Manila is a city of extremes. The poor are very poor and the rich very rich. A constant reminder to the rich that there is another side to life.

Manila is a city of extremes. The poor are very poor and the rich very rich. A constant reminder to the rich that there is another side to life.

The word itself creates an empty sensation. Try saying it now. "Why?" Notice how your tongue touches nothing when you form the word with your mouth. Feel the gap, the space inside your mouth, that it creates. The air. It is a place that needs filling. It is missing an answer.

Desperate people lose the thing that makes them human beings. They lose their heart. Anger and hate fill them so that they act like animals.

Watch it...people who keep things inside them develop all sorts of disease...all that emotional gunk's got to find an outlet. Angry people develop cysts; stubborn people get arthritis; resentful people die of cancer.

Love and passion are well and good while they last, but in the end what mattes is whether you like the person you are with. Friendship and companionship matter more. They are the things that last. And if in the end we learn to be friends, I will be content.

But tales like this must not be taken as truth. You must remind yourself that it is hard to tell where truth ends and a lie begins. So listen all you like, but disbelieve all you hear... You are in the city of lies.