Live in the Philippines

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North to Alaska

Family / by / 70 Comments

Just like that song by Johnny Horton (No, not “Sink the Bismarck”) but as the title says “North to Alaska” which is where my son-in-law Cecil (Father of Jayden, my grandson) has gone to earn his way in life, while having to leave his wife and new son in our care, here in Dinalupihan Bataan. Cecil has a US Passport so entry into Dutch Harbor Unalaska in Alaska poses no problem for him, and his schoolmate had already procured him a job working in the fishing industry (As if there was something else you could do there)

He was worried about the weather and that it would be freezing when he arrived there, so I explained to him that it was June and summertime there. Since he had lived in Jacksonville Florida I told him that summer in Alaska was akin to winter in Jacksonville Florida. That seemed to make him feel better.

Article continues below pictures, click on the picture for a larger view.

He’ll be working for a wholesale shipping company, shipping fish all over the world. Albeit the pay is less than working on the boats, it’s far and above safer. I was on a special mission ship owned by the US Air Force (Who knew they had ships?) and the fly boy’s needed us to crew the ship for them. The USNS Observation Island T-AGM 23 you can Google it, our job was to sit for three months up by the Russian peninsula of Kamchatka beyond the Arctic Circle and observe. What we were observing is still classified, but you might figure it out by looking at the picture and noting on the stern there is a large unit called Cobra Judy, which is the largest mobile X-Band radar in the world. When the radar was lit off no one could go on deck and every hatch and water tight door was alarmed.

So our ship was there from December thru February and even on a full size ship, we rode seas that would want to make Davy Jones apply for shore duty. So I could not imagine being out in that with only a 70 to 80 foot boat beneath my feet. And that my friend is how I became acquainted with beautiful downtown Dutch Harbor on the Island of Unalaska in Alaska.

So as I told Cecil my wonderful stories of the far North, explaining tundra and permafrost to him. I further explained proper dressing. Layer your clothing, always cover your head. And when you’re working outside or anywhere its freezing, have a spare pair of work boots with extra socks in a warm spot, and change them every hour. Because once your feet get cold, you’re done.

But the truly sad part is that he had to go away from his new family in order to provide for them. He looked for work here, and alas there was none to be found, and besides after earning in the States and Singapore, Cecil was not going to work 6 days a week 12 hours per day to earn next to nothing. Hell, I could have hired him as my driver and paid him more.

But I understand his plight, as during my years at sea I had to leave my family to earn my pay. That was a choice I freely made as I loved my job, and no company on the dirt was going to pay the high salary that a U.S. Merchant Seaman earns. Besides affording me the luxury of being able to live anywhere on the planet and they flew me to and from my home and my job.

Cecil will do fine in his new job. Because he knows why he’s there making that sacrifice, to improve his wife and sons life. He knows that his bride is at home in the Philippines with her folks and will be well cared for. Plus his son Jayden has more unpaid YaYa’s (Baby Helpers) than any baby you’d ever meet.

The truth is, and I hate to be the one to divulge it, and, as a republican, it hurts me to say; “I’m sorry Sara, but you really can’t. see Russia from your front porch. But I could from the main deck of my ship.

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Comments

  1. Good luck to your son-in-law Paul. There sure is a lot of money to be made in Alaska. A banker I know back in Kansas has a son that is a diver there. My friend sure would like to make the money his son makes. 🙂

    Hey I can see a sari sari store from my front porch. 😛

    Pac-Man should have knocked Bradley out. Don’t let the judges decide the fight.

  2. Paul: I had some friends in college who worked as salmon slimers over the summer up there. Hard work, but they finished school debt free (one summer the yearned enough for all expenses the following year)

    He’ll do fine… Just listen to you and keep warm

    • John;
      That’s good news to here, I was in and out of port there for 3 months and thought I’d rather have a sharp stick put in my eye than live there. But the people I met seemed to like it. Cecil is living in a small house with five other Pinoys, two he went to school with, so far he likes it and the supervisor gives them fish every day so they’re eating well.

