Wednesday, December 31, 2025

belated update: part 2

note: actually starting this 5.44am on what is now 10 jan 2026.

stressor/ mistake no. 2
responding to the job ads of 2 companies run by duplicitous employers.

paid job no. 1.
that late afternoon (last i wrote re:pre-cursor) as it rained on, i decided to idly look at what job vacancies in medini (that could fit me) currently offered. i was about to give up after an hour (of not spotting anything helpful) when i came across a lie of an ad claiming i could help somehow in the "human rights" department. of course when i saw this (and the fact that its main branch was originally in sg), despite it being an internship (with a supposed expectation of permanent-staff promotion after that), i wrote in to the company's w/app to ask if i could still apply (for more than an internship). i didn't get a reply, and by that time, it'd been an hour past the close of their office hours.

so i decided to look at their messy website a bit more. i was thinking to myself, there's no a way a human rights company could be corrupt, right? well, i was about to find out i was wrong. 

anyway. i spent the whole night-to-day filling in rather tiring google forms on their website asking several essay-type questions at a go. (the internship was for 3 positions, yet i saw 4 full-time positions which i had the skills for but lacked the years-in-experience for.) finally submitted my application with a bloated stomach and me feeling so sick, i couldn't even eat any dinner, let alone breakfast. took a (rare time these days) pantoprazole from my old stash of gastritis pills, and went to sleep.

2 days later, i was finally w/apped-msged back and asked down for an interview the following week. but the whatsapp messages clashed with the information provided in the emails i was also sent. then only did i decide to do what i regret not-doing for the last paid-job i worked at pre-accident (which was also in medini): i decided to look up glassdoor for reviews. i was shocked to see abysmally bad reviews for the same "internship" (read: free labour) from mostly the company's above-my-country's branch.

and when i said, 'abysmally bad', i meant it: ppl wrote how they felt like dying. like how they were publicly humiliated. how the 'ringleader' was actually a disgraced politician (i looked this up and it was true, it's just that post-accdt me couldn't remember— i could go on, so i won't. i'll skip to the part where i corrected the emails i was sent, and politely counter-offered my terms in a manner i knew i would be rejected for. it was the-next-morning by then, so i went to sleep. i was right – i saw an email in the afternoon (despite me w/apping in the morning about it) that also politely declined my counter-offer. that was saturday the 13th (of dec, 2025).

paid job no. 2.
my mother was stressing me out again, so i decided to look up the whole of jb (as well as remote work in sg or kl) for what job vacancies were currently on the market (that could fit me). i wasn't interested in most of them. however, i found another company (whose main branch was in sg) that had...vague descriptions for its job scope, with a low barrier to entry (about merely needing to be interested in "greenery"). i figured i might as well apply, despite it being a sunday (21 dec 2025).

since i was up early the next day, i decided to call the no. listed on their kl website, to ask if my email application had been seen and whether it could be fwded to their HR dept (because once again, i found an email address on the company website instead of bothering to respond to the job ad's generic resume-submitting site).

their kl website's operator wasn't forthcoming and told me to apply to the job ad's site directly. i then called the no. listed on the sg website...and the same girl picked up. i was told politely but firmly not to bother her again, to apply directly and (after i asked once again) that okay, she would fwd my email to HR, but there was "no promise" that it would be seen. (with a response like that, i was even more deterred from applying directly to the job ad's site.)

i spent the next 4 hours in vain, looking up that job ad's site and not seeing anything that particularly interested me. which was when i finally decided i was done for the day (this was shortly after most companies' lunch breaks) and took a toilet break, thinking i'd next get around to finally having a look at this still-not-fully clear-to-me business idea i have yet to flesh out (to my satisfaction, in order to get it to go 'live').

i got back to a w/app call from an unknown no. that i was wondering whether i should pick up or not. immediately after that no. stopped ringing, there was a msg from it saying she was the company's HR manager. i called her back. she explained that the HR girl in charge of hiring ppl had gone on leave, but she'd seen my email and would fwd it to the company's founder (another 'ringleader', i eventually discovered). i asked her what my chances were and she said they were good, and that she already "liked" the sound of me. we ended the call amicably.

