i was too caught up with the drama in my life that i had almost forgotten about a friend's sweet gesture

last friday, as i was too busy getting the entire house in order, a good friend dropped by as promised and gave me my pasalubong.

you see, he's now an expat in saudi arabia, and we both realized that we have a thing for ikea. so in one of our twitter chats, i told him, hey, get me something from ikea ...

... and a couple of weeks before he came home, he actually did.

but then, i was so busy that time, not to mention figuring out whether i really liked this boy or was just too caught up with the teasing, that i had forgotten about the present.

until we had lunch at pepper lunch (something we'd been planning also on twitter) and he mentioned his present. and i was overly excited to get it (but didn't have a car that day) so i was basically bouncing off the walls until he came with this package.

it might look small, but it was HEAVY. quite heavy enough that he had excess baggage going home. lucky for him, though, they aren't exactly strict with excess baggage in the middle east so he simply smiled his way through check-in.

when he handed over the present to me, i pretended to be more obsessed with cleaning the house (at that time i had less than four hours since mama's plane was to land) but the moment he left, i immediately "attacked" the package.

this is slightly embarrassing but i think i almost ripped the cord out of the base cause there were too many things "holding" each piece onto to the main box and i was just too impatient to get everything out.

of course, it need not be said that while i was too impatient to get everything out, i was patient enough to stop every so often and take pictures. hahaha.

so there i was, sweating and figuring things out and after a couple (or more) minutes, i had this:

lovely, lovely floor lamp.

that same afternoon, i got bulbs (soft white ... para kulay mayaman) and an adaptor (for a while i was afraid it was 110v, thank goodness it was 220v) and almost the entire night, i left it on pretending i was waiting for visitors.

i am too shallow that way.

thanks, theo, for your abounding thoughtfulness and generosity.