The Working World For Most People...

Assalamualaikum and Good Day...

I am going to share this guy, Angel Boligan, drawing. His drawing is weird at first glance but when you look at it properly and ponder, has deep meaning within. Well, they do said that a picture said a thousand words...

You can dig more of his stuff HERE.

This Year Eid Fitr...

Assalamualaikum and Wishes of Peace to you.

A lot of changes were brought to this year Eid Fitr in our family. We have new family members. I got married in March and my sister in July. This will also be another year where most of the family members were not around during Ramadhan. My sister and brothers are studying in the universities far from where we live.

Family portrait incomplete... Another ripple in our life...

Thus we look forward to see everybody during Ramadhan and of course during Eid Fitr. It will be one of the few occasions where you will get to see all of us together.

What we had forgotten is all of us aged, we got older. With each passing years, we pick up new ideals, change our way of thinking, our priority etc.

It is very sad to see the only one who looks forward to see the family whole is only my mother. I knew she had been counting days to see one by one of her children home. One of her greatest wish for this Eid was to see all of her children plus my wife and my sister husband in the family photo.

We always take the whole family photo every Eid. We were supposed to do so this year. Alas, mother was left with just the wish.

I guess it is during time like this that we get to see who or what are the priorities in our life. Maybe Allah gave us tests and made us chose. Unfortunately, we did not get to make mother’s simplest wish to come true. Probably we forgot who we should please the most in the first place. In our excitement, we forgot to make one person that loves us the most, the happiest. We easily gave in to our own selfish desires and wants. So much so that we could not grant the simplest wish of a mother.

Just a reminder to whoever read this, truly we do not know how soon death will greet us. Truly we will all be tested in even the simplest way and without us knowing. When we said we love a person, we will be tested to exactly show just how much we love a person.  When we realized that, let us hope it is not too late to shower our love.

Do treasure the time you have with your family. You will be the luckiest person if you get the chance to do so again in the near future. But what if that pleasure is not given to you anymore? Truly we do not want to lengthen the list of things we regret in our life…

OILFIELD LIFE! My Story!

Assalamualaikum and good day.

You had probably read about the offshore life pros and cons in my previous entry. If not, you read it up HERE.

Anyway, I do have few things I want to add…

So, for those who want to work offshore do take these things into account…

1. YES you get a good wage depending which company you are working with. Smaller company tends to squeeze every penny out of you. Meaning you will be slaved with measly amount of pay…

2. YES you can up your lifestyle with a nice home car and holidays but if you are in the position mentioned in item 1, sorry, no nice home and car just yet. And when you are slaved by the company, you will hardly go for holiday. Some company will not even give you days for you to recover once you return from offshore. You are supposed to be as fit as a fiddle or they prefer you to be a robot… even then, a robot or machine will breakdown if used continuously…

3. YES the financial rewards are tempting meaning if you go offshore often, you will get more. Which is true since you do not have the time to spend the money anyway…

4. YES you do get a considerable time at home when you are home. Refer to item 2. Some big companies do offer off days for their employee where they will be left to rest until their next trip. Some, will have you work for them as long as you can still stand up…

5. YES you are in a cabin or prison cell for twelve hours a day and working the other twelve. I do not get this part actually. I had referred to the labour law and they mentioned that we are supposed to only work 8 HOURS PER DAY no matter where you are working! Yet nobody said anything about this and it seems that working offshore for 12 hours a day is a norm. By right, according to labour law, you should be working 8 hours PLUS 4 hours overtime everyday…

6. YES you have to share with people who snore and smell unless you are some high and mighty guy in your company. You will probably given a room on your own or at least, share it with just another person. If not, everybody is treated like rubbish most of the time.

