I had an unscheduled break from the internet when I went to Kaohsiung and my laptop couldn't connect to the wireless down there.

The semester ended on Friday, good riddance, and I took the train to Kaohsiung in the afternoon. The reason I went immediately after classes ended was because there was a wedding reception of one of my cousins on my father's side that I had the opportunity to go to on Saturday.

Saturday, May 26, 5:56 p.m. - Home of a relative on my father's side who I can't name or place because of lack of familiarity. From the look of this I gather they are pretty well-off.

Mind you, until recently I've had very sparse knowledge of my father's side of the family. It was to the extent that when people asked me about relatives on my father's side, I said I didn't think there were any. I would further elaborate that I thought my father might have been grown in a test tube. It made sense to me.

Apparently the information blackout is one way, as most of the people I met at the reception had an idea who I was and where I was in the tree. Furthermore, there were people who had even visited my parents house in New Jersey, and at least one family of relatives who actually lived in New Jersey that I had no idea about.

May 26, 8:24 p.m. - Even though I say I don't know who they were, a lot of them were vaguely familiar. I couldn't place who they were, but I could remember having met them a long, long time ago.

The cause of the blackout can only be attributed to my parents' unwillingness to share or discuss facts, details, whereabouts, or even the existence of relatives on my father's side. The reason? I haven't the slightest, and have no feelings one way or the other about it.

At the reception, I asked the people I was sitting with whether there was a family tree anywhere. The response, "Oh yes, someone made it several years ago – oh wait, it was your father who made it." Information blackout. Come to think of it, that's as close as it gets to a father saying "fuck you" to his son without outright saying it (maybe he wasn't familiar enough with the English) – as far as he's concerned, I have no past, no context in respect relation to him. My father's side of the family is just this thing out there, hovering over or based in Kaohsiung, that I have no relationship with. If it was a boat tied to a pier, I'd have no feelings about chopping the rope and letting it drift off to sea.

The cousin that got married is probably the babiest of any that I could consider my "baby cousin" – cousins who were distinctly babies in my memory. There's only one other – Mimi, on my mother's side, who I knew as a kid since her family also immigrated to New Jersey. She eventually moved to San Francisco while I was there. Sweet kid.

This cousin was a wee baby when I first visited Taiwan, and I probably have a picture from that visit somewhere. All of these people might as well be strangers. "Hi, so you're my cousin. Nice to meet you. Congratulations on getting married." So what.