continued exploring nantou before returning to taichung city. after resting in a french bistro in the late afternoon, we had dinner with jaxing's father again along with an assortment of uncles, aunts, and cousins. we drove back to the high speed rail station, returned the car, and adjusted our tickets so we could grab the next train. our original tickets were reserved seats for 5:00, but now we could only get unreserved seats for 8:10. it seems like all the weekend vacationers were leaving taichung at the same time so there was just standing aisle only. the crowd started to thin out as we approached taipei, and although the original estimated standing time was one hour, i managed to get a seat for the last 20 minutes. at the taipei train station, i hitched a taxi ride with my cousin and his family. i said good bye to jaxing since i wouldn't be seeing her next week before i leave on thursday. i quickly raced upstairs into the office to use the bathroom, must've had some bad sashimi.

(i also discovered tonight that all the 3D photos i'd been taking were never imported, just the jpeg thumbnails. this is a quirk of OS X 10.6.x, which doesn't recognize .mpo files. fortunately i didn't take a lot, but that includes photos from my grandmother's grave and my recent trip to the kenting national park. lesson learned, i'll need to remember to import 3D files manually on this dell mini hackintosh).