This post is going to be a quick one. Basically, I have just concluded Round 2 of the challenge, and I will be sharing the flash fiction I wrote out. The story is based on true events, and is about over one thousand words long.
A Stressful Day at Home
What is home? For many, it is a restful place for people to recharge as they enjoy quality time with their families. But my experience of homecoming on a Thursday was one fraught with worries and frustrations.
After a long day at my army camp, I did some shopping at night to prepare for the next time I return there. Finding out the best deals and products I wanted gave me much satisfaction, but that feeling soon gave way to disappointment when I came home to the news of the Wi-fi being broken. Once I learnt of that, all I could think of was how to get enough data to get by the next day. None of my parents could offer their hotspot since it would be a Thursday and they had to be off at work, so I would be home alone with my sister to rely on mobile data to access the Internet.
Deep down, I felt like a bird who had lost its wings - grounded, helpless and anxious about what would become of itself. I had never realised how important Wi-fi would be until it was no longer there for me anymore. There were times that the connection was slow or disrupted, but that beats having no Wi-fi at all and having to go for the more expensive option of using mobile data. Meanwhile, my parents were relieved that they could count on me to look after the house and help them handle the technician who was scheduled to arrive on Thursday afternoon to exchange the modem.
“What modem?” I asked. Thereafter, I had to sit through a lesson on some Wi-fi related technicalities by my father. By combining his explanations with some research I did online, I learned that a modem converts electrical signals into digital data which is understandable by a computer, while a router beams that data to a computer connected to the network and together with the modem, makes up what I know as the Wi-fi.
I was also filled in the details of what went wrong with the Wi-fi. My father first suspected the software to be the root cause of the issue, and tried resetting the modem to no avail, so he wanted to try out replacing the modem first - that would be where the technician and I came in.
However, when the technician came in the afternoon and tried setting up the modem, the Wi-fi still did not work, leading him to conclude, “Your router is old, you should change it.” I was confused at first because the technician mentioned something about ten years old while the router was bought a few years ago. But, everything made sense when I interpreted his recommendations as my router system becoming out of date.
In spite of all my efforts in helping to fix the problem, I was disappointed to find out that there was no happy outcome and I could only wait for my father to replace the router. Still, the fixing of the Wi-fi was only one out of the many difficulties I had to deal with. More was to come, such as getting the mobile data to work and balancing between running errands for my parents and estate maintenance.
As the morning sunlight streamed into my bedroom, my sister was getting ready to report to her virtual classroom, since it would not be possible to hold classes physically amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. Concurrently, I was watching whether the sunlight would stay for the rest of the morning so that I could dry my clothes out in the sun. Various problems began to arise.
My sister complained that she could not get the mobile data to work on her laptop. After I tried fumbling with the settings for her smartphone and laptop (which uses Windows 10, an operating system I am unfamiliar with since mine runs on Windows 8). I threw my hands up shortly after that and went to try on my own phone and laptop. The tethering method, which I found after some searching on Google, worked for me. Tethering is basically connecting my phone to my laptop using a cable and turning on the hotspot. My sister’s one got to work too after a few tries, albeit not being able to find out the cause of the issue. Initially, I planned to use the data to do some research and watch anime on my laptop, but with it guzzling up data so quickly, I had to ditch that plan and use my smartphone more instead.
Just as the data was working and I thought I could finally focus on writing awesome blog posts, a lady from the National Environmental Agency knocked to notify me of a fogging that will take place at 9 o’clock in the morning. Not only would the fogging take place along my block’s corridors, it would also happen downstairs. Given the rise of dengue cases, this could not be helped, but the fogging happened later than announced. By the time all the fogging stopped, it was nearly 11 o’clock, leaving me with little time to sun the laundry.
I would have liked to leave the laundry be until late in the afternoon, but the sky became overcast and threatened to rain cats and dogs, so I hurriedly kept the laundry a few hours after bringing them out. By then, I would have to get ready to open the door for the technician who would replace the modem to come in. Could my afternoon get any busier?
Yes! In the late afternoon, block washing happened and I had to rush to close the doors and windows before the water would spray everywhere. I was surprised because nobody told me that this was going to happen, unlike the fogging in the morning when I had time to prepare.
As the day drew to a close, I was tired from attending to so many things, including the chores that I would have to do in the evening. But in hindsight, there was something positive in all this trouble, as I learnt how much it took just to maintain our living quarters, from my parents who did the chores and ensured that the electrical appliances were working fine, to the essential workers who did estate maintenance like clockwork. It seems that I have to be grateful to these hardworking people for the comfort and rest I get at home.
