JOURNALS OF A FILIPINO SEAMAN

Journal log entry : June 08, 2016   For the past two days I had been planning my move to get out of this ship. One such plan is that I use a "bereavement / compassion leave" which despite my sadness losing dad last month , can be used as an excuse to get the hell out of this ship.   There are two scenario's that would lead this plan. One is that the company will honor my request and grant me an all-expense paid ticket out of here, second scenario is that they will still honor my request by in the expense I have to shoulder the cost of travel from my point of disembarkation all the way to the Philippines, and same goes also for my replacement. Lucky for me this ship is bound to Asia , were air fares are cheapest. The only question is if I do have enough money by the time I send a request for an "early vacation" . On second though I don’t give a shit about money at all - safety and lives is in questioned here , and I don’t want to risk my neck dying on this s...

Entry log: June 06, 2016 Monday   With the difficult working environment and lack of resting hours , here is most of the tactics I had worked with on "BOSTON EAGLE" . I had to focus in order to stay alive here on this ship for a few months, actually I draw inspiration on the NASA survival movie like the martian (starring Matt Daimon), I feel like an astronaut on a space mission here and in the middle of it something went wrong.   Basically my situation here as of the moment is solving one problem over the next - usually related to daily maintenance and space saving measures, Of course in general this doesn’t matter at all if I can't get the hell out of this slave ship, but on the short run till I figure it out - I'm solving one little problem to another. Fortunately for me I brought all the needed equipment I need for the trip (and god !! it was worth every ounce of weight on my luggage) and I have to science this shit up to get out of BOSTON EAGLE.   All equipme...

LOG ENTRY June 05, 2016 Sunday   Despite being Sunday , there is still work going on here on this nightmare ship "BOSTON EAGLE" .   Pay slip just came out , and as expected it was unsurprisingly disappointing.   Some of the crew here were very ignorant on what is actually going on the salary, actually almost all of them are smoochers (translation in Tagalog "sip sip") hoping that Norstar Ship management will be fair on the employments terms. I guess that’s the problem with Filipino crew, Most of them are arrogant and cocky sons of bitches thinking they're the high and mighty when it comes to manual labour but almost all of them don’t know shit when it comes to paper management works like this on the pay slip and pay roll issues. PATHETIC !!! People who don’t have balls to do what needs to be done.   Now these ignorants are figuring it out for themselves on how to solve the payroll and are even hopeful that norstar might hold up to the end of the deal on the...

LOG ENTRY June 04, 2016 Saturday   Losing dad was the first blow, now another blow hit me. As in literary hit my face and broke of two of my teeth, both near on my front tooth. Worst part is that there is no possible way for me to get my teeth repaired , second part is that any possible repair done is going back home after 8 months and the annoying part is that if I go see a doctor , either here , Singapore or China Dry docks is that it will take days to fully repair. Time that is not plenty here on this ship.   So how did it happen ? First is that I was assigned for a couple of days now to fitter number 02 , thing here is that a deck person doing the work for an engine personnel was bad enough, let alone get injured because of it. As expected shit started to hit the fan for me soon when I was helping out fitter get the iron pipes out of the skyline on the engine room, the first long heavy pipe was ok and got it out - the second small pipe was the one that got me hit. I k...

LOG ENTRY : June 03, 2016 Friday   Recently received news via SMS roaming that my dad recently died from cardiac arrest. I haven't known the details yet on his demise and was only informed by my younger sister. Given with the limitations of communications here, I couldn't get even the details, The only thing I knew about is that it was   abrupt. Nobody both me and people on the house expected that this would happen, Dad was despite suffering a stroke 15 years ago which paralyze half his body and having a fracture on the leg two years ago was more physically fit for his health to last at least 2 decades.   Aside from that my movement is restricted here, being put on a "slave ship" were working situation here are extreme and worst that I had previously faced before. Recent news now has informed me that working hours has increased from the usual 8am to 5pm, now to 6:30am till 5:30pm - totaling of about 11 full hours from Monday to Saturday. Basically not enough time...

Blog entry for : June 02, 2016 Thursday   Despite the moderness of my equipment, I still kept reverting (or looking back) to my old designs I used a few years back. Probably because of the fact that my old designs were lightweight, easy to use and easily constructed. The designs of my equipment date as back as 2010 and might consider it nowadays as obsolete but however it is now phased out.   In relation to this entry, I recently received a lot of flak from my fellow co-workers , both Filipino, Indian and Singaporeans alike. Apparently they haven't saw any sailor before that arrived on a ship with so many working equipment, and much to my suspicion some of them are even jealous that I came here well prepared and are doing everything to discredit my work (don't they all). Bosun even tells me openly that I should stop using my equipment, so I don't get any nasty attention. Frankly I think I already have and he's the one who's jealous of my equipment and he's j...

ENTRY LOG FOR : May 30, 2016 Monday   Past few days have been a total adjustment for me, given with the overall workload dumped. Regardless of which, I will continue to write and report on what is my general experience in this "junk ship" and the present situation. So onward with the writing and recording on my Blog.   Few days have been overwhelmed with much cleaning as, in a gargantuan task of rehabilitating this ship. The former Indian crew have left a tremendous amount of trash before they left and I had been doing the work of clearing each public room of trash and transforming it to habitable standards, Some of the   rooms here were in total wreck took me a lot long time to clear it like for example the public smoking room and the training gymnasium room. Practically there was no equipment ready when we arrived here and we had to scavenge whatever we can find on the working equipment like helmets, laundry soap, etc all the way up to the beddings and all.   ...