This is Vince, he’s the greatest person I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing.  We’ve known each other since we were 13 and lifting weights trying to combat our Asian genes that restricted us to physiques that consisted of skin and bones.  Right about now he’s getting on a plane to Dubai and then he’ll head on to Kandihar to finish the remainder of his 10 month appointment with his intelligence firm.

This man had less than 24 hours on US soil and he chose to spend a couple of those with me.  That’s the most sincere thing anyone (outside of my dad) has done for me in a long time, maybe ever.  I’m used to people not calling or responding to emails after I get surgeries or just period.  I don’t keep up with people in MD, they’re flaky and I didn’t like them in high school so why would I like them now?  I don’t have a facebook page with 600 “friends”, truthfully I think that stuff is ruining what little soul our culture has left.  People get on there confessing superficial aspects of their life trying to seem like they’re deep, but in fact they’re extremely shallow just looking for attention.  The whole thing reeks of shameless self promotion and I’m not talking about the artists. bands or people marketing their independent business’; its the people with nothing interesting going on yet the update the world 5x a day on their mundane boring lives.

Today is the 9 year anniversary of when I first picked up the guitar.  It was in 6754 Del Playa Rd Goleta, California.  It hadn’t even been two months since my first hip replacement…the one I disrespected and dearly paid for during my 20′s.  Thanks to Andrew I put everything I had into learning that instrument and every moment since that day has been spent trying to conceptualize the sounds I hear in my head.

If you do only one thing today, google Paul Garisto right now.  He played on Love is Hell and Rock and Roll…do I need to say more?  His discography is longer than the scar running down my left leg.  He just finished his summer tour with the Psychedelic Furs and now we’re going to make a  record together.  I have 30-40 songs in various stages so I’ll record the guitars in my studio and he’ll record the drums in his studio.  We’ll keep bouncing  songs back and forth and we’ll take the cream of the crop and put out a record before I head to school.  We intend to play a show or two as well but that’s putting the cart before the horse, songs first then everything falls into place.  I can’t lie, thinking about who will play bass is pretty awesome; two of my closest friends are phenomenal bass players, I consider them my brothers at this point in our lives.  Andrew and Benj aren’t Les Claypool-Flea knockoffs but rather spectacular musicians that have mastered their instruments.  I’ve been waiting my whole life to get to this point, what kid didn’t idolize Slash while growing up in the 90′s?  Now I don’t have to obsess about every beat, fill and dynamics of my playing…I’m making music with someone who makes a living from being flawless.  Now I can just concentrate on my songwriting and vocals, just saying it out loud gives me relief.  I swear I just lost my headache….

Oh yeah I should probably concentrate on healing from this as well…

Be safe Vince, I love you.

As the season progressed I realized I was wasting my time and I made use of the car ride home by trying to convince my dad to let me quit.  He would ask me why and hear me out every time only to tell me that I should finish every task that I set out to do.  He explained how its the first step in being a successful human being.  I of course let it go in one ear and out the other and continued to be miserable every afternoon in practice.  I knew I should have played soccer, being that I played it year round every season since I was four.  I think my dad wanted me to understand that and make sure I went back to the game I was my best at.

Anyways on days like this where I have to mentally prepare myself for the month ahead things like this pop into my head and I realize how important my old man has been in my life.  If there was anyone else beside me in every doctors appointment of surgery I would not be here today, that is a fact.  Last night Vince was looking through my photos and said, “this is crazy, if you never got sick none of this would have happened.” The last 10 years have been a trip, I can’t wait for the next 10 and they start tomorrow.

When I get old, lose all my hair and lose sight of my six pack under my wrinkles; I’ll show my kids this picture and tell them this is what I looked like the day before my 15th surgery.

June 9th-NINJA tour…amazing musicians playing some of the greatest songs of our time.  Going to see a concert while using a cane is inadvisable but some concerts are worth getting out of your deathbed.  Being that Eric Avery has left since then and NIN will never tour again this show has a special place in my heart.  It was 2 days before their 3 hour Bonnaroo set, of which I have a great recording,

June 11-12 hour recording session at Inner Ear Studios fueled by denial, Percocets and Xanax.  I worked on the album all summer but eventually scrapped it.  Great production but the songs needed more time and less misery.  I packaged two tunes in Vol III.

June 12-Undergoes experimental procedure that hollows out the femoral head removing dead bone and replacing it with donor bone and a unique compound.  Requires 10 weeks of crutches to allow the bone to properly heal.  The 13th surgery turns out to be the worst experience of my life trumping cancer by a hair…the drugs actually worked 10 years ago and when you’re 20 you have no clue how big the ramifications are.

June 15-During dinner I break out into a sweat, the thermometer reads 104 temp and my left thigh swells to 1 1/2 its normal size.  I was quickly admitted to the ER and underwent an ultrasound which found nothing.  I receive an antibiotic to fight the temperature, at some point the IV comes undone and blood starts flowing on the floor.  This was the millionth mistake made by the nurse that night so we leave once she unplugs the IV.

June 16th-Contact two girls from my past that I have no business talking to.  Toxic conversations continue until they thankfully implode for good a month later.

June 18th-While eating a late night snack of ice cream I pass out and my tongue resides between my teeth, resulting in a vicious laceration which makes eating impossible for the next week.