i then got on my com to craft an email to someone i still consider very dear to me in my life, when...eventually, my com started ringing with a w/app-call. it turns out my tablet had been pinging with w/app msges that i'd ignored, coz i just thought they were the usual app alerts. i picked up the call with my tablet and it was the 'ringleader'. he asked if i'd seen his msges (no) and if i was free to talk. i asked for half an hr more, he said ok, and i finished up my email, with just 5mins or so to gobble down lunch, before calling back the 'ringleader' on w/app-call. 

we ended up talking for over 2hrs (i hadn't realised till he said it) at the end of which, he considered me already hired. however, he brought up a whole buncha points that were favorable to me (or at least nicely requested-of me, such as could i "please" give him 2 mths' notice before leaving – this implies he has never gotten such a long notice for the position i applied for) that i later-on discovered were contrary to what the HR girl had drafted in her nearly-didn't-give-it-to-me "job contract" (it wasn't even a short offer letter: it was 14 pages long of mostly-unfair-to-me terms and conditions).

chances are, i'll keep forgetting what to mention in the job contract that contradicted what i've mentioned on here that i was otherwise first told. so every time i mention it, i'll mention the contradiction in the job contract itself that i eventually, with a fuckload of pestering and also having to say i was "considering" at the end (even though it was clear to me by then that there was nothing to consider), managed to get a hold of. 

so here's contradiction no. 1: job contract matter-of-factly stated that i could only give 2 months' notice when i was leaving (labour laws here list it as 1 month for a job of less than 2 years' old). the job contract also stated that it was a "requirement" for me to work "1 year" minimum at my job, yet the same contract stated that i could be dismissed, during probation, immediately.

he then asked when i could next start. when i said "after christmas", he proposed i head over to his office on christmas eve "to see if you like" the working conditions and the job scope that the outgoing (as in, opposite of incoming) girl in my position was going to give me an overview about. when i reiterated that i preferred to start after christmas, his counter-claim was that it wasn't on christmas day itself. i stupidly reluctantly agreed, and he said he'd get back to me after checking if the outgoing girl was gonna be on leave (thank god she was, when he called back).

he then asked that i come down to the sg office on friday (26 dec 2025), despite me applying for a position in the not-yet-open jb office (which he said was going to be factory and wasn't sure about having office space for – the HR girl told me otherwise when i did come over on friday). since that was already the end of monday the 22nd and a buncha things* weren't sorted out yet, i told him that with such short notice, i would have to take the official cross-border cab in.

things that weren't yet sorted out:

• my mother'd earlier-in-the-month said there was some new ruling about insurance needing me to pay an extra 50 ringgit per year if i wanted to drive into sg (which my mother didn't yet pay for), 
• my car's autopass (or causeway entry-to and exit-from sg's toll) card was valid but not-renewed yet (coz it needs to get renewed every year...except it hadn't been driven into sg that year),
• since covid's pandemic lockdown, what used to be a physical, on-the-spot submitted embarkation card has now become an online-only application, and i wasn't clear on how long or short it'd take (or if the automated, my-form's-details-sent-to-me email sufficed – it later turns out that it did).

back to me taking the cab into sg. he said "no worries" and that he'd get his company to pay for it, and we also ended the call amicably. later on, my mother kept insisting that i whatsapp-write him the total amount of per diems for my daily trip into and out of sg. he kept writing that he was okay with whatever the amount was. i assumed his word was to be trusted, since it was his own company and...well, my pre-accdt paid job paid for all my per diems, wherever i travelled, no questions asked. (but then again my pre-accdt company was an MNC, whereas his was "an SME" [or small or medium-sized enterprise].)

i then wrote down that, with such a high amount as a daily per diem and him requiring me to travel into sg every weekday for the first 3 weeks, followed by every tuesday, that i might as well rent a hotel room with that same amount of $. 

