Living in an 'Office-Tel' Type Building

[MrMan]

Back when I was an English teacher in the mid 1990's in South Korea, a friend of mine lived up in Seoul. I used to go up about once a month or so to hang out with him. We'd just do our normal thing-- buy movie tickets in advance, ride the Subway to a market area or mall, eat in restaurants, stop in a coffee house while waiting on the movie.

This guy lived in an officetel-- which was a building with rooms that could be use as offices, hotels rooms. It was in Kangnam (like in the song, but before the song came out.) Basically, it was a big rectangular-shaped room with big windows like in an office. He had a bed and a futon that could go on the floor for guests. There was heat from the building that would shut off for the night, so he'd turn on an electric space heater.

It had a restroom that was a toilet and a sink. There was a drain on the floor. That's a good thing about the Asian bathrooms I've seen-- they typically have a drain on the floor. It's just common sense. Why doesn't the USA? A lot of Asian showers involve just showering on the floor. I don't like their keeping their floors wet. He had a hose that would connect to the sink. Especially in the winter, he'd boil water, mix the hot water with the cold water from the sink in the big container pan thingy, and bathe from a dipper. Then it was my turn and I would go in there and do the same thing.

I tried to talk him into putting a bucket full of water with a lid on it many feet in line with his space heater like I did in case the gas for my little building went out and my hot water heater stopped working. But he didn't like that idea for some reason. It would save him from boiling water.

There might have been a kitchen-like area in the front across from the bathroom-- a kitchen sink and a place for a stove-- probably that runs on cans. My memory is fuzzy on this point but that would make sense because there would be plumbing there for the bathroom unit on the other side of the wall.

I was listening to the radio about how in the larger cities a lot of the country did not completely go back to office space and it's usage is down about 15% since before the Covid-lockdown started. It doesn't make sense sometimes how restrictive city governments can be about the usage of our own real estate property. Why not let people rent office space to live in?

I knew a guy who said he rented a warehouse because he had a lot of stuff and it was cheaper than renting a house.

Has anyone ever lived in a place like this?

[milevaa]

Man, reading your post brought back some memories of some not-so-great living situations I've been in before. It sounds like you're dealing with quite the setup there. I totally get what you mean about the officetel life – it's definitely not for everyone. I had a friend who lived in one back in the day, and let me tell you, it wasn't the most comfortable place to crash. His place was pretty basic, just a big room with minimal amenities. And yeah, heating was always an issue. He had to rely on an electric space heater most of the time, which wasn't ideal. But hey, at least you've got some creative solutions going on with the water situation. Boiling water for baths can be a hassle, but it sounds like you've got it down to a science. Have you ever thought about upgrading your water heater to something like the Bosch 125FX AquaStar from here https://www.waterheatermanuals.com/bosch/125fx/? I've heard good things about tankless water heaters – they're supposed to be way more efficient and could save you a lot of hassle in the long run.

[Natural_Born_Cynic]

Back when I was an English teacher in the mid 1990's in South Korea, a friend of mine lived up in Seoul. I used to go up about once a month or so to hang out with him. We'd just do our normal thing-- buy movie tickets in advance, ride the Subway to a market area or mall, eat in restaurants, stop in a coffee house while waiting on the movie.

This guy lived in an officetel-- which was a building with rooms that could be use as offices, hotels rooms. It was in Kangnam (like in the song, but before the song came out.) Basically, it was a big rectangular-shaped room with big windows like in an office. He had a bed and a futon that could go on the floor for guests. There was heat from the building that would shut off for the night, so he'd turn on an electric space heater.

It had a restroom that was a toilet and a sink. There was a drain on the floor. That's a good thing about the Asian bathrooms I've seen-- they typically have a drain on the floor. It's just common sense. Why doesn't the USA? A lot of Asian showers involve just showering on the floor. I don't like their keeping their floors wet. He had a hose that would connect to the sink. Especially in the winter, he'd boil water, mix the hot water with the cold water from the sink in the big container pan thingy, and bathe from a dipper. Then it was my turn and I would go in there and do the same thing.

I tried to talk him into putting a bucket full of water with a lid on it many feet in line with his space heater like I did in case the gas for my little building went out and my hot water heater stopped working. But he didn't like that idea for some reason. It would save him from boiling water.

There might have been a kitchen-like area in the front across from the bathroom-- a kitchen sink and a place for a stove-- probably that runs on cans. My memory is fuzzy on this point but that would make sense because there would be plumbing there for the bathroom unit on the other side of the wall.

I was listening to the radio about how in the larger cities a lot of the country did not completely go back to office space and it's usage is down about 15% since before the Covid-lockdown started. It doesn't make sense sometimes how restrictive city governments can be about the usage of our own real estate property. Why not let people rent office space to live in?

I knew a guy who said he rented a warehouse because he had a lot of stuff and it was cheaper than renting a house.

Has anyone ever lived in a place like this?

I didn't. I lived in a two room apartment in South Korea before coming to the U.S. My parents won the spot by "lottery" back then in the 1990's.
It have everything you described and it also included a small balcony, living room, a single bathroom with a hole on the floor, and two bed rooms.
The stove was connected by a LPG tube, and you have to manually turn the knob on and off to open and shut the natural gas. There was no oven,
but we did have a microwave and an intercom system installed. There was no floor heating system such as "Ondol" installed in our apartment floor.

I think I lived on the 7th floor and our apartment was right next to a communal building with a stationary store on the ground floor and a community market in the basement.. The apartment buildings each had 15 floors, as that was the standard at that time, and several similar buildings were clustered together and there was a communal market and shops in a small communal building.

I lived there for three years.. some of the problems were lack of sound proofing and no fire escape stairs like ones in America. A elderly Grandpa always comes to our floor and tell us to keep it down when we just dragged the chair and the table. The soundproofing was almost nonexistent.

I was in elementary school and all the kids have to walk to school crossing the over bridge, with their lunchboxes or "Dosiraks".
Very few people in my neighborhood owned cars as public transport was good. They were just middle class, "Salary men" just like everyone else.

I remember Korean people back then had some "soul" left in them. Some people were "warm hearted" and many people were innocent and happy. At least most of them...I don't know. There were problems in the 90's, but not as bad as today. Now Korean people are vicious, cold, overly competitive, capitalistic, materialistic, and morally bankrupt. I know, because I have visited Korea back in 2016 in a business trip. Everything has become stale and cold.

[MrMan]

Before my wife and I had any children, she found out an opportunity to 'buy' a 'rumah susun'-- stack house unit in Jakarta. It was cheap government housing, and you can pay off the person who lived there, but you don't own it. It sounded fishy to me. For me as a foreigner living there, I wasn't sure that would work out-- a white guy sticking out like a sore thumb in housing built by the government for Indonesians.

The unit had a slicked concrete floor (they use diesel to do that I think), with a squat toilet. What was cool about it was that some people adapted the windows of their unit to make little shops and sell food. So it had the feel of a mall or an outdoor market.