing manager - more importantly I haven't heard of any sailor who got reprimanded because he was maintaining a blog. In any case it only shows proof on how stupid and idiotic this so sailor called "Christian Remoto" , can he think of something else that is original ??!! And if he's going to take vengeance, can he please hurry it up because I'm getting bored with all his talk but no action . He can just plainly kiss my ass !!! 

 

Anyway there isn't that much to expect on that stupid old Mongoloid aside from harassing people both on the internet and in real life , but from what I heard being dumb and stupid can be genetically inherited and let's hope that it won't be passed down to his children or else society will be again in burden for adding numbers to the mongoloid populace. Overall this reflects on how poorly civilized Filipino sailors are - that they stalk people. Anyway based on his SMS message he apparently comes from of the provinces, which is not surprising on the fact that most people there are savages and lack urban manners compared to people who came from metro manila area and Makati (or at least G.M.A. i.e. greater manila area) . I ask myself and wonder how jebsen even hired an idiotic savage like him ? Probably jebsen management is crapping out on their job and forgot to screen out people like these ? Or  maybe they have lowered their employment standards to pathetic levels. 

 

MESSAGE FROM A FRIEND

A week before Easter Sunday, I had a chat with my friend and college classmate on Face book and had a chat about my predicament. On the chat he told me that he sent an email to his crewing manager and I had to look for some guy named "Vladimir Reyes" of CF Sharpe Shipping Company. Obviously for me I see this was an invitation to join CF Sharpe's Band wagon and at the same time a guarantee that my friend will act as my sponsor (backer). According to my friend  he already sent an email to this crewing manager , something about "letter of recommendation" kind of stuff, so I won't have problems getting inside and probably they will be expecting me. Anyway It eases my mind that my friend would back me up and for the least I wouldn't have to think that looking for a job on that company will not end up me being chased out on the shipping office - (as what happened to me a lot times during my deck cadet years).

 

Given with this information (and invitation), I considered getting a job in CF Sharpe a top priority right now and had set aside other agenda's I have at the moment until I get some results from this , whether it’s positive or not. I already made preparations in securing a chest x-ray film copy for later use if in case things went well , and to add more effect on the "first impression" I also took a haircut so I don’t get on the wrong foot with crewing manager in case he has a nasty habit. Believe it or not first impressions last in looking for a job particularly in the shipping community.

 

For now I'm not totally uncertain in looking for a job as a sailor compared to years ago when I was still a deck cadet transitioning to an O.S. . Main reason is because of the fact that I'm experienced now and that my documents have more qualifications in it that it was years back, so overall estimate is that qualifications for an "ordinary seaman" won't be a problem for me once I get inside CF Sharpe's office at least on my perspective. I remember a few years back that I was marooned here in the Philippines by my former company and had little or no money at all on that time, to make it worst my employment experience was one a year and I had no license nor even have a U.S. Visa. Practically my employment situation at that time was very grim. The only thing good about my situation was I do not heavily relay economically on the maritime / shipping industry and had other skills. Now years later , I'm better off and could say that I'm at least "have something" on my work as a sailor.

 

PARABLE OF A FOOLISH FILIPINO SAILOR

"love your job but don’t love your company because you may not know when your company will stop loving you"
-Dr. APJ Abdul kalam
 
 
Recalling a few years back, some co-workers of mine kept babbling that I should love my work, they even insisted and argued to me that I should fanatically work hard FOR THE COMPANY. Now years later I'm glad I had proved them wrong, and that being so called loyal to the company could be disastrous - if not deadly overall, but anyway its for them to find out for themselves that they are wrong and I was right. What matters for me if I stand up on my ideas and don’t give a shit on those shitty sailors.
 
