i spoke to WWY this morning, asked if they were going to visit chiang kai-shek memorial, a taiwanese landmark. she told me no, that they were returning to chongqing tomorrow night, and would spend their last day shopping. i didn't push the issue any further. why would they anyway? for a mainland chinese millenial girl so far removed from the events of the chinese civil war, the CKS memorial must be a real bore. besides, probably one of the main attractions of coming to taiwan is for the shopping, buying genuine stuff they can't get cheaply in china (with tariffs and whatnot). i also asked her if she tried the smelly tofu. she said it was too smelly and none of them dared try it.

i've been vicariously touring taiwan with them through their social media postings and i must say i'm a little disappointed. they only had 8 days on the island, and decided to see all of taiwan, but in my opinion ended up seeing very little, just scratching the surface. they hit a few famous destinations (jiufen, shifen, qingshui cliff, hualien, kenting, taipei 101, national palace museum), but missed a lot more along the way. i was surprised to see how much taiwanese businesses catered to chinese tourists, with signs for alipay payment (chinese paypal) everywhere.

a week is just too short a time to truly experience taiwan. hopefully they had a good time and will want to come back again. as they say, leave something for next time. WWY in fact said that they were just wandering around taipei today (taking the subway, walking) and felt not like tourists but locals. i'm really curious what she thought politically the difference between taiwan and mainland china, but that's not a conversation one has over wechat.

some more cleaning today: decluttered my bedroom so i could move some stuff from the living room, including the white tube chair i found a few months ago with the wobbly legs. did a load of laundry, changing my bedsheets in the process. in the afternoon i went to market basket to get some groceries. in the evening i biked down to the cafe to get a few more store front photos with the setting sun. this time i used a tripod, but the sunset position is such that i can't really get it as a backdrop for the cafe. i returned home with some braised chicken and rice which i ate right away without heating. the only food i had today was a bowl of stale cereal and some old faintly sour milk.

we had another 27kW+ day today. i did some calculations, and based on the weather forecast for the rest of the month, there are only 2 days where it's sunny (saturday and sunday), with it being cloudy the rest of the time. if on those two sunny days we can each break 27kW+, we will have exceded the solar output for october as well.