      • I was fortunate that when we did ‘spec ops’ in the far north, I was on a Navy ship ported out of Yokosuka but I was still based in Subic. We stayed on station until the op was over. And, knowing I was returning to the RP, I always had that warmth to look forward to 😉

  3. Gary;
    I sure want him to do well, and we enjoy having Yhen and the baby here with us. I thought I’d enjoy the empty nest, and found I didn’t.

    The last two fights were close, Manny does not need the money, he should have walked away on top the last time. The re-match will be good!

    I can see about 25 Sari-sari stores from my house.

    • Well from everything I see and hear, the fight was planned for and fixed for the rematch from the git go. Bradley, BEFORE the fight, tweeted a photo and comment about the rematch in Nov. The photo was a designed poster announcing Pacquiao – Bradley 2 match. Pacman will make more money for sure and if he wins, chicken Floyd will have to fight him.

  4. Paul, there used to be a LiP writer based in the Philippines who worked in Alaska 6 months out of the year.

    To amplify what Gary had said about money to be made in Alaska and not necessarily suggesting that Cecil be one, I heard that in Alaska, refuse and recyclable materials collectors (the Department of Labor’s term) pull in an average of $20.41 an hour, the highest in the nation. Cecil has a lot going for him in terms of future employment and high earnings, being young and a U.S. citizen.

    As for me, if I were his age and wanted to make loads of money within a short period of time, I’d try to get a job with Blackwater Security at $550 per day in-country, like Iraq and Afghanistan. High risk, but excellent pay. The catch?You had to have military experience, with emphasis on Special Forces. As for Pacquiao, I like it that he took the split decision graciously, saying, “I respect the judges’ decision, but I felt I won the fight.” And he said it with a smile. That’s class.

    • Paul,
      Cecil will do just fine up there. Seems like he has a good head on his shoulder, plus some good guidance from his father in law. Can’t beat that free fish either, so he’s in heaven as a filipino. Another interesting job that pays well and only goes a few months a year is ice road trucking. It comes with some danger as you could fall through the ice. Does he know when he will be able come home? All those boxing promoters are all crooked, i would n’t trust any of them. Thats why i lost interest in the sport. Take care and thanks for sharing this story. Please keep us updated, i’m interested to see how he is doing, especially when the weather changes.

      • Ricardo,

        Did you get to go to the airport to greet Mr. Aquino on his visit to Washington? I see he shook hands with some of the Fil-Am’s who greeted him there.

      • Papa Duck:
        Ice Road Trucking? Put me on that fishing boat, I know people love truck driving, and I love the songs. But that was on my list of jobs I never wanted. If you had ever seen Cecil drive my car you’ll understand why I won’t pass that suggestion on to him. (lol)

      • As I remember, he was a fine guy from the DC area, in fact, and was one of the few expats I heard about who had his expectations dashed and returned to the States after only a few years of living in the Philippines.

        • Ric, I think you are talking about Louis. He was from Catonsville, Balto area and now living in Jax, FL last time he posted.
          I only live 25 miles away from DC but saw him on local news (Pnoy). He actually landed on Andrews AFB, Maryland across the river from DC, where the AF One and SAMs (Special Air Missions) planes, the ones with the US of America logo on them are maintained. Helos are maintained in Quantico nearby us.

          Mars

          • Just got back from the gym, Mars. Yep, that’s him. I actually remembered his name, but didn’t want to post it for privacy reasons. He was a good cook, too, I remember.

  5. Good luck to your son-in-law. At his age it’s a great opportunity and I’m sure he will soak up the experience and be able to put some money aside for the future. Away earning them big dollars…like father like son!

    • Randy;
      Cecil flew to Alaska and had a job 3 days after arrival.,
      Now that tells me that any guy who is not prone to having everything handed to him, can ignore the high unemployment numbers and get work at a well paying job. The key word here is WORK! True he can’t go home to daddies house and eat and watch TV or hang with his buddies every night.
      .The only downside was improving Obama’s employment numbers, oh wait they are still over 8% (Higher if they’d stop using the NEW MATH) it can be done if a guy will just try.