Coincidentally I was reading my blog in the net and saw what was written on my comments section. Apparently on this so called "Christian Remoto" didn’t like my post on my blog and said in "you know, I pity you. Pero di mo ba naisip na marami kami taga CSM sa mga blogsites mo. Ako taga jebsen pero may friends ako sa career at relatives sa senator. Di maganda ang mga blogs mo tol " …
 
Translation (You know, I pity you. But haven't you thought that there's a lot of CSM on your blogsites. I'm from jebsen but I have friends on career and relative in senator. Youre blog isn't pretty bro. )
 
Of course being familiar that as a Filipino sailor , conflict is always in our nature. I replied. "So ?? Anu gusto mo patunayan ? Tapos kana ? Kung ayaw mo blog ko - wag mong basahin bobo ! Ang hirap kasi sayo masyadong kang sipsip sa companya, yung tipo na sunod sunuran na parang bobong aso"
 
Translation ( So ? What are you trying to prove ? Are you finshed ? If you don’t like my blog - then don't read it dumb ass ! The problem with you is that you're an ass kisser to the company , the kind who obeys mindlessly like a stupid lap dog) .
 
Anyway I'm no stranger when it comes to these kind of idiotic ass licking Filipino sailors and as a matter of fact, "Christian Remoto" is a classic example of a foolish sailor. Always blindly obeying without ever thinking of where and what he is. Little does he know that Filipino sailors are contractual workers - meaning they're expendable. Any time the company sees an employee has outlived its usefulness, they can simply throw it away like yesterday's breakfast. NO MORE NO LESS - that is the rule in any capitalistic company.
 
From what the poor fool says , he's been from jebsen so meaning he's in a different company , now the question is since when did he cared on csm ? Frankly these idiot doesn’t even have an idea on what the fuck is actually going on CSM affairs and the only thing he does is piss off he's own kind.
 
 Anyway sailors like "Christian Remoto" are nothing more than a bunch of disgusting ignorant hypocrites who will never be wise enough to understand. They are simply too stupid and too pro company, plus the fact that he lacks civilized manners.  
 

AS FOR CHRISTIAN REMOTO , WHOEVER THE FUCK YOU ARE . WHY DON’T YOU  FUCKING CRAWL BACK TO YOUR COMPANY AND SUCK SOME COMPANY DICK, YOU PATHETIC SPINLESS COWARD, maybe the company will give you an award one day for the best company asshole licking employee of the year. !
 

ONLINE JOB HUNTING

It's very obvious that despite the advancement in the internet and social media when it comes to job hunting, the maritime community here in the Philippines is still backward when it comes to this and rarely use this advancement in looking for employee's. In other words the term online application system is not effective as it is compared to other job Industries like in the BPO (call center).

 

Here in the maritime community , despite some companies here have an online application system on their websites - none of them have an effective means of using it effectively. As a matter of fact they don’t even bother to contact each and every applicant that submits an online application form in their website. The cause is either their lazy or simple ignoramuses, who knows ???!. Fact here is that the online job searching for sailors via internet is ineffective and pathetic compared to BPO companies in the Philippines.

 

In the BPO community (or industry), Companies there have all the time to follow each and every applicant that passed their application form online regardless of the volume of applicant they received online, heck even some of them conducts interviews on the phone. Their so efficient in screening online that if you would compare it to the maritime industry online job application system (in any company). The maritime communities job hunting system online would be pathetically embarrassing.

 

The principle why BPO online job hunting is so effective is the fact that they have a saying "Time is money" and in order to save time, effort and money to job seekers, an online application is even encouraged - in literal sense they actually do not waste a person's time. The Maritime industry here in the Philippines sadly doesn’t live and practice those ideas and sadly put their applicants on the horrendous wasteful inefficient process. Probably they argued that "the more a person waste his / her time in the waiting area, the more he / she is interested" . The problem with the maritime community here in the Philippines is the fact that they are very slow and refuse to accept new idea's especially on the job seeking and job hunting experience , let alone the efficient use of those new methods. As a result employment process is clunky, time, effort and money wasting.

 

      

SPECULATION

All that I'm going to write are just speculations, rumors and mostly theories on what is going exactly on my current predicament with my company.

