We tend to get crafty with our Christmas gift ideas especially when we want to surprise the ones dear to our hearts. For John Benedict Villon, he regards this gift he received from his girl as the “greatest gift of the year”, other than “passing the semester”.
He shared his sentiments on Twitter, as well as photos of the magazine his girl gave him.
Effort ba kamo? May nanalo na po.
My girl just gave me a 32-page magazine that’s all about me. Just when I thought that passing this semester is the greatest gift of the year, then I am so wrong. pic.twitter.com/eqy2LUBokx
— John Benedict Villon (@Chima_08) December 22, 2017
WHEN IN MANILA has reached out to Villon for further details.
John Benedict, or JB, is a UST med student while the giver, JD, is a recent UP graduate who’s now working with a law firm.
Villon clarifies that they are not a couple yet.
“I clarified “my girl” not “my girlfriend”. We’re exclusively dating for seven months now, and I asked to court her a little more than two months ago. She and I met at Tinder. She found my Tinder profile weird but cute.”
Photos from this tweet.
“JD and I are very close. We see each other every weekend, even though I’m in Manila and she’s in Taguig. We actually have this competition about who’s going to give better gifts to whom. She wrote this beautiful poem for our 100th day of knowing each other and gave me this equally beautiful photo book to celebrate the end of the first half of the past semester in Med School. For Christmas, she gave me the magazine while I gave her 12 days of Christmas gifts. My gifts were such that I gave her one book on the first day, eight Sneakers chocolate on the eighth day, and a dozen roses bouquet on the twelfth day. We are both trying to be creative and unique with our gifts.”
Could not ask for a better reward #THANKYOUUUUU pic.twitter.com/4snZdYlONF
— John Benedict Villon (@Chima_08) October 17, 2017
Pt. 2 pic.twitter.com/wjQ28Qtoi0
— John Benedict Villon (@Chima_08) October 17, 2017
Pt. 3 pic.twitter.com/5vapYxc70t
— John Benedict Villon (@Chima_08) October 17, 2017
Pt. 4 pic.twitter.com/WQIWeWMfNf
— John Benedict Villon (@Chima_08) October 17, 2017
“Contrary to many assumptions, JD is not a journalism graduate. She holds a degree in social science and only does graphic design as a hobby. She is crafty, is into writing, especially poems, and also into calligraphy. Everything written in the magazine was hers. Due to her perfectionist nature, it took her a month to design the magazine and write all articles written there. She said she wanted it to be as perfect as possible because we’ll definitely look back to it again when we’re old and she doesn’t want to have regrets.”
“At first, I thought JD was gonna make a sculpture of me or something. The night she gave the gift to me, she brought this plastic envelope to dinner and tricked me into believing it contained documents she needed to mail, when it was actually the magazine it contained. When I saw what she did, grabe. It was a surreal feeling. Imagine having used to not receiving gifts for years and then receiving that kind of amazing gift. It felt unreal. Seriously. But she was there. Right in front of me. She’s real. And I can’t ask for more.
We consider each other the greatest blessing 2017 ever gave. We hope 2018 proves to be an even better year for us both.”
Aren’t they the sweetest? Happy holidays to the two of you!
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Disclaimer: WheninManila.com does not own the photos above. Credits go to John Benedict Villon.
