At any rate, factors obtain arguing against the notion that respondent consented to contract extension under the same terms and conditions prevailing when the original contract expired. Stated a bit differently, there are compelling reasons to believe that respondent retained the services of the acceding Delos Santos, as the Court of Appeals aptly observed, but under domestic terms and conditions. We refer first to the reduced salary of Delos Santos payable in Philippine peso[23] which, significantly enough, he received without so much of a protest. As respondent stated in itsComment, without any controverting response from petitioner, Delos Santos, for the period ending October 31, 1995, was drawing a salary at the rate of P8,475.00 a month, whereas the compensation package stipulated under the POEA-approved contract provided for a US$613 basic monthly salary and a US$184 fixed monthly overtime pay. And secondly, MV Super RoRo 100 was no longer engaged in foreign trading as it was no longer intended as an ocean-going ship. Accordingly, it does not make sense why a seafarer of goodwill or a manning agency of the same disposition would insist on being regulated by an overseas employment agency under its standard employment contract, which governs employment of Filipino seamen on board ocean-going vessels.[24] Petitioners submission about the parties not having entered into another employment contract after the expiration of the POEA-approved employment contract, ergo, the extension of the expired agreement, is flawed by the logic holding it together. For, it presupposes that an agreement to do or to give does not bind, unless it is embodied in a written instrument. It is elementary, however, that, save in very rare instances where certain formal requisites go into its validity, a contract, to be valid and binding between the parties, need not be in writing. A contract is perfected when the contracting minds agree on the object and cause thereof.[25] And, as earlier discussed, several circumstantial indicia tended toprove that a new arrangement under domestic terms was agreed upon by the principal players to govern the employment of Delos Santos after the return of MV Wild Iris to the country to engage in coastwise trading. Given the foregoing perspective, the disallowance under the decision subject of review of the petitioners claim for maximum disability benefits and sickness allowance is legally correct. As it were, Delos Santos right to