Euphoria No More - Part 1

It's almost 5 months since I was promoted to the Equity Research division. The euphoria was long gone and the fatigue has set in. I didn't get paid leave and won't get it until after the first anniversary of my placement as an employee (pegawai tetap). So, this is what happened:

• I got accepted as a Management Trainee (MT) on May 2006. I didn't get paid leave (cuti) since I wasn't considered as the company's employee. All of the MTs were, are, and probably will be treated this way. So, fine then.
• I got promoted as a Junior Analyst a year later, in 2007. According to the company's rule, an employee is not allowed to get paid leave until the first anniversary of the employee's first working day.
• The closest thing to a leave (unpaid, of course), would be the gap between my working period as an MT and as an employee, which is immediately after the one-year period and prior to my signing contract as an employee.
• Depending on each MT's individual bosses, one may not get to use that gap (1-10 working days max) and lose the opportunity to get the unpaid leave, effectively not getting any leave for the period of 2 years.

To make the story short, I was one among those MTs. And to add salt to the wound, all mandatory leave instituted by the government (such as extended Eid and Christmas day-offs) are to be applied to my paid leave days in the next year, on top of the mandatory leave for that year that is going to further reduce my quota, possibly putting me and other MTs in a paid leave "debt" situation.