I recently moved into a condo because my late parents left the unit to me. I thought, “Okay, great, free place to stay, might as well enjoy the facilities, right?” Big mistake. Huge.
The people living here are genuinely next-level sensitive. Like, got what also can complain.
Two nights ago, I couldn’t sleep. It was around 12:00 AM, so I took a walk downstairs to the pool area just to clear my head and get some fresh air. I sat on one of the deck chairs, put on my transparency-mode earpiece, and cracked open a cold can of Coca-Cola. A single “Psssshhht” sound. That’s literally it. I wasn’t playing music on a speaker, I wasn’t talking on the phone, I wasn’t even breathing loudly.
Suddenly, I see a curtain twitch on the second floor. This middle-aged woman literally peaks out her window, glares at me like I’m committing a felony, and ducks back inside. I thought she was just being a weirdo. Five minutes later? Boom. Security guard walks up to me, looking super paisheh, and tells me someone lodged a noise complaint because I was “making racket by the pool past quiet hours.”
Are you actually kidding me? A noise complaint for opening a can of Coke? Is your wall made of single-ply toilet paper or are your ears biologically engineered to detect carbonation from fifty meters away?
This incident made me realize one absolute truth about condo people: They have a tiny bit of money—or more accurately, they act like they have money—just for the unearned prestige of telling people during Chinese New Year, “Oh, I stay in a condo.” It is the ultimate “fake it till you make it” middle-class trap. It’s just another way of saying, “I desperately want to act rich, but I cannot afford a landed bungalow, so I buy a 3-bedroom shoebox and treat the common property like my personal kingdom.”
They act like they own the entire estate, policing the gym dumbbells, monitoring the pool usage like Olympics lifeguards, and sending 1,500-word essays into the MCST feedback portal because a delivery rider walked “too loudly” along the corridor. It’s an insufferable culture of petty Karens who think paying a maintenance fee entitles them to feudal lordship over their neighbors.
And don’t even get me started on the ridiculous condo management fees. Every quarter I look at the bill and I feel my blood pressure spiking. I am paying hundreds of dollars a month in maintenance fees just to fund a security team whose primary job is apparently to harass me on behalf of a sleepless, miserable auntie. I am literally paying out of my own pocket to be annoyed in my own home.
Honestly, give me a mature HDB estate any day. At least in a heartland neighborhood, people mind their own business, the food downstairs is cheaper, and nobody is going to call the cops on you for enjoying a soft drink at midnight. Rant over. I’m going to go open another can of Coke inside my kitchen just to spite the upstairs neighbor.