contradiction no. 2: job contract never mentioned any such training in sg being required in writing, despite being so anal-retentive about things such as not even permitting staff-who've-been-fired to speak to ex-colleagues, and how everyone needs to inform "the company" if any such occurrence happens. i've never applied for a company that already sounded so orwellian, even before agreeing to work for them. i've also never— i'll mention mistake no. 2b later.

as i was saying. i automatically assumed that travelling in and outta sg daily was allowed coz i'd done it so often (but was either on student or work-related passes while i was...which i'd forgotten about). but because my parents worried and brought it up so often, i finally looked it up on sg's official govt website page. it literally says that "If you take up any on-the-job training, you require a work pass." and that their govt still needs to be informed, even if it's for 'allowed' activities.

if i were to guess, i would think that this clause was deliberately left out of the long and thorough (and mostly unfair-to-me terms) contract because (at the least, HR) knew it was illegal. in fact, this was the last point i'd written (in the only, hastily titled [as my first-name last-name] email i ever got from the company) as to why i was forgoing the signing of (and taking-up the offer on) the job contract. 

i.e., i truthfully said i wasn't willing to get banned (no matter how temporary, because it'll be on my otherwise-pristine record) from entering sg again for illegally "working" (according to their govt's definitions of work, listed in the page i've just linked) there, and this reason superseded my inability to accept the change in me-first-being-told that my per diems to-and-from sg would all be fully covered.

(i calculated it to amount to 250 ringgit per day, or something like 80 sg dollars – i used online toll-fare calculators, added in petrol as well as my lunch there in sg. by on the phone, he had agreed that per diems would be separate from, and additional to, my already-lower-than if-i-worked-in-sg pay in ringgit. i did see the same job ad in sg offering a more suitable pay in sg dollars, but he said he decided he would rather hire a johorean who travelled between the two offices [and surrounding areas] and 1-2 times a year to the kl one [and its surrounding area].)

contradiction no. 3: absolutely nowhere in the job contract did it mention anything about per diems; in fact, my salary was stated as a "gross" amount of shitty-in ringgit (and not even close to its sg equivalent). it was my father who pointed out that 'gross' means per diems are also included...i googled and the definition of 'gross' did include that (as well as other things).

the next day (tuesday morning of the 23rd of dec, 2025) after writing me a few bullet points of only-the-employee-benefits of his company, he suddenly wrote that 80 sg dollars was "too expensive" and sought a zoom call with me. i finally tore out the scotch-taped post-it note from this laptop and was waiting (despite not having slept the night before, coz i was about to)....like motherfucking 29hours of not sleeping yet for him to write back, which he never did. at which point, i gave up and decided i'd at least catch some sleep during office hours' estimated lunch break timings.

i did actually already reject the job in writing, since that amount was too large an expense for me to have to incur (on top of already shitty pay). he claimed the pay he offered was "the market rate", yet i saw many other similar jobs in jb only requiring me to travel to their site-of-work (only 1 place in jb) and back, for the same pay range.

i awoke after an hour and...had my lunch, and basically prepped to sound more awake. soon enough, the 'ringleader' called back. he asked if i could take the bus instead. (i adamantly said no, what with the pushing and shoving and me being wary of ppl banging into my hit-and-run's scarred leg.) he then asked why i can't carpool, like his once-in-a-while employee did. i said it wasn't official, so i could easily get kidnapped (i actually meant to say 'sex-trafficked') and no one would know...unless it was someone regular. i asked him if the employee got someone regular to drive her in and outta sg. he said yes, but that the driver prioritised daily commuters (i.e. implying the driver would bypass her if his car was already full). 

