Lessons from the sea
I entered the Neptune Lounge where I gave a talk on peace aboard the Villa Vie Odyssey, UNESCO’s first Global Flagship for Peace, and noticed a man who looked Filipino seated quietly by the entrance in a chef’s jacket. I smiled. He smiled back.
We introduced ourselves and, sure enough, he was a kababayan—executive chef Orlando Obierna, the man in charge of the ship’s kitchens.
Doing what we do, we naturally felt connected, and our conversation drifted to his life at sea.
Before his life at sea
Obierna has been sailing for 36 years. But his story as a cook began much earlier. He was only six when he started hanging around the kitchen while his mother, Novie, prepared meals for the family. Curious and eager to help, she let him cut and slice vegetables.
One day, he cut his finger. His mother didn’t make a fuss and quipped, “Son, you will become a chef when you grow up.”
She was right. Obierna began professionally as a kitchen helper at Jollibee Quiapo, followed by the Sheraton Hotel, and later, the Mandarin Hotel. But when he joined Holland America Line in 1990, he started as a kitchen assistant.
“So is it totally different from working in a hotel or restaurant?” I ask him.
“Yes, yes, yes,” he answers. “In a hotel, if you are expecting 700 guests, you are not doing it every day. Here, we do elaborate spreads every single day—for breakfast, lunch, dinner, with all-day snacks and even room service. Twenty-four seven.”
All in a day’s work
The Odyssey is a smaller ship, but on larger vessels Obierna worked on, they could be feeding as many as 3,800, plus the crew. As executive chef, Obierna has supervisors working under him, but he still makes it a point to be there before every service.
Meanwhile, the night before, his team is already discussing the following day’s meals, checking stocks, and making sure they have everything they need. After all, when you are out at sea, you can’t simply send somebody out to buy a missing ingredient.
Then there is something passengers probably never think about—public health. “Cleanliness and sanitation are very, very important in our operations,” Obierna says. It’s why ships undergo regular public health inspections, and repeated failures can have serious consequences.
Being an executive chef means making sure a complicated operation runs smoothly every day. And Obierna learned to do all this from the bottom up.
Good things come to those who wait
In 1995, while he was a chef de partie, Obierna was offered a promotion to become the sous chef. He said no. There were other chefs who had been waiting longer, he explains, and he believed they deserved to be considered first. His bosses weren’t particularly happy. He was even told to apologize for turning it down.
“Why should I apologize?” he replied.
Surely, Obierna wanted to move up but not at the expense of people he felt had earned their turn. His turn eventually came when, in 2006, his executive chef resigned—just before the busy Christmas season. Obierna was then asked to take over. He accepted the challenge and eventually became executive chef himself.
So what had he learned after spending so much of his life at sea? “Leave your attitude at home,” he says.
He is also big on respect. “You have to treat everybody the same. A ship brings together people from all over the world. Different cultures, different personalities, different ways of doing things—and you don’t only work together. You live together.”
From executive chef to family man
Obierna’s schedule now is three months on board and three months at home. “But even three months is difficult for a family,” I tell him.
“It is difficult,” he agrees. “But you have your goal, and that goal is for your family. You are here not just because of yourself.” That opened a softer side to Obierna’s story. He and his wife, Mayda, have five children and have been married for almost 39 years.
It made me wonder: How do you spend so much of your life at sea and still remain part of the everyday life of your family? “Communication,” he answers. And for Obierna, that means making the effort every day—a message, a call, a video call, whatever is possible. “You have to. Every day. Especially with my wife.”
Every morning, wherever in the world he happens to be, he sends her a good morning message. “And if I forget,” he says, smiling, “she sends me a question mark.”
Just a question mark? “Yes.”
It’s kinda sweet to think that a man responsible for feeding an entire ship and crew, with all the pressures of life at sea, sees to it that part of his morning routine is making sure his wife knows he is thinking about her.
I also wondered about his kids—whether he still knows them, still has a relationship with them. “Oh, yes. But with a lot of effort,” he says.
Life lessons from the man at sea
There are many of our kababayans who dream of doing exactly what Obierna does, so I ask what advice he would give them. “Think about it 100 times, 1,000 times. What is really your goal? Why would you like to join the ship?”
Obierna’s career has taken him from Holland America Line to Disney Cruise Line, Aroya Cruises and now the Odyssey, which he considers his final chapter at sea. So when he talks about what carried him through the years, he talks not of promotions and grandeur but of patience, attitude, respect, and never forgetting why he is there.
His best advice is simple: know why you are going, work hard, respect the people you work with, and make time for the people waiting for you at home. Even if some days there isn’t enough time, just say, “Good morning.”
“Because if you forget, there may be a question mark waiting, and that means you’re in trouble!”
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