7. YES you have to put up with substandard cramped conditions and food. The offshore officers loved all this health and safety stuffs. They make it such a big deal that we thought IT IS THE MOST important thing there. After all, all this safety and health stuffs suppose to protect you and keep you safe. I will say, in most cases, they DO NOT CARE about your safety, your place is not always clean and the food served could be better. There are people who said that prison is even better than offshore living quarters…

8. YES You do miss your loved ones and to make it worst, if you are not the high ranking important guys offshore, it will be very difficult for you to keep in touch with your loved ones. Somehow, with all the technology available, most of the offshore facilities in my country have like 1 phone for every 100 people on board. Internet connection is not existent in some places and at places that have it, the speed is really really slow. It took me one hour just to read emails from my yahoo mail and sent a document less than 1MB. I heard, offshore outside of my country have more phones and good internet access. At least you can still keep in touch with people onshore…

These are the points that really make me sit and think about working offshore in the long run…

OILFIELD LIFE

Assalamualaikum and good day.

Here is something that was shared with me during my life as an engineer who work offshore… I had added and changed a few things but the message that we the offshore men want people to know remain the same.

For all the guys wanting to work offshore and abroad take stock before you sign on the dotted line :

YES you get a good wage
YES you can up your lifestyle with a nice home car and holidays
YES the financial rewards are tempting
YES you do get a considerable time at home when you are home
YES you are in a cabin or prison cell for twelve hours a day and working the other twelve 
YES you have to share with people who snore and smell
YES you have to put up with substandard cramped conditions and food 
YES You do miss your loved ones 

SO ??? BEFORE YOU EMBARK ON A TRIP AND SIGN YOUR LIFE AWAY THINK ON ????

NO you will not be there for all your kids’ birthdays 
NO you will not make it to every party, BBQ or whoever 40th, 60th, 80th birthday anniversary 
NO you will not always see your kids swim or ride a bike for the first time
NO you will not be there at holy trinity or school plays and see them being presented with a medal for sports day or a high achievement
NO you will not always be there and will feel helpless and far away in times of family crisis
NO you will not be there to bury a family member or close friend

SO BEFORE ANYONE JUDGES SOMEONE WHO HAS THE GUTS TO WORK AWAY AND TRY TO MAKE A BETTER LIFE FOR HIS FAMILY DON'T say he is lucky or he is minted !!!!! He has sacrificed more than half his life to make his family's life a GOOD one filled with happiness and hope.

I will elaborate more with my own experience working offshore in the next post…

Independence Day? Really?

Assalamualaikum and good day to you reader…

Yesterday marked the 56th National Day for my country. As always, this date, 31st August always bring some sort of controversy to the people in my country.

Photo courtesy of www.theborneopost.com

Also one of the latest update for this year is that my state had also somehow unearthed that it gained its freedom from the Brooke Dynasty on the 22nd July 1963. Ok… One of my questions will be, why on earth do we get to know this only today? I did ask around and most of the people (those who are close to me only) did not even know about this! Forget about asking the younger generation, I went straight to people of my parents and grandparents age regarding this issue and they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS!

Here are some links to the 22nd July:
LINK1 LINK2 LINK3

Some people argue that someone had somehow added a new page into the history. As usual followed by the statement that the anti government people work is behind all this. Some people claimed that since history is written by those in power, they had purposely left this bit out. If this is true, I am not sure what the main reason for doing such thing is at the moment.

However, for sure the date 31st August is not the correct date to be celebrated by the whole country IF we are harping about promoting unity. Uniting people need to be with something that everybody in the country can relate to. Something that is similar with majority of the people in the country. Why not 16th September? The day when my present country came to be as it is now? The day when the Tanah Melayu, Sarawak, Sabah and Singapore were united into one country, Malaysia? It is the day of UNITY!

I am not sure what is wrong with the people nowadays… Not to disrespect anybody, but 31st August IS ONLY FOR SEMENANJUNG MALAYSIA! What does it got to do with Sabah and Sarawak? Some people did argue that without that, Malaysia would not even exist… Hmmmm… Well, do look into the possibility that Sabah and Sarawak would not even join Malaysia since we can stand on our own. Brunei declined the offer to do so. If Sarawak and Sabah did that, could we possibly be another country on our own? Countries maybe?

 If we talk about IF the possibilities are endless! But since event had passed, should not we focus on NOW? Why the 16th September was never highlighted in the first place? Why it is treated as if it is of no significant? No importance? To achieve unity, we should give and take. We cannot hold each other hands if our hands are full of other things that we think are much more important than the unity that we proudly claim to be our most important value.

Our history need to be studied and researched again just so that the REAL history can be properly shared with our future generation.