'ringleader' said he'd check and call back. which he did, but instead told me "you shouldn't jump the gun", that suddenly, 80 sg dollars was a "small sum", and that "i made you a promise for friday" ("you did?" i asked, stunned), and that "everything can be worked out...so don't be so quick to say no". and that he would see me on friday, and that yes my transport would be paid-for. he wrote down sth like to "have a good rest", but it was anything but that. 

my mother had gone to the insurance company to pay the 50 ringgit. i used whatever papers she'd returned with, as well as me having to google [as well as trial-and-error] a lot for other requested-for online photos or documents, to apply for my autopass' renewal. (i did ask eric [for where to find such documents] who'd done it before post-lockdown, but he said he'd forgotten by then.)

i later found out, when my autopass renewal's application got rejected on friday afternoon itself, that it was because the 50-ringgit coverage "was listed at a future date" (i.e. just 4 days later, on the 30th of dec 2025). i made sure to apply on the evening of the 29th and...got my approval the next day. except that i no longer had a job to drive out to, so...*i literally exhaled*. i'd love to visit new crea in-person again, except that i (still) currently have no new income coming in yet.

and initially, neither of my parents were planning to celebrate christmas, let alone its eve. they didn't even put up any christmas tree. 

(my mother only hurriedly dragged out the stressful-af tree that she'd bought for me 2 years ago and scolded me for, when i said it was so difficult to move houses with without a box, and she even dictated what ornaments should be hung on the tree when i was living at the haunted house...so in the end i returned the tree to my parents because what the fuck kind of "gift" is this when it comes with shitloads of scoldings and dictatorship orders about how the tree should be arranged and where it should be placed (like the rest of all the furniture for all places i've paid for within these 2.5 years to rent for what was supposed to be my space away from that witch, dammit)— back to topic.

yet when i was prepping to go out for dinner on the eve's pre-sunset itself, and was asking my father to coax my mother out, he finally got her to agree for us 3 to eat out at some restaurant nearby. while at the restaurant, my mother suddenly asked to have xmas lunch (but leave in the morning) the next morning. and it so happened that when i photographed a we-fie with the restaurant's manager, who'd recognized me before i recognized her ("long time no see!" she said), i spent the hours-until-midnight doing up (and editing) the wefie to send it to her...except i wanted to first receive confirmation that i'd gotten the correct number.

however, i never got a response (till several days later). the rest of that christmas-eve night, as well as my following christmas night, was spent either on last-min christmas-greeting emails or preparations for my boxing-day (or 26 dec 2025) trip to sg that i hardly got to sleep at all. and fucking hell – my mother scolded me for all of that, and refused to let me drive out at 11pm to the (at) larkin (by now instead of jb town) cross-border taxi stand, to book in-advance a taxi for hours ahead. fucking bitch...she all-of-a-sudden kept making various excuses to stop me and finally admitted it was because she found that timing "dangerous" to drive out during.

she even scolded me for driving back to the restaurant pre-sunset (because i wanted to ask the manager if i'd gotten her number right). 

(i waved at the manager as she was walking upstairs to [i didn't know till then that she lived upstairs] her abode for a break but she ignored me. so i got my confirmation from the in-her-place manager below and also ordered a surprisingly tasty iced chocolate with caramel drink. until then, i had only thought caramel went well with tea or vanilla ice cream, because i hadn't come across such a drink mixture yet.)

i then sent the wefie on-the-spot (using the restaurant's wifi). it was only a week later that i got a simple written acknowledgement of thanks from the manager. yet again, i am involved not-by-choice with ppl i've met at restaurants my parents have dragged me to, over the past year, and that my mother has scolded me for, because that fucking bitch has always been scolding me even though she knows ever since i was sentient, i've had strangers coming up to talk to me.

in fact, i received a humiliating tight slap across the face (and right after my bath too) after unexpectedly being called out to the garden that faced the playground (where everyone else from there could see me being slapped in shame) from my father, just for innocently giving the bus driver (a few doors down) this house's number when he met me in the playground and asked for it, and then called me up, and kept asking me to whisper and not tell my parents when they kept asking who it was, until my mother eventually got suspicious and he put down the phone.

this memory came back in full-blown ptsd, as part of my many...decades full of physical and verbal abuses from my parents. which my mother promptly denied has ever happened of course (and has repeatedly gaslighted me about – thank god for all these written records, and conversations with peers about such occurrences, as proof that it wasn't just "your mind making it up" – fucking bitch), whereas my father legit has so bad a memory, he seems to have erased all the instances of him physically beating me up, running at me with a butcher's knife, and so on.

back to topic. she said i should've gone to the taxi stand then, when she knows full fucking well that (esp post-accdt me/) i prefer to drive out when the sky is dark, so that it hurts my eyes less (esp if i've been running low on sleep), and that i have always been a night owl. (except nowadays, i am a night-to-day owl. like rn. it's actually 9.09am atm on 10 jan 2026.)

