THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE OF ALL

Weather was kind of bitchy these past few days that went by and

eventually it was so severe that the metropolis city ended up being

submerged in knee high flood water (in some areas of the city it was

more than 6 feet deep). Of course I live in the lower parts of marikina

city (which is part of the metropolis by the way) and its pretty obvious

is my house is also affected by the flood - just like everyone else in

the metropolis.



Nothing much I can do about it though, mother nature just bashed her way

with water and mud .In the end I just prepared the shovel ,2 plastics

buckets ,a garden hose and a dust pan after the flood for the clean up.



Frankly cleanup wasn't that bad at all and compared to the flood I've

experienced three years ago, it only took me four hours to clean

everything up (compared three years ago were I had to spend a week - yes

a week in cleaning out all the mud inside my house) .



During the cleanup , I felt sorry for the two kittens (out of six

kittens) that got caught up in the backyard and died of drowning. Some

how I should have acted earlier in saving those kittens and putting them

inside the house, unfortunately by the time I acted - two kittens were

already missing and at first I though the mother cat just simply moved

it away and transferred it to another place, the rest of the kittens

were safety transferred inside the house.



It was only after the flood that subsided that the bodies of the kittens

were found.



I'm bothered because the two kittens that had died were close to me and

was always following me whichever place I go at the backyard. Now I can

never see those kittens again because they're dead, in some ways I feel

responsible for those kittens - if I acted up a bit sooner , the kittens

could have been still alive.



I guess that's the difference between humans and animals , we (humans)

look out for each other -whether we like it or not and have a complete

concept of what life and death exactly means. Animals just follow one

rule - "survival of the fittest"



Anyway I just don't want to continue talking about the kittens , that

just simply saddens me up



So aside from shoveling all the mud , I had other news from my internet

life.



Okay one of my acquaintances (J. Bergonio) is asking for a financial

favor for some sort of a problem he had over his school, problem is I'm

not the good Samaritan type and I'm not exactly sure if helping him is a

good idea.



In other news



I went browsing a few blogs over the internet , checking out blogs from

other young sailors out there and saw a few good ones.



One such blog I've encountered came in from a Malaysian Deck Cadet From

"ALAM School" , according to the blog I've read. Malaysians don't

exactly pay much attention in the maritime job area on the fact that

there are more jobs in the land based than overseas and in some ways

land based jobs have a much higher pay than the sea based ,



Point is according to what I've read since their sailor population is

low , the Malaysian government and Malaysian private sector encourages

some students to take a sailing profession . They even go as far as

shouldering all the expenses for the person from start to finish just to

make sure that the countries seaman population doesn't go zero.



He made emphasis that although the Malaysian sailors are fewer in number

compared to Indian and Filipino counterparts , He could say the least

that deck cadets are well cared for and not one Malaysian deck cadet

ends up being chased out and treated as "unwelcome" in a private

shipping company and if one does then the *Malaysian* government will

take matter's in their own hands and smack the said company,



According to him the Malaysian sailors are so pampered that they end up

lazy.



I'm not exactly sure if he's claims were true or exaggerated but what I

can support is that the Philippines have a weak economy and as a result

jobs overseas are more lucrative than the land based ones. As for the

maritime industry here , I could comment that a simple Filipino deck

cadet is treated very differently and exactly the opposite on what he

describes in Malaysia.





What I can comment is that the industry here is so badly choked up and

cannot support a huge workforce population and to make matters worse the

available good jobs are monopolized and reserved only to those so called

"Elite" Schools , and the rest of the deck cadet workforce end up

languishing in worse conditions , or worse disillusioned and unemployed.