Let’s be real for a second. Life in Singapore is basically a Freemium game designed by a very sadist developer. You start at Level 1, primary school, thinking you are the king of the world because you have a shiny Charizard. You think, “Bro, if I can just get that Base Set 1st Edition, my life is complete.”
Spoiler alert: It’s not.
Then you hit puberty, the hormones kick in, and suddenly Pokemon is for kids. Now you want a PlayStation 5 so you can play FIFA or Genshin and ignore your O-Level revision. After that, you realize girls don’t look at your digital trophy room, so you need nice clothes. You start with Uniqlo (the national uniform), but then peer pressure hits. Suddenly you’re wearing Essentials or Balenciaga, looking like a walking billboard just to go to Orchard Road.
By the time you start working, the game scaling gets ridiculous. You look at the MRT map and think, “Sian, I cannot do this for the next 40 years.” So you want a car. You look at the COE price, your liver hurts, but you still sign the 7-year loan for a Honda Civic just so you can get stuck in the same CTE traffic jam, but with aircon and Bluetooth.
Then comes the ultimate Singaporean final boss: The HDB. You find a partner, you do the most romantic gesture in Singapore history (“Babe, want to BTO or not?”), and boom—you are now $500,000 to $1 million in debt. You haven’t even stepped into the house yet, and your CPF Ordinary Account is already cleaner than a surgical theater.
You spend 30 years chasing the 5Cs, running on the treadmill like a hyperactive hamster on Kopi-O Gao. You think, “Once I reach the next milestone, I will be happy.”
But then, you hit your late 30s or 40s. You look in the mirror. Your hairline is retreating faster than your bank account during a Shopee 7.7 sale. Your knees start making a “crack” sound when you stand up from a food court chair. You go for a routine health screening, and the doctor looks at your cholesterol report like it’s a death warrant.
Suddenly, the game changes completely.
All the branded shirts cannot cover your dad bod. The Honda Civic cannot drive you away from your high blood pressure. And your million-dollar resale flat? It feels very empty if your family is too busy working or too estranged to sit down and eat a $4.50 chicken rice together.
The hard truth of life in Singapore is that we are conditioned to buy our way into happiness, only to realize the best things in life are on a strict “No Cash, No PayNow” policy.
You cannot buy a new lower back. You cannot PayLah! your parents to stay young forever. You cannot buy a genuine conversation with your kid if you spent their whole childhood working OT to afford their branded shoes.
It is sibei sian, yes. The system is built to make us chase. But the moment you realize the treadmill has no finishing line, you can finally choose to step off and just walk at your own pace. Buy your economic rice with fish, spend time with the people who matter, and stop letting the Gahmen or society dictate what your next DLC should be.
Now go and drink some water. Your kidneys are watching you.