I’m sitting at a standalone McCafe right now, staring at a lukewarm $3.50 Americano I probably shouldn’t have bought, just watching the lunch crowd rush past. Everyone looks like a ghost. Everyone has their head down, eyes glued to their phones, marching to the MRT like ants.
Lately, the weight of being the “middle man”—both a son to aging parents and a father to a toddler—is genuinely crushing me. I feel like a human shield trying to stop a bullet train. I’m doing everything “right.” I work late, I try to upskill, I dollar-cost average into investments whatever little I have left, and I pinch every single penny. I skip meals sometimes or just eat plain bread to save that extra $5. No new clothes, no holidays, no Grab rides. Just pure survival mode.
But man… I looked at some old physical photos at my parents’ HDB flat last weekend. Photos from the 90s and early 2000s. Why did Singapore look so bright back then? I remember the old wet markets, the neighborhood playground with the actual sand, the sheer vibrant color of just living. Life wasn’t perfect, but the air felt lighter.
Now? Everything feels gray, sterile, and hostile. The corporate world here has turned into a cold, transactional slaughterhouse. Every other week, we read on CNA or LinkedIn about another round of tech or banking layoffs, casually blamed on “AI restructuring” and “operational efficiency.” It sickens me. Human lives, decades of loyalty, wiped out by an algorithm so a conglomerate can report higher Q3 margins to investors.
It makes me look at my son, who is currently obsessed with drawing dinosaurs, and my heart just breaks. What am I even saving for? What is he supposed to study in 15 years? Coding? Automated. Writing? Automated. Finance? Automated. We are forcing our children into a hyper-competitive pressure cooker to prepare them for a workforce that might not even want human beings anymore.
I’m just so tired of chasing the next bill. Total Debt Servicing Ratio, town council fees, insurance premiums, grocery inflation… it never ends. If the grand prize of surviving a grueling 12-hour workday in Singapore is simply earning the right to pay bills and worry if you’ll get retrenched tomorrow, what actually is the point of this life? We aren’t living anymore. We are just maintaining a meat suit until it breaks down.