Scribble scrabble.
#2029 | weehee, wifi!
One of the last things I did in the weeks leading up to my departure was fix the wifi situation for Shane’s family and my own. I’d heard about wifi network extenders for a couple of years now – coincidentally around the same time my home wifi started deteriorating. Or perhaps it coincided with the meteoric rise with which my reliance on the internet at home grew, what with new ventures into freelance work and such, making me newly aware of existing dead wifi zones in the house? In any case, it was getting to be intolerable, but like most minor pains in life, we tolerated it anyway, silently, hoping it would get better by fire, flood, or act of God.
Of course the thing that would finally cause me to spring into action would be my departure. For as tech-illiterate as I am, believe it or not, I am possibly the most tech-savvy in my family, and if I didn’t sort it out before I moved, my family might very well be stuck staring at the loading bar in the study forever. Fixing the wifi was on one of my very long list of things to-do prior to my move, but thankfully part of being engaged is having access to my fiance’s very tech savvy brother, a privilege which I abused liberally…
Anyway.
Shane and I lead very different (read: gamer and non-gamer) lives and so the extenders we got differed as well. I got the Orbi Voice for my place and the ASUS AX6100 network for his, and while they essentially do the same thing – extend the range of one singular network coverage – they differ slightly in execution.
In an ideal world, your original router should be sufficient, but for many people (us included), there are many odd spots in the house where the beams of wifi don’t touch. Shane, for example, lives in a railroad style apartment, meaning the rooms furthest from the living room have patchy, nonexistent wifi connection. Previously they had to use two separate routers, but that meant connecting to Network A in the living room, disconnecting and then connecting to Network B as you moved through the house – very unwieldy!
And while many temporary fixes include getting a second router and such, that creates two networks in your house, as was the case in Shane’s place previously. This is opposed to using an extender, which simply extends your original network connection. And having one singular network coverage matters because it would make it possible to do more things with more convenience. For example, if you wanted to send something to the printer, if you wanted to access the television or living room sound system from your room, or if you wanted to move through the house without the network on your phone dropping and accidentally using up your 4G instead of connecting to the next nearest Wifi router.. The reasons go on, and they were good reasons, so onwards to steady wifi we went!
Setting up the Asus – black and gold, which I was seriously loving!
We set up the Asus at Shane’s place first. I have to say that I straight up loved this from the start because of how sleek it looked, and how easy it was to set up. You basically plug it into your (windows) laptop with a LAN cable and set it up the same way you set up any router, by entering your details into a localised page in your web browser as per the little instruction booklet that comes in the box. Once that’s done, you set up your satellite, and get that to beam wifi out to the far corners of your house.
How extenders work is, the modems need to see each other to ‘talk’ to one another. Ideally, there shouldn’t be obstruction between the two satellites, and the prevailing wisdom is to find a spot that’s high up and central in the house. We stuck it on top of the fridge, which was surprisingly the true center of the house. Voila! Extremely, extremely fast wifi in the back two rooms.
Another option was setting the Asus up in a room where they wanted to set up a gaming point, for example, in Shane or Shaun’s room. The Asus uses both a wired and wireless connection because it has internet and LAN ports, meaning you can plug your TV, Xbox, Playstations, Nintendo switches, and anything else to the ASUS, giving your consoles an extremely stable wired connection, and extremely strong wireless connection for remote devices like phones or laptops!
And then at my place, we set up the Orbi network, including the Orbi Voice.
The Orbi was designed to be an easier set up because it’s an app based installation. You essentially download the Orbi app and follow the steps, and voila. Alas, a delayed voila for me – I encountered a couple of speed bumps setting it up because the app wouldnt recognize my network. This may just be a one off thing, mind, because when I ran a troubleshooting search on the web, there were tons of reviews praising the seamless setup, which eluded me endlessly. Eventually, it took a couple of modem restarts for this to get going, but once it did, the experience was smooth sailing henceforth.
Setting it up on the TV console so it’s a higher, unobstructed point from the floor or under the table. The matte white look really blends it into any modern home quite easily, something I appreciate!
Once you’ve set it up, the Orbi is pretty much the perfect system for families and macbook users. The sleek matte white is very reminiscent of early Apple days, and literally everything is controlled via the app – you can turn on and off wifi access for a certain device (if you want be irritating and prank your sister), change the network name and password, create a guest wifi, run speed tests, and use their Disney Circle on Netgear function to implement parental controls. It also ‘talks’ to you in a very straightforward way – the top of the router lights up in different colors to indicate potential issues. Purple if your internet is down. Green when first powered on. White pulses when firmware is updating. Blue if the connection between the Orbi an Orbi satellite is good. So on and so forth. You can use the Orbi router with regular Orbi satellites or the Orbi Voice satellite, and we went for the latter in my bedroom.