 

*For some time now , I have been here in the Philippines for a very long time given with the length of my stay , I had been thinking a lot of thing on why Career Ship Management hasn’t called me yet. One speculation I have is that that the principal I have (specifically CSM) wants to haggle on my salary, after all the salary being offered to O.S. on my previous principal was 1268 U.S. dollars , while CSM pays only 905 U.S. to their current O.S. which is at least 300 U.S. Dollars less - may not be much to some but if you translate it in Philippine Money its more than 15000 Php and cumulate that to about 9 months then the loss of income would be as much as 135,000 Php on the whole contract, The dirty tactic their playing is that their trying to put me on "indefinite hold" status in order to bow to pressure and accept the one sided terms. Probably they figured that  putting me 6 months or more without any income would force me to yield and accept the job offer of being paid less. In either case if this is the scenario than I could tell that CSM or Career Ship Management is an opportunistic and exploitative sassy bastard ! . I speculated this because I heard rumors lately about one of my co-workers "THEO"  has already been assigned to the ship CAPE TAFT which I recall correctly is one of the ships that has a similar pay rate as in CAPE TEXEL (ship I was assigned before the recall). Now the question here is that, I came in the Philippines first and how come my co-worker who just arrived on the latter gets to be in assigned first on the ship very similar to mine ?

 

*Another likely Scenario I came up is that, someone or something might have sent the office a bad report and that I'm being excluded because of this. At some point Mr. Nidoy might have something that he is not telling me. I recall back a few months earlier that CSM refused my transfer back to their principal and that Mr. Nidoy even called on my phone and asked if their was any problem I had with CSM, I replied to them that I don’t recall any of it and he's guess is as good as mine. Bottom line is that whatever is the reason why I'm staying here , coincidence or not - there is something blocking my progress.

 

*Another likely scenario, On the first week of 2016 I reported to Mr. Nidoys office and asked why I was pulled out on the line up. He said that the reason why I was pulled out was that my job position was replaced by Chinese workers and that CAPE TEXEL will be dominated by foreign crew.

 

*Why just leave if the employment conditions of Career Ship Management are becoming less desirable ? Leaving and resettling on another company is much easier and quick compared to earlier "deck cadet" years - as long as my U.S. visa remains Valid and intact , it should post no problems however coincidentally 2016 - 2017 memo from the MARINA (government agency handling maritime affairs in the Philippines) require all sailors to renew their certificates every 5 years starting 2017. To simply put most of my documents have now only less than a year of validity and sooner I will have to renew it. The hindrance from me leaving the company is because of the cost of renewing these certificates, The solution I had been thinking of in this kind of scenario is replacing my certificates with cheaper versions of the same kind of training certificates , another solution if there is no funding is I will have to take a local land base job to generate funding.

 

*Another likely scenario, is that Career Ship Management might be punishing me after some fiasco's that I had dealt with in the past , like my refusal to be assigned to Cape BARI and refusal to be dispatch on short notice in CONTI Guinea, and the latest was my questioning of being returned back to CSM , an d assigned to Cape Texel. I do admit that I had been at odds with Career Ship Management every ship assignment or so , but my only complaint on this matter if this was the scenario is that they should have told me directly about this - so it would be sparing me a lot of time figuring things out and spent the time wasted in looking for another company.

 

For the moment while writing this , I had been in the Philippines for 4 months , 2 weeks and 5 days already. Or equivalent to 142 days.

NATIONAL BREAKFAST DAY

National breakfast day - Frankly i never even heard of this holiday before ever in my life, but according to the McDonald's promotional commercial on T.V. they will be giving away free McMuffin sandwiches to the general public nationwide  - AS IN FREE FOR ALL on march 14, 2016 6am to 7am. The General public was very anxious to hear about this announcement and have been waiting for weeks for this. I myself can't wait on those free sandwiches and wanted to try out they're so called McMuffins. There's an old saying that "the best things in life are for free" so I got myself One McMuffin on that day , may not be much since Philippine Sandwiches are half smaller than the ones in foreign countries , but the thought of giving without asking anything in return to someone you don’t even know weighs more in kindness rather than the size of the sandwich.  

 

Praise McDonalds for being true on its commercial on giving those sandwiches for free on the general public, I was afraid that they might turn out to be like some kind of scheme, like any Philippine government social worker propaganda on T.V (or any Philippine government agency in general). where they only tell a partial truth and majority was a fabricated lie. Hopefully my suspicion on McDonalds turned out be wrong.