  6. Best of luck to Cecil on his job in Alaska. My first 3 visits to The Philippines had a one hour stop over in Anchorage so I got a glimpse of it from the windows at the airport. North To Alaska by Johnny Horton, I still have that on a 45 RPM ( remember those ? LOL ) that I bought when the song was on the charts.

  7. Bob;
    I was playing it while I wrote this article, but mine is on a USB (mp3) I’ve not owned a turntable in 30 years, hard to carry to each ship I went on. The thing I remember about Anchorage was the $7.00 Hot Dog at the airport snack bar, I figured for that money it had to be the best on Earth. I was so very wrong.

    • I didn’t let it get that far Paul, I settled for the $1.95 cup of coffee. Last time I was there, about 3 years ago I think, the snack bar was completely closed down as in ” out of business ” . Fortunately the gift shop made coffee available at a much more reasonable price.

      • Paul/Bob NY:

        At the Anchorage airport, the have a bar called the “Upper One”. Very expensive drinks in comparison to lower 48’s but who cares. Locals seems to enjoy it, I know I did.

        Mars

        • Mars;
          After the hot dog, I was afraid to order a beer, I was lucky as it was a one hour layover before heading for Clark Air Base PI. Remember the old military charter flights. The SMB’s I had out on Fields Ave more than made up for the hot dog. Oh, there was something else there, but I just can’t remember!

  8. A couple years ago my Grandson’s friend went to Alaska and worked the fishing boats, loved it he said. He came home to Delta Colorado and went fishing on a small lake that even i could dam near swim across. Little 11 foot boat sunk and he and his other friend drowned. Go figure. I wouldn’t want to go out on those Alaskan fishing boats.

    • Loren;
      During a lifeboat drill on one ship, I was on my way to life raft 21 as per my billet. The inspector stopped me and asked if I knew where life raft 21 was located; I smiled and told him that every life raft was number 21 as far as I was concerned. Mine would be the first one in the water.

      • The first one in the water? You mean like the Captain of the Costa cruise liner that hit rocks off the Italian coast and capsized and he was among the first to abandon ship, despite orders from the Italian Coast Guard to go back to the ship to supervise the rescue? I thought you would be among the brave souls who would stay with the ship until it hits Davy Jones’ Locker (LOL), or, at least, direct the sinking ship’s string quintet to continue playing, “Nearer my God to Thee”, to help keep other sailors calm while they load on to their own lifeboat 21. 🙂

        • Ricardo;
          I never sailed a ship with passengers, so everyone is assumed to be a professional, they are on their own. Winston Churchill was asked why he so much enjoyed Italian Cruise Ship’s. His response; “The food is great, and they pay no attention to that Women and Children first rule.”

          • Paul, speaking of Italian cruise ships, have you seen a picture of the Italian captain of the Costa Concordia? Not only did he have long hair, but in the picture I saw, he had on his ship captain’s uniform complete with the shoulder boards and front buttons undone showing his hairy chest. LOL

            • Ricardo;
              I have spent many, many months in Italy over the years, and that picture was no surprise to me, I also sailed for 3 weeks on an Italian Navy Destroyer named the Alpino during an exchange program the Navies had. They are a tad macho, but a pleasure to be around.

              • Paul,
                Did they have Cognac with there meals on the ship. I remember working with the Italian Military when i was in the Marines and they had cognac with there field rations.

              • Papa Duck”
                Wine with the meals and in the lounge anything you wanted including Yak! The ship I was on with my Italian friends was named after Mountian Fighters called the Alpino Division.

