JOURNALS OF A FILIPINO SEAMAN

The number of crowd on the tent , 6:15 in the morning Work in renewing my passport has become pending lately, I was supposedly should have renewed my papers way back December last year, but due to holiday season it sorted to fall behind and had waited this January. By the time I had to have it renewed , again it was set back a few days because of a national holiday when the Pope visited this country. Now after clearing all the holidays that went, I decided to make an appointment online on this so called passport services. Unfortunately this so called online passport services my country brags a lot end up to a big disappointment , and to simply say the services they provide are not poor but horrible. If I would compare the services they were doing several years back to present - I would definitely say that passport services years back was better considering that Online appointment system was not implemented yet. For migrant workers you can get a passport within less than 5 hours while n...

Some article i had read about being a sailor on the internet , Cannot verify if this is true or not. but some are. Forget any romantic notions of life on the ocean wave – most modern-day seafarers are simply ‘prisoners with a salary’ It was only late afternoon, but already dark and stormy, on the Thursday of the week before Christmas 2009, when the cargo freighter Danny FII approached the Lebanese port of Tripoli en route from Uruguay to Syria. She carried 18,000 cattle, 10,000 sheep and 83 humans, including four passengers, and had been converted from a car carrier into a modern-day Noah’s Ark. Danny FII was not a new ship, but it was modern, because her crew was international: a British captain and chief engineer, 59 Pakistanis, some Filipinos, a Lebanese and a Syrian. Though she was Uruguayan, she flew another country’s flag. She was a typical member of the 90,000-strong fleet of freighters that sail the seas, bringing us 95 per cent of everything that we consume. Eleven miles out f...

Half of my leave pay just went down very easily in just a few hours. Often times I think that such a huge amount could have been put elsewhere to good use if we didn’t have any debt commitments to other people, I could have bought a lot of things to the house if I didn’t have huge debts to pay - Maybe I'd buy a big LCD TV along with a Refrigerator and DVD player , perhaps I'd even purchase a 22. calibre hand gun from the local gun shop. I can't argue that those debts are of reasonable nature , and if it weren't for those debts that we made during mom's hospitalization, mom wouldn't be alive now and vertical. For the record 40 thousands pesos was obliterated within roughly just two hours, after I got my leave pay. On the following days I just stayed on my house , repairing and modifying more equipment. On the 13th of January, got a dose of a little bit of sunshine and surveyed any possible DFA branches on local malls were I could a passport with less the hassle o...

Behold the amount of money on my leave pay !!! Almost 3 weeks have already passed since I arrived, Now given the circumstances of my situation , it is imperative that I get my leave pay and settle a few house debts as well as renew my GTF seminar documents (now BTOC) and renew my passport. Last December 26th , I was informed by the accounting department to check my "leave pay"  status via IVRS system. Now that’s the problems starts, I can't exactly remember my IVRS number and were I wrote it. Recently I had called career ship management over the phone to ask about the status of my leave pay to my dismay it was meet with rudeness by the person who answered the phone, (Damn bitches fall below the standard customer service skills) . So I was left with no other choice but to go there personally and check it out, I made plans to personally go there at the office but I fell asleep and missed the scheduled time on Thursday. (leave pay inquiries are only open in the morning), ...

Had already been here a couple of days now and yet I feel as if like I was dreaming. I'm here physically and yet somehow the sensation of being in the Philippines is a bit far as if like I was detached somehow on the surroundings. On the past few days I was busy tending to the equipment and gear I will be using on my next working assignment. My work was centred on my 1st check in luggage , which is basically houses my personal clothes and a few working gear equipment.  I had to try which civilian clothes I will wear for embarkation, normal casual wear, special / social occasion wear,  and disembarkation / hotel / airport wear. Clothes of sailors should be divided into that four categories. TAKE NOTE THAT THIS IS CIVILIAN CLOTHES AND NOT UNIFORM. embarkation wear sample Embarkation wear is mostly the clothes I will wear when joining the ship, mostly it's just a street casual clothes , with plenty of pockets (preferably a jacket of some sort) and comfortable enough to move arou...

So what has changed during the past six months I was away ? Geographically - it's very little the roads and streets are just the same as it was even on the shops in the public market are unchanged at all , I had a feeling that my surroundings are the same but very different somehow. Though the environment is not alienating, it is somewhat different from where I left off - not like I woke up on a totally different universe but more of like the same reality with a different scenario. For now I'm trying my best to catch up on things I left off six months ago, It made little progress but at least I'm not totally socially disoriented on what's happening around me - I try to fit in as much as I can. Anyway this vacation will be just short lived for me ,as the financial needs back home have already grown to triple the size that it once was in only six months As what I mentioned earlier on my entries most of the funding is put on medical needs. As per usual proce...