 

As for Jollibee , I'm pretty sure they a "NO COMMENT" on this matter.

UNCHARITABLE CHARITY

Wasn't exactly enthusiastic nor even delighted to hear about this so called PWD's invitation (person with disabilities invitation from the local social service) coming  the town hall from the start. However since I gave my word that I will attend their invitation when the social workers visited a couple of days ago, I decided to went ahead - after all this for my dad's sake, and dad's was actually the one invited and not me - I'm only serving as a guardian and tag along on dad since he could barely walk.

 

As expected, the reception and treatment we got from the municipal hall of cainta rizal was pathetic and mediocre at best. It’s a good thing that we came there as a group along with other PWD's (people with disability) and there's a cab that fetched us to and from the municipal hall of cainta Rizal. To summarized it looked more like a PWD field trip rather than a social service kind of help. We did get help from the social services department on medical assistance part but they just handed out 20 pcs of pain killer tablets (all generic) and told us not to bother them again.

 

The same thing goes when our group was asking financial assistance from the staff on the social services department, office of the mayor. They told us that they can't help us and that the mayor wasn't in "his office" ( what ?! The mayor is not at work during office days and office hours ??? ). Probably the mayor is not interested at all meeting people with disabilities and senior citizens 60 yrs old and up - all are voter's in his domain. In any case personally I never liked the idea of "financial assistance" on the fact that it sounded more of like begging rather than helping , but either way help or not. The mayor was no public servant.

 

At early afternoon, a cab came in on the Municipal Hall to fetch us back and return our group to their homes.

 

Like I said on my previous blog entries that public service in the Philippines is none existent and pathetic, a person is lucky enough to find a friendly social worker. Almost all of the Filipino social workers are hostile and loathe helping the poor (and even the local citizenry). They are totally unfit as a public servant and boggles my mind on why they even end up as charity workers in the first place. As much as possible avoid asking help from them and a person is better off without them.    

PROBLEMATIC POSSIBILITY

Seems that every news I get lately about my work keeps getting worse than ever. Latest news I heard from one of my former co-workers thru social media is that there's a refresher course for PSCRB training Seminar and Career Ship Management Requires its crew to take that. "Theo" says that folks in the office required him to take that course and he's surprised to learn that Career hasn't informed me yet about this. I told him that the company must have forgotten to tell me about it earlier and will probably inform me on the latter.

 

Now the problem about this is that if ever Career Ship Management required me to take this (or decided to inform me on the latter) is that it will take me for a while to be able to accomplish that, and upon my research on the internet the cost of the refresher course, amounts to about 3,000 Php excluding the cost of its MARINA COP and other expenses. Overall I estimate it could be 4,500 Php . This price tag is no big deal a few months ago for me , however present situation I have is that I'm currently in a pinch right now and it's not sure on where the hell would I get the funding for it, if ever that would be the case. Bottom line is that it’s a hassle and problematic for me if Career Ship Management decides to impose this on me.

 

Another problem, I have to deal with is the re-medical exam issue that kept resurfacing. Apparently from what I read on the social media, medical certificates are good only for three months if I'm still stuck on land and valid for two years once I get onboard a ship (for legal purposes only and not employment) , if whatever case I never got deployed beyond the three month period , then its already expired and have to retake the medical screening again, which bottom line means another hassle for me.

 

For now I'm going to stay silent about this issues since , I haven't heard any news lately yet from the company. The longer I stay here , the more problems arise that I have to deal with.

 

In other news …..

 

I accidentally stumbled upon a special collectible BSP coin. It looks like a normal 5 peso coin on first look , but upon closer examination it revealed that it's an "OFW" themed commemorative coin. I took pictures of it to show it here on my blog what it looks like.

 

 

 

In another news….

 

I'm going to make a few movements within the coming of days, and have asked my younger sister that I will be borrowing money from her soon. My sister agreed but unfortunately for me, her salary is still as far as the 20th of this month and it meant for me that I have to sit tight for a couple of days until my sister gets her salary for me to borrow money. 

 

If ever I should get the funds, I'm going to secure first an X-ray chest plate and an NBI Clearance (law enforcement work clearance) which is needed for local employment.