              • Paul, Papa Duck – French soldiers are the same, they have cognac in their field rations. My 3rd infantry division (Audie Murphy’s division – Audie Murphy is the most decorated American soldier ever, if not mistaken) trained with the French soldiers at the Hohenfehls (Germany) artillery ranges in the 60s. While we, American GIs, were drinking water from our canteens after a C-ration meal of beef stew, they were drinking cognac after a meal of coq-a-vin. LOL

              • I dunno, Paul, anything we say on the internet especially pertaining to history and when national pride is at stake is bound to be challenged. The French will vehemently deny this, and would say that they won more wars than the U.S. It may be true, but then again, the U.S. is a young country compared to France. Half of the wars they won throughout their nation’s history were won before there was a US of A. 🙂

  9. Hello Paul,

    When I was still in the Phil and was still dreaming of USA, I overheard from a balikbayan how backbreaking his job as snow plower in Alaska is. Yet it pays a lot too. So here I was w/o no visa yet and dreaming of quick way to earn money. But when I got here in IL, I settled to the more predictable “way of life”. The prospect of living outside of IL away with my family (bros & sis & the rest) is unthinkable. My point is my fantasy of working in Alaska never came as an option when I got here.
    Anyway, pls explain this to me like I am in third grade:

    So our ship was there from December thru February and even on a full size ship, we rode seas that would want to make Davy Jones apply for shore duty. So I could not imagine being out in that with only a 70 to 80 foot boat beneath my feet. And that my friend is how I became acquainted with beautiful downtown Dutch Harbor on the Island of Unalaska in Alaska.

    Thanks!

    • Roy;
      Davy Jones Locker, is an idiom for the bottom of the sea: the state of death among drowned sailors. It is used as a euphemism for where a sailor will end up if his ship sinks. When a seaman has had enough of ships he’ll get a job on land or Shore Duty.
      Full size ship is a ship that is over 150 feet long. Or made for blue water
      Smaller ships are made for coastal waters closer to land.
      So if I’m on a 300 foot plus ship, and you’re on an 80 foot ship because of sheer tonnage my ship will ride rough water better,

      • Or, a 952 feet cruise liner weighing 110 tons. When such cruise liners set out to sea at the beginning of a cruise, they are guided out of the bay by a small guide boat of the USCG until the cruise liner hits the open ocean. While the small guide boat bobs up and down in the water like a cork from a bottle, the larger boat remains steady, you hardly feel it slicing through the waves.

        • Ric, maybe 110 tonnage displacement is small for a cruise ship. In comparison, the USCG 378 foot High Endurance Cutter (Hamilton Class) has a displacement of 3,300 tonnage.

          • Mars, I know nothing about a ship’s displacement, is that the same as the tonnage of the ship? The figures of the cruise liner I cited above were that of the Carnival Liberty at 952 feet in length and had tonnage of 110,000 tons. My wife and I sailed on the Carnival Liberty a couple of months ago, and this was after the Costa Concordia ran aground off the Italian coast after it hit a reef. Costa is owned by Carnival Corporation. Immediately after the Costa disaster, another ship owned by Carnival also got in trouble in the high seas. Can’t remember the exact details of that second accident. This is not to say, however, that Carnival owned cruise liners, or there officers, are necessarily bad. I would not hesitate to sail with the Carnival again at the next planned cruise. It was just a coincidence that two ships owned by the same company were involved in accidents one after the other within a short period of time. The reference to long haired ship captains who speak with an accent was a playful remark on my part. But still, it is hard to ignore the fact that there seems to be, in my opinion, a kind of a correlation between a long haired ship captain and a lack of discipline.

            • Ric;
              By tonnage they mean the weight of the water that the ship displaces, as long as the ship is lighter than that water it will float. Keep that in mind as you add passengers or cargo.
              Carnival Lines are all foreign flag ships, in order to keep the costs and crew wages down. Because of that the U.S. Coast Guard has no control of the crews training or the ships safety equipment, other than the basic requirements set by international agreements. The waiters cooks have no training in seamanship, yet are tasked with assisting in shipboard emergencies. So it’s the blind leading the blind. Because of that when I was sailing as a US trained Merchant seaman my pay was higher than most other countries Merchant Officers. Now, container ships are high paid crews as their cargo has more value to them than passengers are to cruise lines.

