Is the routing table on your laptop correct?
root@epithalamus:~# route -n Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 172.16.23.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 vmnet8 192.168.177.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 vmnet1 192.168.254.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 2 0 0 wlan0 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 1000 0 0 wlan0 0.0.0.0 192.168.254.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 wlan0