As you can see it’s not meant to be an inconspicuous object at all; it’s meant to be proudly displayed as an integrated part of your furniture. The Orbi voice is also a smart wifi speaker, which allows you to connect your Spotify account and activate on voice command. It runs on Alexa, which isn’t available in the SG app store, so any purchase of the Orbi comes with a workaround guide which is really easy to sort out. Besides radiating wifi, it is also, importantly, a good speaker – Harman Kardon – which is possibly the best speaker we’ve had at home, though all of us are casual music listeners, not people with home cinema aspirations.
Once we had the Orbi set up, I actually grew to seriously love it. Having everything on an app actually made it super easy to understand what was going on and why – for example, if there was a slow connection on one device, I could look at the overview on the app and figure out what was going wrong (usually it had to do with the triband receptors in the receiving device), and just reset it for that device alone. One thing to note though, is that the Orbi only has an internet port, and no LAN ports on the device body. What this means is that you can use the Orbi for wireless connections, but not connect anything wired (like extra gaming consoles) to the Orbi, which is fine for casual internet users like my family and I.
Bottom line: Both of these devices are great for covering wide areas in the house, and ridding your place of dead zones, but:
The Orbi is better for families or mac users (it’s hard to plug a LAN wire into a macbook for setup, so the app setup is best for people who don’t want to deal with the hassle of multiple dongles and wires), as it’s an all rounded product that’s incredibly straightforward to use as long as you know your way around a phone. It will appeal to people who like a clean, minimalistic aesthetic – not just because of its beautiful product design, but also because the wireless set up makes for a less messy house overall, without multiple wires lying around! I also think that it’s especially suitable for families who may want to monitor what their kids access online, or have numbers to how much time their kids spend online – not necessarily to restrict their access, but because it’s important to have mature discussions about responsible internet usage, which the Orbi facilitates 🙂 Plus, it’s a wifi speaker!
On the other hand, the ASUS is better for people who don’t mind wires and are more invested in having good, stable connections for their internet enabled consoles. It’s especially suited for gamers, for example, whether hard core or casual, because it allows you to wire multiple consoles up to different points in your house wherever your satellite is. With the ASUS you could have your PS/Xbox consoles (which run on wired, not wireless connections) in your living room, bedroom, or study, and they would all be super fast and super stable since the wire is a dedicated route that channels your signal bytes across.
Overall: A happier, more stable, more worry free wifi experience at home.
It was amazing how simple it was, like walking through a door. Flaky wifi, good wifi. How could we have lived before this, holding our phones up to the sky as if begging for a connection? I don’t know. Of course, there will be those who see that as a metaphorical parallel to the state of our modern worship-reliance of the cloud and such (it is, quite literally, called the cloud), and those are all fair comments, which I will continue to acknowledge from my point, under the covers, far from the living room router, scrolling and scrolling on a seamless connection before bed.
This post was written and researched in July 2019, and brought to you in collaboration with SITEX Singapore, but all views expressed are my own. Visit SITEX for more details in relevance to the Smart Home and Living Experiential Zone!
x
Jem
#2028 | (It’s been waiting for me)
Here I am in transit at San Francisco Airport, waiting for my flight to New York, which will then propel me headfirst into a dream which has been a decade in the making. When I first said, at 18, that I’d move to New York some day, everyone dismissed it as the words of a young dreamer. At 23 I said again I would move there within five years and people were amused at the conviction of someone who could not possibly know what she was declaring. Occasionally I catch echoes of the same sentiment in myself, and know that I might have eye-rolled my 18-year-old self too. I have reminded myself many times over the last few years not to laugh off the airy dreams of younger girls. I hold the naïveté of hopefulness in both hands and blow on it.
But it is not New York the physical space that I seek but the heterotopias of my mind. I want to stand at the cross junctions of metropolitan chaos and watch it collide with the literary heartbeat of the city. I want to watch the ways a people can be both chained and set free by ideals. There are things I know I am looking for and things that I can sense but cannot yet name. I am starting at my dream school in my dream city and I cannot help but wonder if I have reached the dream version of myself that deserves these things yet? Probably not. And so I am excited but also nervous and afraid. But yet here I am in San Francisco Airport, waiting.
