x9200 wrote:Edmundfo wrote:I have previous brought up the very restrictive access card policy at Woodsvale
condo. Now their policy has tightened considerably, insisting on personal access cards which even has to be showed to the guards when you enter the condo by cab.
[..]
I have never been able to receive a sensible answer from the management regarding how this system allows me to have overnight visitors. My only
In our previous place (really big condo) it was similar and I found it acceptable or even desirable. We have visiting friends many times and then simply left them one pair of the keys with one access card (we had 2 only).
conclusion is so far that it dont. And people call this private
property?!?
This is also a "condo", a protected/restricted access property. There are some obvious limitation resulting from this.
When I brought this up on a different forum I was met with statements such as the following: "
As an expat renting a condo at a fairly high rent it does rather devalue our condo to have hordes of locals around the pool and other facilities". Are this kind of attitudes really representative for the expat community in Singapore? Making
condos look like a charicature
Well, regardless locals or not locals... in the above mentioned condo it was a clear problem with this. During weekends the population of the condo seemed to get doubled and this was with the access card procedures already in place.
of the over-controlled Singapore society. Thank god I only have 3 months left of my lease at this miserable place.
I am really afraid you will likely be disappointed in your next one too.
It also seems you are trying to make out of this a racial or political issue and it has nothing to do with this.
I really dont get this. Me and my wife has one access card each. Lets say we give one to our overnight guest. First of all,
this is not allowed by the management (because the cards are personal), so it does clearly not solve the problem. Second, if we do that one of us will be without access card and therefore risks not being allowed into our own house. That is hardly an "obvious limitation", but rather a Kafkaesque-Hellerian absurdity if you ask me. Recall that the security guards will now not let me enter without my access card either, despite knowing perfectly well that I live here. I ask again: Can anyone please explain me how to deal with this?
This would be easy to solve if the management was willing to give out one extra access card, possibly with limited validity in order to avoid abuse. But the management refuses to do that. So although your solution works at your condo (and worked at Woodsvale before), I can hardly see how it can work at Woodsvale with the new policy.
This is not all, though. Since we rent a rather large 3 bedroom apartment, we wanted to let my sister in law visit when she wanted to. The landlord had no objections to this. However, the management was only willing to give her an access card if she moved her permanent address to Woodsvale. This, again, I find ridiculous. It kind of follows from this that I'm not allowed to rent (or for that sake own) two different private properties at once.
I'm not saying that the management does not want locals in their condo. On the contrary, Woodsvale is governed by its own residents, and I believe the number of expats owning a place here is rather low. Neither did I make this into a racial issue. Rather it was the responce (emphasized in italics) from other expats which had a racist flavor to it. The racist flavor was apparently clear enough for you to spot it, and then I think its fair to ask if other expats share those attitudes.
It is hardly surprising that the population of the condo would appear to double during the weekend. However, a condo such as Woodsvale is so spacious in the first place that this shouldnt really be a problem. The only place which tends to get too crowded is the gym, which frankly is quite pathetic anyway.
Of course a condo should be a somewhat protected place.
But rules need to be practical if they are supposed to work well. There are many less drastic measures that Woodsvale could have implemented instead. How anyone can be willing to make their condo into a prison (yes thats what it is, when I cannot leave my house fearing that my friends may want to visit me) just for the sake of keeping their swimming pool empty, is beyond my imagination.
