from Rob

Hey there Jesse:
Damn crazy bowl people. Actually it's a type of asian surfing. They
drop the folks off in the bowl in front of a big ship, then when the
ship passes and the wake comes, surf's up baby. It's a not a game
for the faint of heart because if your bowl gets capsized, very
common, just try floating a bowl in the sink and you'll know what I
mean, those waters are shark infested. The world record is held by
Thakt Bi Twave, he rode a wake nearly 3500 miles from the coast of
Vietnam to just west of the Cape of good Hope but a spring storm
knocked him off the wave and capsized him. Fortunately he was
rescued by a flock of migrating Emperor penguins on their way to
breed in Antarctica. Of course once there he promptly froze to
death. His body was later found by a team of archeologist from
Poland who started a heated debate in the archeology world claiming
that the people of S.E. Asia had actually migrated originally from
Antarctica during the Mezobowl period. This of course was later
disproved but his name will live on forever in the annals of
Vietnamese Bowl surfing. Crazy bowl people.

Cheers, Rob

Rob Pendell

Thank you Rob, that was great. I learn so much more with my friends around
:)

Oh and later after I sent the original bowl people story, I seen several
with modern strobe lights. Much easier to see at night.

Well I will be home on Tuesday see yall then.

Jesse

Kentucky Fried Pilipino Chicken and Crazy Bowl People

Kentucky Fried Pilipino Chicken and Crazy Bowl People

Well, first a little business. While ashore I had a chance to see how the
blog entries looked. Not so good I guess. I apologize for that, it looks
like words are running together and the format is all messed up. I write
these in Word on my laptop then copy/paste them into the ships email which
then sends them to the bolgger. I guess things are getting formatted
several times, but right now there is little I can do about it other than to
say I hope the entries are not to irritating to deal with.

Also if anyone is interested, email communication with the union is going
well. We will all leave the ship before the company, ship and union come to
agreements, but I have a feeling every single unlicensed person aboard this
ship will be getting back pay in the mail for one reason or another. There
were that many complaints of contract violations.

Last business note – I am again working OT. I only took two days off, but
figured I punished them enough LOL…

Okay… on with it already.

So I only had about 6 hours to enjoy Subic Bay, from 8:30 am to about 10am I
spent my time trying to just get out of the container terminal. Eventually
I managed to get a taxi to take me into town. It turns out Subic Bay is
pretty much just the bay and not a city unto its self. I guess I should
have known that before hand. But the bay is surrounded by what is called
the free zone. All the docks, duty free shopping, yacht clubs and the nicer
hotels are in the free zone.

My driver Ed took me into Olongapo, the first town outside of the Free Zone.
This is a very busy place and traffic was crazy but they do drive on the
right side of the road -sometimes. My first stop was an internet café. The
internet in the Philippines leaves a lot to be desired, at least at the
street level shops in Olongapo. I was knocked off line about every 2
minutes. I eventually walked several blocks to find another internet café,
this one was run by gamers, who clearly were engaged heavily in destroying
the Minions of Alticor the Damned or something and I was quite the bother to
them, but they did get me set up after a while. Unfortunate though that
when I was done, I tried paying them during a very voracious battle. I
think I was due some change back, but I thought better of asking for it, I
just high tailed it out of there.

Having had the chance to chat with my sweetheart back home, I decided I was
hungry. So for the first time in my travels I decided to eat Kentucky Fried
Chicken. The ships food this trip has been terrible and the water worse,
so I figured I would just play it safe and go American.

I was greeted at KFC by a door man. At first I thought he was just leaving
and held the door open for me, but turns out, operating the easily hinged
swinging device was his job at KFC. I would soon learn he had another job.
I studied the menu for a while and decided I would get the 2 piece meal.
That was the largest meal other than ordering a bucket.

I took my tray to a table and began to eat, I apparently ordered the extra
spicy and crispy chicken with out even knowing it, that was just good
fortune. There was a little side of gravy on my tray and a biscuit all
wrapped up in that KFC picnic blanket pattern paper. I un-wrapped my
biscuit only to find out it was a ball of rice. Only an idiot from
Vancouver, WA would think he would get a rice free meal in the Philippines.
I was just about to take a bite of a chicken leg, when suddenly a dirty and
mostly toothless man appeared over my head.

This man was obviously mentally challenged and spoke in vowels. Well, to be
fair there were several W and M sounds as well. I am sure he was asking for
a hand out, but he surprised me just being over me all of a sudden. I
noticed a very large pool of saliva in the corner of his mouth, and it was
dangerously close to spilling out. I didn't know if I should hand him a
couple pesos real fast, or to protect my chicken from an almost certain
tidal wave of gushing saliva. Tilt his head just a little bit more and my
chicken was a goner. I decided I should take a look around real fast to see
how the locals were reacting to this situation. Judging from their looks,
or perhaps it was my selfish hunger, I decided to protect the chicken.