*exhales* christmas itself was also stressful. eric initially said he'd pay for christmas lunch at ikea when i said i was gonna stock up on f&b (like the previous times when i was living in his apartment, and my parents forced me out to eat there [and get yelled at] with them). but when i got back, he had changed his mind. i therefore had to pay for all the unnecessary extra f&b i'd gotten back, on top of christmas lunch, and the usual mountainful of chicken wings my mother'd got for her mother (aka. my gran).

so fast fwd to boxing day. i hardly slept and had to deal with yelling at and refusing that fucking witch from dropping me off at larkin, what with so much stress she was giving me already. so i drove myself stressfully to larkin, parked there, and thankfully immediately got a cab that took me directly to the sg office without a hitch. i arrived early, with enough time to change downstairs (at a food court's toilet) into office clothes before heading upstairs to the company's factory-lot situated on a block's rooftop of its industrial complex.

and when i arrived, the 'ringleader', who was supposed to be on leave, greeted me together with the HR girl (who was more like a lady...looked my age or around-that-range, though she openly thought i was half my age...woot! – even the 'ringleader' on the phone thought i was younger when he asked me, based on the 2hr convo alone, on monday) who had been on leave on monday.

one of the first things they brought up, after we were seated in their glass-walled (overlooking hot-desks workspace) meeting room, was the high cost of my per diems (to and from sg). it was once again brought up that other employees carpool. i asked if other employees had to enter and exit sg so often or if their pay was higher. they avoided answering me.

and somehow, both the 'ringleader' and HR girl pared down my per diem to 30 sg dollars less, because they assumed that malaysians pay less to cross the causeway (this logic does not compute – malaysians always pay more, because our currency is 3 times less of singaporeans'!) and don't have as many extra tolls and fees to pay (despite me previously listing official toll calculators for both countries).

although i wasn't on board with this, the 'ringleader' said sth like, "and this is based only on what we're estimating so far", so i assumed that he implied that he'd pay me accordingly once i actually drove in. he also reiterated once again that my transport that day would be paid-for.

contradiction no. 3b: the HR girl only asked me for my cross-border cab receipt back, despite me saying i would take the train-and-bus back (since it wasn't rush hour yet). so not only was that later part not covered, but i also cheated halfway and took a cab coz it was already getting late. (in fact, i'd wasted sth like 2 hrs walking around the area and trying-and-failing to hail a cab, because that particular area didn't see much unoccupied-taxis traffic.)

i'll skip the rest of my time at the sg office, because it isn't relevant. the outgoing girl was...my gosh, i felt so sorry for her. (i'd guessed she was a fresh grad, and later on when i got back to look at her socials, her linkedin did indeed state as much.) coz when i later finally had a look at the contract (days later) with the orwellian policing and all, i finally understood why it seemed like she wanted to say more (and i myself wanted to ask more)...except we couldn't, when the HR lady came back into the room, as if to monitor our conversation.

so...there i was in sg, trying and failing to hail a cab back...and walking around and not being familiar with the many-changes-made (since i last left that area in 2018) place. i even got myself a new ez-link (train and bus) card from the train station when i saw others using it, and topped up 50 sg bucks into it, thinking i'd be using it soon. 

