Kaohsiung, Taiwan

It's Lunar New Year. The official part, which lasts for about 3 or 4 days, is over, and businesses are open again, but the cultural part goes on for like two weeks and then turns into a couple more weeks of the Lantern Festival.

My uncle invited me down because all of his kids, my cousins, are in town, and one has a new baby boy who I haven't met yet. I guess for that reason, I don't regret coming down, it's a nice gesture to represent, but I do regret that I booked my return to Taipei on Monday night, instead of Monday morning, or even Sunday night.

I hate hanging out with family, it's the most boring thing in the world and isolates me and makes me not want to be here even more. It emphasizes my insignificance and represents it on a sublime scale.

I sit here thinking, "What am I doing here with these people? Why did I even come?" and once I get started on those lines, it quickly turns into "What am I doing here at all on this planet? What do I mean to anyone aside from banal, socially constructed ways?"

It's hard enough for me to be social, and coming here makes it worse because it puts me in social situations where I'm not really here at all, and it's alright for me to not be social. Then I go back to situations where there isn't a language barrier, but if at any point I feel like I'm out of the conversation, I'm fully comfortable disengaging, and that's not good.

A bunch of cousins gathered tonight and as they chattered incomprehensibly, I mused about how all of them, except the two youngest ones and me, are all parents now. They're all doing the family thing now, and they're doing a pretty good job of it, I shouldn't wonder. And to them, this path is the most natural thing in the world; it never occurred to any of them not to take this path. It might be a natural human social impulse, but it is definitely part of the Chinese cultural canon.

10:29 p.m. - Three of my cousins on the left. We're all cousins to each other. On the right, a cousin's wife, my aunt and Audrey's daughter, Pie.

They would have done anything to bring this path to fruition. And if I wanted any part of it, then the past 12 years in which I haven't had a mutual attraction with anyone would be a major problem. And believe me, my bar isn't that high, there just haven't been many and the ones who were seemed to be part of God's big joke he's playing on me – "Someone is attracted to me and this is what you send?"

Like the time I was looking for an Asian American drummer to play with and the only response I got was from a Japanese American ex-con who I couldn't get out of my house fast enough?

But I looked upon this group of parents and so thoroughly did not want any part of it, and that said, it includes sex. And I think it's safe to say if you're willing to throw out the sex, you really, really don't want to be a parent. I mean as a starting point. That's a whole 'nother discussion, though, which I haven't thought out.