I am still feeling weird while typing this. I always thought the “kiasu” culture in Singapore was mostly harmless—a bit of queueing here, some credit card min-maxing there. But what I just discovered is next-level sociopathic.
I’ve been staycationing with a group of four friends since uni days. We’re all in our late 30s now, mostly working in tech or finance. One guy, let’s call him “Bryan,” has always been the “planner” of the group. He handles the bookings, the split-bills, and the spreadsheets. We all joked that he should’ve been an auditor.
Last night, we were at his place for drinks. Bryan went to the washroom and left his iPad open on the coffee table. A notification popped up from a Google Sheet titled “Lifestyle Tracker – 2025/2026.” Curiosity got the better of me. I thought it was his own budget.
It wasn’t.
It was a spreadsheet with tabs for every person in our close friend group. I clicked on my name. This guy has been logging every single group buy, every shared GrabFood order, and every “treat” I’ve mentioned over the last 14 months.
He had columns for:
- Estimated Monthly Spend: Based on the restaurants I suggest.
- Income Tier Change: He noted when I bought my new car and calculated my estimated monthly installment down to the cent.
- “The Promotion Indicator”: He literally wrote a note saying, “Alex started ordering premium sashimi sets on Tuesdays instead of regular donburi. Salary likely adjusted +20%.”
The creepiest part? He used our shared GrabFood “Group Orders” to see exactly what I’m eating when he isn’t even there. Because he’s the one who usually starts the group link to “save on delivery fees,” he has a digital receipt of my diet and spending habits.
I scrolled further and saw he was comparing our “data” to decide who he should network with more. There was a comment under another friend’s tab saying, “Spending decreasing; likely hit by recent tech layoffs. Reduce social investment.”
I felt sick. We’ve shared dinners, celebrated birthdays, and talked about our kids, and all the while, he was treating us like data points in a CRM software. When he came out of the toilet, I just made an excuse about my son waking up and left immediately.
How do you even confront someone about this? If I tell the others, the whole group chat will implode. But I can’t look at him the same way. In Singapore, we talk about “transparency,” but this is a total invasion of privacy. He isn’t a friend; he’s an analyst and we are his portfolio.
Is this what adult friendships in SG have become? Just a calculated game of who is “moving up” and who is “stagnating”? I’m seriously considering nuking the friendship and just going solo for a while. Watch out who you share your “Group Order” links with. Some people aren’t looking to save $2 on delivery; they’re looking to see if you can afford the upgrade.