(so eric was wrong after all, in telling my parents that only credit and debit cards were now being used. he left out the part where the ez-link doesn't charge 60 sg cents [or 1.80 ringgit] extra per trip if credit or debit cards are used.)

i endured a mild form of pushing and shoving at the usual sg checkpoint section where ppl "queue" to take the bus back. (they don't queue. they make a fucking run for it. even the metal railings themselves have more than 1 person at a time walking in, before the final free-for-all scramble into the various buses. and that wasn't even peak hour, when i was there slightly after 5pm on a friday.)

i skipped my lunch thinking i'd reach home earlier. i hadn't eaten a thing all morning till evening. so imagine finally returning to larkin where i'd parked my car (after taking the bus all the way back, instead of stopping by city square to eat – it was partly coz the HR lady requested copies of personal documents from me while i was still 'in transit'/ travelling back; more on mistake no. 2b in a bit).

i reach into my bag for my car keys...and find them missing, together with my keys for the house's gate and grille, as well as my steering lock's key. they're not in my pockets or any of my clothes (extra or worn) either. and i am hungry and tired.

i call my mother but she doesn't pick up. i call my father and explain things. he implies as if my mother's at home sleeping, but that he'll come over soon to pass me my car's spare key (with the spare key for the steering lock). i tell him i haven't eaten yet and intend to either drive or be sent to larkin junction after arriving home (and unpacking and changing and using the toilet), but he says there's no need to coz "there's always something at home". so i assume he has let my mother know of this as she awakes or sth, just before leaving the house.

i end call. as i wait for him in the open-air carpark, it suddenly rains cats and dogs on me. i walk quickly, like everyone else in the car park, back towards the sheltered area (where the cross-border taxis are), and wipe off my bag and extra clothes that have taken the brunt of the rain. just as suddenly, it stops raining. my father finally drives into the taxi stand's adjacent public carpark. (he was previously reluctant to and intended to ask me to walk outside the parking area, but thankfully this wasn't the case when he arrived.)

he unlocks my car and its steering lock. he checks my car's interior for the possibility of me having left my keys inside (in case the car auto-locked itself or sth). nothing. he watches as i drive past, just to make sure my car keys aren't under the car or around it or sth. nothing there either. 

since i reach this house (of my parents') first, i make the mistake of deciding to park my car under the lamppost. this is only my 3rd attempt at doing so, and for the last attempt, my father said i'd parked too far out onto the road. so this time i try to get as close to the lamppost as possible...and drive straight (in slow motion) into the lamppost. as in, i leave the gear in 'drive' and let the car auto-move until it gets stopped by the lamppost with a loud thud.

i get out to check. at that moment, my mother appears (as if) out of nowhere (from across the road, where she's apparently just parked) and starts scolding me for driving my own car into the lamppost. she scolds me for losing my car keys (and the rest of the keys in the ring, despite none of them having any form of identification for what on earth those keys are for, in case the stranger who finds them has bad intentions).

as we get into the house, i say sth like, "i'm hungry, where's the food" because i assume my father has already briefed her. (he soon arrives back here after my mother first appears.) she starts yelling back, "don't you know there's ikea lasagna in the fridge?!?" exasperatedly. this is the final straw that sets me off. how the fuck would i know, when she hoarded all the extra f&b i'd brought back, after refusing to let me buy takeaways ("i have my own containers", she insisted to the cashier and i). 

and not only that, but the night before, i'd seen the 2 lasagnas i'd chosen left outside on the table. i just assumed she'd eaten them up, since by-then eric had said (and i'd told her) that he was no longer paying for them. (i only paid for everything the next day or sth like that. my mother paid first because the credit card terminal was slow, and therefore not correctly registering my typed-in-too-fast PIN for larger-than-250-ringgit [due to govt regulations] transactions.)

the next night and the day after is filled with yelling and screaming and blaming. for most of the time, my father is clutching his chest (because it hurts) and...it is usually what makes me eventually back down (because that's usually a sign of someone about to have a heart attack, right, when they start clutching their hurting chest due to stressing out?). because as usual, my mother always wants to fucking win the argument. and when she knows she's in the wrong, she brings up the kitchen sink to find fault with me through some other manner. 

she is also famous for firing salvos before locking my parents' room door, because she knows that causes me to start yelling (and sometimes banging at, or throwing things at/ ) behind that locked door. motherfucking witch. 

moved the next section to a new post coz this one's getting too long.