              • Incidentally, Paul, no major cruise line exists today that flies the American flag. Almost all major cruise lines are registered in foreign countries where the requirements for hiring are less onerous. In addition, foreign-flagged cruise ships are able to keep their costs down by hiring crews in the low-skilled positions such as cabin stewards, kitchen crew, the wait staff and janitors from developing countries. Which is exactly why they remain in business. As a result, these positions are filled almost exclusively by workers from the Philippines and Indonesia who are willing to perform the work for less pay. In the various cruise ships that my wife and I have sailed on, ie, Holland America Line, Carnival, Celebrity, the crews, are either Filipino or Indonesian with a sprinkling of South Asians, except for the bands which are exclusively Filipino, talented musicians as they are. Aboard ship, it’s hard to distinguish, even for me, a Filipino from an Indonesian, until they open their mouth to speak. They make their money, not from wages which is a pittance, but in tips collected for them by the ship’s accounting and tips directly handed to them by the guests. Their shipboard contracts run up anywhere from 6-8 months a year with 2 months vacation, then renew their contract again for the following year. And, yes, mandatory safety and life boat drills are conducted as the boat gets underway.

            • Ricardo,
              I thought those cruise ships were like the love boat lol. I agree with you about the captains with long hair and it also does not look professional in uniform. Take care.

              • Papa Duck, I’ve noticed that Scandinavian ship masters and their officer staff look a lot more professional. Without exception, their haircuts are close-cropped. Some do wear beard, but are trimmed to military standards, reminiscent of Prussian military officers. They also wear their uniforms smartly, stand tall and erect, and conduct themselves beyond reproach. That kind of demeanor and bearing go a long way toward creating a high level of comfort and peace of mind on the part of paying guests, in my opinion.

  10. I lived in Anchorage, AK for 8 years. If I’m not mistaken petroleum (oil) industry is the major industry in Alaska. Since your son in law is a US citizen, he might want to look into working for one of the oil company out there. He would make alot more money working for them up in the slope. If they ever decide to start building the natural gas pipeline, that’s where the money will be.

    Also, as an Alaskan residence, Cecil will be able to collect the PFD (permanent fund dividend) every year once he is eligible. Every man, woman and child gets a PFD and it is sometimes as much as $2500.00 per year and it’s distributed in Oct/Nov.

    My two older sisters worked and retired from the fishing industry from Dutch Harbor. They say it’s hard work but you can earn and save money if your smart. My sister would come to Anchorage, buy tons of cigarettes from Costco and resell them to her co-workers. If Cecil is an enterprising young man, he can do “side business” and make extra money. I know when my sisters worked there, every thing is provided, room and board, food and they even have a laundry person that did the laundry for the employees. They sometimes, work as much as 18 hours a day and no time to do laundry.

    I wish Cecil the best of luck! Alaska is a beautiful place but it is very harsh and unforgiving in the winter.

  11. Miss August;
    This was a one time trip to Alaska to aid in replenishing his bank account after the move from Singapore to here and the birth of little Jayden. I’ve talked to old friends about a Merchant Marine job as I had. So he would only be gone 4 months at a time with 5 months paid vacation in between each ship.

      • LOL, Ric, Obviously we aren’t or you were absent from school during this subject. Have you had your douse of sinigang yet this week? Ha ha. Look, you are insinuating that I am disclosing privacy info when he posted this himself. His sign name is “Louis”, might not be his real name and he decided to go back to Jax FL instead of flying back and forth the Alaska for the job. He wants to move to FL to be near his relatives and job prospect. Sometimes ago when you quit posting for a while, there was a thread about Filipino foods and he posted something, even where he stayed for a while in Catonsville, MD and we had an open discussion about the Double T diner that we frequent when we were visiting my daughter going to college nearby and he also said he patronized that place for good food when he was living there. He also lamented the lack of good real old time diner in Jax, FJ area.

        It’s raining a little bit right now, Ric, get your raincoat and get some sinigang soup at the nearest Filipino restaurant. It’s supposed to be comfort food.

        Mars

        • Missed sinigang, Mars. Don’t tempt me, as there are no Filipino restaurants within 150 miles of here. LOL The only time I get to eat Filipino food is when I am in VA/MD. I told you about Pampanguena in Gaithersburg. It’s now my favorite Pinoy resto in the DC area. They have more selections there than at your Kabayan there in Woodbridge. 🙂

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