JOURNALS OF A FILIPINO SEAMAN

"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...

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...

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 sid...

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,...

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 medi...

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 mon...

Things are returning again to normal , at least close to normal and the recent problem on mom's black listing in the dialysis clinic is now close to being solved , thanks to kind donors from mom's school mates.   As for my employment problem , it is still on going and yet to be resolved. There is some progress on the past few days and my "contact" on the company took a look on the reason why I'm still stuck here in the Philippines. From his search it turns out that Career Ship Management as of the moment have too many sailors around and less ships, resulting that some crew they have , are still up to now in indefinite hold status. From the looks of it , they have a lot of folks in the waiting line , One of my former co-workers few ships back   said that he's in hold status for 8 months now.   For now I'm in a loophole situation, I could choose to leave career ship management company and try my employment elsewhere but there's no guarantee once I g...

It been a long time, and yet I'm still here in the Philippines. Specifically its been almost four months now ( arrived at Oct 26th last year ) , and I'm starting to think all sorts of stuff on why there's no sign yet coming from Career Ship Management and I'm starting to suspect that there's something wrong going on why they haven't put me on any "Ship assignment" yet.   Recently I talked to one of my former co-workers via face book on what is his suspicions. Its glad that I talked to one of my former co-worker and our discussion   made me think on what is actually going on , or the very least gave me an idea. To start with apparently "jay carta" told me that Career Ship Management has nasty habit of putting things on hold for a very very long time for their crew, and based on what he said it's around at least six months , (some were rumored to be even put on hold as 8 months to a year - as from what I heard from A.B. "Patrick dondon...