June 20th-I slip in the shower falling directly on the hip. Thankfully nothing breaks and I arrive to my one week followup in a wheelchair, low point #2.  My doctor rips me a new one for talking to people that only do me harm.  Surround yourself with great people and it leads to great things.  Anything less and that’s what the remaining 99% of the population come from.  People with PhD.’s congregate amongst fellow PhD.’s, we’re human but we’re not that far off from wolves…or sheep.

July 5th- Receive this email from one the finest guitar players and songwriters of our time, Dimitri Coats.  Receiving this email was the single biggest boost of confidence of 2009.

Hey Ajay thanks for sending that. Really pretty stuff. You should sing on all the tracks. See it through. Wishing you good health. Hang in there. -Dimitri

The summer before we were partying in SF and he kept picking my brain about my experience in cancer while I asked him about playing with everyone from Josh Freese to Ken Andrews.  Needless to say it was one of the best nights of my life.  The friends I made that night eventually lead to being introduced to Juliana Hatfield three weeks later.

July 11- The lowest point in my life occurs this particular Saturday morning when Psychopath calls me to tell me that she just fucked her ex.  This after I asked her to please not tell me if she’s seeing anyone else since I still had no control over my feelings.  I proceed to hit rock bottom by flushing all my pills down the drain, not eating for a week while experiencing hellish withdrawal and lay under blankets watching Law & Order reruns while nameless strangers peruse our house everyday since it is on the rental market.

July 20- I begin Physical Therapy and Ann begins putting the pieces back together.  Two weeks ago I told her about the Saturday morning call and she replies,”that’s why you were so depressed.  I’ve never seen you down like that”.  To put that into perspective, this is someone that’s treated me for all but one of the 6 surgeries in the past 2 1/2years.

-August 26- I slowly gain back my weight and mental bearing while relearning how to play the guitar since my hands were traumatized from using crutches for 20 weeks out of the first 32 of 2009.

September-I start walking after we move to a new house on a 2.5acre lot, only to battle tendonitis in both knees as well as bursitis in my left hip until spring.  I go to PT 3x a week and start writing new music for the first time since composing The Long Way Home in  March.

July 5th-Scheduled to undergo my 15th surgery, a full replacement of the left hip.

Now- This surgery is the last piece in getting my life on track.  For 10 years I’ve compromised everything around me due to a low quality of life from being in constant pain and in and out of drugs.

What I have done right is build a solid foundation in the manner of being able to create at will in multiple mediums.  I’m extremely proud of what I’ve accomplished in the 10 years since my remission; becoming proficient on guitar, bass, drums and singing, learning how to write songs, mixing my own records whether they’re analog or digital and recording albums, all the while dragging one leg around.

I bought a camera 4 years ago with my summer savings earned while tending bar in the Sierra Nevada foothills. I drove back from California with my parents and shot the Redwood Forest, Crater Lake and Yellowstone-I was hooked on the grandiosity of the national parks married with a wide angle lens.  After my hip replacement I was burnt on music and decided to pursue photography full time.  I shot 60 bands in a summer; I witnessed some of the greatest bands of our generation from 5 feet away.  NIN, Radiohead, Ben Harper, The Raconteurs, Burning Brides, TVOTR to name a select few.  This whole time I was sharpening my eye for landscapes in all of the Bay Areas’ parks.  I tried shooting everything I could and now I feel comfortable in any situation; whether its a baby portrait, Trent Reznor during an earthquake or the Dalai Lama.

I’ve come a long way in a handful of years but I’m just getting started.  One month from now I’ll be pain and drug free and preparing for Grad School which begins a month later.  My potential is unlimited and nothing or anyone is getting in the way of me fulfilling this….not even me.

On a serious note; I am privileged to be their son and extremely grateful for everything they’ve done for me and all they have given me.  I have no doubt I wouldn’t have made it through the last 10 years if they wavered one bit during cancer and all the surgeries.  Even when there was no sense in any situation they put their head and hearts together to push forward and get me the best help possible, failure or giving up was never an option for them.  Regardless of the differences we’ve had, they’re the best parents I could ever ask for.  What’s even more impressive than staying together for 40 years is they’ve somehow managed to keep their sanity while dealing with me for 30 of them.  Any lesser people would have been broken by what our family has been through.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of my dad moving to America.  He never had been on a plane before and didn’t have a dollar to his name.  All he had was a scholarship so he borrowed $400 from Jay Bhandary, my uncle’s classmate who was already working in the states.  He married my mom and the following day moved to Reno, Nevada to start his Masters; of which he completed in one year.  To top that he then went to Berkeley and completed his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in two years.  Not hard to see where my brother and I got our work ethic from. He builds electric cars with his hands and I release music like its a magazine subscription.  Jury is still out on how I became a nutcase; I’m leaning on the power lines, seven spinal taps or maybe it’s the 14 soon-to-be-15 surgeries…take your pick.

I remember everything about this one, mainly because I was up at 5am that day for a parade through the village neighboring Sittur.  My friends Ashok and Mahesh went to someone’s house to drink coffee but I strayed to take shots off in the distant field.  I turned the corner and was 15 feet from a grazing cow that was the size of a small Volkswagen.  Luckily for me he liked brown people and just stared at me with the look of,”you’re not in Oakland anymore punk.”  A couple minutes passed and his owner came out.  Upon speaking a couple words he realized my only language was English but the gap was bridged when I showed him the universal signal of raising my camera…

I was looking for a picture for this post and I came across this extended moment from this past summer. This was the first shot that I took after I got off crutches. In my eyes its raining stars.

You can tell we’re related just based on his great hair.