I know it may not be what I imagined; I know the New York in my head has formed out of half-impressions from a nostalgic age. I know it may not be all I’ve dreamed of. But the difference between that dream and my reality is what I find myself searching for. In that space between realities I will make my own. And then we shall see.
x
Jem
#2027| equality or fomo?
If a marriage is a partnership then how is it that it is always the man who exerts himself jumping through loops and performing feats of love to win the hand of the woman, who is indeed a woman, and not chattel to be bought or haggled over –
Anyway I also proposed to Shane.
x
Jem
#2026 | Once upon a Friday
So many things have happened recently but here we are with a slice. Once upon a Friday I was busy being productive with my life, waking up early to work on script edits, going to the gym after TWO MONTHS of being out of commission (travel + work + shin splints and doctor’s orders) therefore nearly fainting post workout, heading to the hospital for two vaccination jabs, one on each arm (meningitis and influenza), and then heading to meet my girlfriend Georgina to bring her to a surprise dinner with the girls for her birthday.
Xiaoqi had booked a home dining omakase experience, which in my head translated to – it’s someone’s home, so it’s super chill. So naturally, I showed up with no makeup save for some smudged eyeliner from the gym which I got lazy to wipe off (it’s a ‘look’, i protested) and in an orange t shirt with sneakers, which explained G’s look when she gave me the once over and went:
You look… cute.
Anyway. I got us a grab to the secret address Xiaoqi sent me which turned out to be a three storey townhouse, and knocked on the door. When the door opened to a dining table which was completely unset, in my head I started thinking what an unprofessional dining experience this was because they were clearly not ready for our 8pm reservation and also this is why you make a booking at somewhere established aka Luke’s Oyster Bar or something because you wouldnt be caught in a situation like this on someone’s BIRTHDAY
While I was panicking (secretly texting xiaoqi WHERE ARE YOU WE ARE HERE AND CONFUSED), G started walking up the stairs and was like: Hey maybe it’s upstairs
And I went: Er G you cant do that i think this is actually someone’s house
G: No maybe dinner is upstairs
Me: No this is one of those home cooking experience things. You cant go upstairs!
And she just ignored me and started walking up anyway.
So I followed her up and the first thing I saw on level two was a couch and a side table with a gopro mounted on a little cardboard box labelled storis which is this engagement ring company in Singapore, and in my head I immediately went
FRED IS PROPOSING TO GEORGINA
And
WHY DIDN’T ANYONE GIVE ME A HEADS UP?! STUPID BOYS
And I tried to block the gopro with my body so she wouldnt see it
SEE NOW I HAVE TO PLAY BY EAR AND IF I MESS UP THE PROPOSAL FOR HER IT WILL BE MY FAULT
And
SERIOUSLY, BOYS ARE SO STUPID ARE U KIDDING ME
G: What are you doing
Me: Nothing. I think this is part of the dining experience.
G stared at me like I was crazy.
G: Er.. okay. Shall we sit down?
Me: Erm
Then music started playing, and our friends started walking out. The problem is, G and I being so close, have the SAME CLOSE FRIENDS. And so I got kind of mad because
HOW COME EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT THIS EXCEPT ME
All this time my face was trying to seriously play it cool because I didn’t want G to know I knew nothing about her proposal in case it bummed her out or something, but I was seriously cursing Fred in my head for being such a bozo.
It was only when I noticed they were wearing black shirts saying CREW and little red stickers going HELLO IM JEM and HELLO IM SHANE that i went
Oh. I guess I’m getting engaged!
So the moral of the story is I am not very smart.
It turned out Shane and written and staged a short six act immersive play with our closest friends, one act for each year of our relationship, a play which was in equal parts dramatic and ridiculous and hilarious and sad, which somehow managed to find the space to mock my Dota playing skills, as well as incorporate a mid-show break for me to go change into a gown they had rented + do my makeup and hair, something which, when I relayed to my girlfriend in the UK later on, caused her to breathe a sigh of relief and go: I respect that.
Act six saw me walking up to the rooftop alone, where Shane was waiting with a recreated scene inspired by our time in Ponza all those years ago, with Papa Americano playing in the background, so I guess that’s our song now. We had dinner (cooked by Roz, a near perfect recreation of the same pasta we had on a boat in ponza), and on the table was the theater programme booklet for Ortensia (the play), complete with playwright’s message, cast and crew, backstory, and script.
Kindly memorise your lines, Shane said, so I flipped to Act Six and saw:
This is as good a time as any, he said, and he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.
