JOB AVOIDANCE

BLOG ENTRY: September 06, 2016 Tuesday

Location: Singapore anchorage

 

On the past couple of days without the "repair crew" around , things here have been quieter and peaceful, and more time for me to pitch in and do work unhindered. Somehow I had no worries leaving my equipment behind, and it doesn’t go missing suddenly.

 

It has been busy and a lot of work is still yet to be made with the lack of man power around, but I think it’s the best rather than had a lot of trouble with the "repair crew" . Before I'm not confident leaving my stuff behind even on the locker room, sooner or later some guy from the repair crew would grab it without my knowledge and by the time I know something is missing, - it all too gone and too late.

 

In the recent days that they were gone, working on deck has turned to shit lately, and both the Indian chief mate and Myanmar Captain has been increasingly annoying on work that even the DNV - GL surveyors find them mistreating. One such example is that they don’t give people here a proper rest and break time, and only allowed people here only 15 minutes rest for the whole day. Even the meal breaks were being violated and coffee or water break time is cancelled, people here are being overworked for petty meaningless reasons, that don’t even qualify as urgent or important. Even the DNV - GL surveyors are complaining about this. 

 

Seriously these pathetic ship officers, being so "company dogs" that they intentionally neglect MLC rights and violate seafarers contract terms (such as I mentioned earlier about meal breaks etc.). If they keep this maltreatment up to their crew and the DNV - GL surveyors, sooner or later it will back fire with them - and when it does, I'm going to be there and laugh at them. They deserve the worst punishment ever , and their lower than scum, their very lucky and fortunate that this ship is travelling in the far east international labour laws like MLC and ITF doesn’t have a firm reach and no visible enforcement. This is one of the harsh realities of being a sailor , Chances are most people you encounter as sailors are bad people. There are a few good people but a majority of them are scum (both filipino and non- filipino's). I hope kids or people who read this blog understood the dangers and get the idea , that being a sailor is one of the worst jobs on the planet.

 

Going back to what I was discussing over, The Indian Chief mate and the Myanmar Captain kept dumping us with work orders that its getting impossible to complete a task for five minutes without being interrupted and being dumped again with a new one. This treatment is getting worse as the day passes and eventually I'd be fed up and be changing tactics as a result and apply some forbidden one's like "Job avoidance" . Ethically job avoidance is not a right thing to do (as like any other jobs out there as I know), but if I weight my situation right now and justify it - probably it's the best thing action I had to make as of the moment. They treat their subordinates like crap and keeps pushing and stepping on them , then it's only a matter of reason and logic that I should do the same. As like Captain Betts told me once "you sow, what you reap" .

 

In other matters

 

Lately I had been discolouration of my eye area, apparently this might be the result of too much sun exposure lately. The rest of my face is ok given that I wear a balaclava mask (facemask) when I go to work , except for the eyes of course because it's the part where its open

 

To smoothen out the discolouration , I had to experiment on wearing a coloured safety glasses for now to at least remove the dark spot on my eye area. The area is so dark that when I remove my mask I looked more like a raccoon.