Just as I was about to hunch over my food, leaving the back of my shoulder
to take the sloppy bullet should it fire, the Door Man showed up and ushered
the guy out of the restaurant. So I ate and looked at the people around me.
It would appear, they too would have protected the chicken.

As I left the KFC I ran into Tidal Saliva Sam and offered him 20 pesos. The
rest of the day was very uneventful, eventually I got Ed the driver to pick
me up, I bought him a soda and I downed two beers, and then went back to the
ship. We sailed a few hours later.

It is about 26 hours now since we sailed from Subic Bay. We are about 300
miles from Viet Nam which is currently the closest land. We are headed to
Singapore where Monday we will all fly home.

I got off watch just a few minutes ago, but I saw some crazy bowl people out
there on the sea just a little while ago. Okay, you're asking "What are
bowl people?" Okay everyone but Tim is asking that question.

So I spot a vessel on the horizon crossing our bow from port to starboard.
After a while it is clear that it had slowed to a near stop in our path. I
steer 6 degrees to the left to avoid hitting what we now know is a dow (okay
I have no idea how to spell dow). Any way this was a fairly large wooden
vessel all pieced together with branches to make a rooftop. It looked like
10 people could live on it comfortably, but I suspect it was the permanent
home of at least 20 some people.

They were dropping off giant bowls, each containing one person. They
dropped off about 4 of these bowls and then just sailed away from them. The
people in the bowls just drifted on the sea with no discernable way to steer
these things as far as I could see. The Mate told me he had seen a National
Geographic on these people. These people get dropped off to fish and with
luck they are found again and picked up.

It did not take long for me to loose sight of the men in the bowls even
though they were fairly close. The bowls themselves were very hard to see.

After sundown we began to see many of them. They had sticks that appeared
to be smoldering and glowed in the dark. This has to be how they are found
and picked up. Even though they had the lit sticks, their light was very
dim. Several that we spotted could have been run over by our ship had they
been directly ahead of us. Some were way to close by they time we could see
them.

Any way I thought this was interesting. I would write a little more about
them, but it is late, time for bed and my fingers are having a hard time
typing now LOL…

Take care and good nite all.

Jesse

Arrival - Subic Bay Philippines

Arrival - Subic Bay Philippines

We arrived and anchored in Subic Bay today, Wednesday April Fools day.

This morning after eating my breakfast I checked my email to find a short
note from Mr. George Tricker, Vice President of Contracts for SIU. He let
me know that he received my email and has contacted the company to
investigate my claims. (No personal emails were recieved today however,
very odd)

Shortly after that I learned that the Bosun is now in contact with the union
for the first time in about 4 months and apparently the office is in contact
with the Captain.

I have no idea how things will pan out, whether the Union will see things as
the Bosun, crew and I do, or if the union will back the company and the
captain. At this point I don't care so much, I am just happy that contact
with the union has been accomplished. I suppose every now and then, one of
my little email tirades seems to warrant action.

I replied back to Mr. Tricker and apologized for the informal language and
use of profanity and explained that adding his address was an after thought
after I already wrote the email. My original intent was to vent to friends
and family, but then I thought if I hid his address among others in the
email that perhaps it would not be deleted. I thanked him for such a quick
reply.

Anyway, here we are in Subic Bay. We anchored since they were not ready for
us at the dock. A few minutes ago most of the crew caught a launch to
shore. They sure looked like they were ready for a good time. Since my
watches conflict with the launch schedule I will just go ashore after we
dock. I could go tonight, but I would have to pay for my own personal
launch and I don't want to do that.

I hear we should be heading to the dock around 6 am local time. This will
be perfect, my watch will be over at 8am and I can enjoy Subic in the day
light. It is possible that the ship will sail tomorrow night. We will see
how fast the unloading goes. It is about a 3 ½ day sail from here to the
ship yard. If we get in there right away I could be home by Tuesday or
possibly Monday, but I am not really counting on that just yet. A surprise
backload could always rear its ugly head. Some of the crew may just loose
their minds if that happens.

Well I am having happier days and daily dealings with the crew are great.
The other day the slop chest was opened up (the ships store) and all the
bottled water sold out right away. I was disappointed because I did not get
any. For a few days now, our water was not good to drink. I was happy when
everyday since then a crew member would just out of the blue offer me a cold
bottle of water. At least 4 guys offered them to me with out my ever
asking, they represented each department to boot. This ship does truly have
a wonderful and thoughtful unlicensed crew. One could not ask for better
shipmates.

I hope everyone is doing well, especially my darling' with the knee, and mom
and dad recovering from bronchitis. J

Jesse