Hubby and Wifey's Blog

We are spending ¾ of our life working and staying aboard the ship. We transport goods from country to country; we travel around the world for free, meet different kinds of people and learn their traditions. Yes that is the life of a Seaman, no permanent home, no permanent life. All we know is to live and work on a floating metal and earn a better and higher salary for the people we love.
They say that in every port there is a girl, in every port we drop our anchor, seamanloloko, seamaniiwan, we are people like those who live in land. The only difference is we born in land but we live at sea. It is hard to live at sea if you’re not capable of it. For the whole contract, all we do is work. From 8 am till 5 pm we work. Sometimes when our ship will be going on berth 24 hours round the clock we don't sleep because our vessel need all its crew to be along side safely. Our home land is sea and sometimes seas are not on us. Sometimes the sea is angry giving us large and huge waves which make our life much worst. Rolling, pitch, and yawing from 0 to 35 deg side by side on our clinometers that makes us dizzy and cannot sleep at night. No television for the whole voyage. We cannot watch television when the ship is 15 miles away from land. We have Movies here (dvd, vcd, blue ray disc) but sometimes some nice movies are being kept in respective cabins and never return in their respective place. Some are place in their baggage and bring it home (because its original and original in Philippines are expensive).
“BAKIT MAALAT AND DAGAT? KASI UMIIYAK ANG MGA SEAMAN” What the hell is this? They make fun of all seafarers. We have satellite phone on board the ship and we can use the phone to call our love ones. Some modern ships have crew mail on board. We can send e-mail on our love ones and we have our own user name and password for private messages. Some other ship have internet on board and that is because of the technology at this time. If you are a seaman, company insurance will chase you. Discuss some privileges and how seaman can be helped in times of emergency. They deduct the monthly contribution to our salary and it is fast as the bullet. In times that we need to use the insurance, the insurance company will need some this, some that, and the processing takes around several months to get the help of the insurance company “mabilis silang kumaltas ng contribution pero pag gagamitin na ang seaman isang taon pa ang hihintayin para marelease lang ang insurance na kailangan ng seaman. It’s not fair to us and they are just using this seaman to their so called insurance business.
Showbiz chismis hehehehe onboard the ship chismis can spread as fast as 3 seconds. Mas matindi pa kami sa chismosa sa lupa hehehehe. We get what we want when we are in land. We can buy as much as gadgets as we want but if the seaman can't manage to control his expenses, after 1 month he will board again the ship. Some seamen have lots of gadgets but after 2 weeks he will go to pawnshop and use his entire gadget to survive for another week while waiting for his line up. Some of our comrade on board the ship are not lucky. Sometimes the Sea took our comrade seaman letting them buried in the heart of the sea. Some of our comrade seaman when their ship sunk they will be lucky if there is nearby ship that will help them. Some seamen are eaten by sharks and predators of the sea. Even the seaman can swim he cannot stay for a week to swim.
There are times I notice some seagulls in the middle of the ocean. Thousand miles away from land but there are some seagull flying around the ship. The old seaman told the new guys that if we saw a seagull at the middle of the sea it means that area have or there are some ship sunk and the seagull was the spirit of the seaman. We live at sea and we die at sea. This is how the seaman’s life when his life was taken by the heart of the sea.