Being the annoying person that I am, I said: See how lah, which is a very Singaporean way of saying yeah maybe lets see how it goes, also the same thing I said 6 years ago when he asked me to be his girlfriend.
And he went WOMAN can you stick to the script
And I said ok lah yes
And that is how we got engaged!
Hehe.
The end, but also, the beginning. 🙂
x
Jem
*All pics here are screengrabs from a video that my friends took and Ian edited hehe.
#2025| Busy/ Not Busy
It has been approximately two and a half weeks since I have been engaged. In this time what have I done, I have changed my phone’s LCD screen, I have watched a play (Three Fat Virgins Unassembled by Theatreworks, described as such – virginity is not a state of the hymen, but of the mind), I have aggressively karaoke-d and also crossed the border with my family to play laser tag. My mother has been revealed to have zero compunction shooting us all in the face, which was predictable, but not as predictable as her pre-game spiel on how family should keep peace and how can we expect mother to shoot daughter and husband to shoot wife. Tugging on the heartstrings of the guilty she has come out top in all games we played. I see you, mother. I see you.
In all days except the monday of this week I have seen my ex-boyfriend who is now my fiancé which is a thing i like to say to throw people off. But throwing people off is one thing; I feel also, like i have been unbalanced in the days after. For example I have been regarding the word Engaged with some kind of curiosity. Engaged when employed regularly means busy. Busy, occupied, unavailable – the meaning of that last one pivoted to mean also, betrothed. It is funny because the primary meaning of the word is the opposite of what i have been. Ever since i have entered the state of engagement I have been anything but busy. I have been sitting around reading and also doing a lot of oversleeping. I missed a whole week at the gym because excuses. I have been afraid of my email. I have had my hand grabbed and examined more times than ever in my life. I have forced myself to work but felt unable to form an emotional connection to my emails. Again with the emails. I have so many emails. I used to feel so attached to my email but now that the attachment to my ex-boyfriend-now-fiancé has increased it feels like the attachment to other things have decreased. I opened three good emails and one bad one this week, the rest were more or less neutral. It sounds like a positive ratio but I dont know. I should feel more engaged with my real life but I have instead been infected with lethargy. When I have the lethargy i also historically make space for paranoia. So now I worry about things like crossing the road and the BULLISH MARKET that my phone’s news alert told me about this morning and also about my water intake. The sum total is a plus because I am very happy to be engaged to one of the people i love. But it feels like a weird trade-off that now i suddenly worry about the birds that have gotten into the recent habit of shitting all over my office’s window ledge. The ledge has always been there but the birds have only discovered it recently. We put some spikes on the ledge but whether or not this will be effective remains to be seen.
x
Jem
#2024 | reading update 2
Reading update for Jan-Mar here.
In the last three months:
April
The Sun on my Head by Geovani Martins
A Map of Betrayal by Ha jin
We, the Survivors by Tash Aw
Critical Incidents by Lucie Whitehouse
Hotel World by Ali Smith
The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink
South and West by Joan Didion
Swimming Home by Deborah Levy
The Changeling by Victor LaValle
This is going to hurt by Adam Kay
Delayed Rays of a Star by Amanda Lee Koe
Broccoli and other tales of food love by Lara Vapnyar
Lanny by Max Porter
The Lonesome BodybuilderBook of the month | We, the Survivors by Tash Aw | This is going to hurt by Adam Kay
May
Not that Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham
The Farm by Joanne Ramos
Suicide Club by Rachel Heng
Crazy Cat Lady
Too Fat Too Slutty Too Loud by Anne Helen Petersen
Your Duck is My Duck by Deborah Eisenberg
A Free Life by Ha Jin
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth RussellBook of the month | My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
June
Inferior by Angela Saini
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
10 minutes and 38 seconds in this strange world by Elif Shafak
Lie with Me by Philippe Besson, Translated by Molly Ringwald
This is my family: New Singapore Plays Vol 2 by Checkpoint Theatre
How we Disappeared by Jing Jing Lee
Hereditary (Screenplay)
Insiduous (Screenplay)Book of the month | Lie with me by Philippe Besson | How We Disappeared by Jing Jing Lee
I’ve read less than I’d like to – slower than I’d like to, essentially, but I have reasons.. !!
Reasons or excuses I suppose, depending on how you look at them. Regardless, hoping to turn this around in the second half of the year, which I am sure will be spent reading infinitely more.
x
Jem
Camera Info
I shoot on a Nikon D750 with a 35f/1.8 lens, a Fujifilm x100v, or my Samsung Note 20 Ultra. Pictures are edited in Lightroom Mobile or VSCO