Hello, i seldom (ok close to never) post here, just an uber lurker coz I'm kinda shy but as an international fan who thrives on any bit of cookie crumbs out there from generous and delightful fans like yourselves, I guess it's my turn to give back to my fellow cookie addicts out there and provide you guys with a DC fix, like you always do with me.

So hi I'm gcelq and I'm a cookie addict, my first real taste of DC came May 12, 2009. David C. arrived in our country 12:59pm at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. Since the airport was just 20 mins from my place, I decided to go. Unfortunately for me, NAIA security is as effective as ever so needless to say I wasn't able to see him up close, but I did see his car pass by me and God knows what he looked like behind those heavily tinted windows. Then he was gone. Luckily, we know where he would be staying so along with a fellow Cookista, we tried to catch him in the hotel for his scheduled video conference/interview in 4 hrs.

We arrived at the hotel, scrambled to find the correct hall and just waited, waited until the staff were already eyeing us funny, perhaps deciding to charge us for inhabiting their hallway or for the electricity we were using to power up our laptop. I didn't prepare (much) for this one so I just brought 2 blow up pics of 1) Dave & the EEB 2)my pic with him ('him' meaning his life size cardboard sketchers ad in one of our malls) and a sign indicating my word nerd number. Finally after 2 hours, he arrived at the hall, he had a lot of security with him. We knew beforehand that he will not be allowed to take pictures with the fans. Well, he is in a foreign land, and he's a foreign artist so security's extra tight.

He was wearing his fave plaid shirt,denims, boots and his aviation sunglasses and tho he was being whisked away, he managed to read my sign, slowed down and heard my friend who called out to him (she also has a great story to tell, story of how she met him earlier in the morning, she's a lucky lucky girl) and he did that oh so familiar laugh when he's amused about something like seeing one of those tripod signs or when he's watching Joey. We didn't get much vid of that coz we were both starstruck. Obviously we were not allowed in so we just settled ourselves outside and started counting how many guards he has or harassing Sony's crew (kidding, we just asked how long will the interview last) or talking to the other Cook fans.

We were coming up with ways how we could get DC to come to us since evidently, we couldn't get near him without being introduced to the massive, well toned arms of his security.So when he finally came out, the kids put on their greatest acting chops and asked DC for a pic, but DC, while being on the other end of those iron clad arms, couldn't do much and was seriously apologizing, he was just being whisked away quickly. The kids called back "we (still) love you tho" in which he gratefully replied "aww thanks" then in he went to the elevator, and a quick "bye guys" before the door closed.

I gotta hand it to the guy, I believe he was traveling for more than 14 hours, clearly no sleep, and I
heard he hadn't eaten yet (and we know his relationship with food ) and continuously went for 2 hours to do a video interview with a number of people from different countries, and he still manages to smile and try his hardest to accommodate his fans given the present circumstaces (and that's not even counting what he has been through this past week.)

So realizing we won't be able to get pics (or hugs) it was great that I had a chance to ask him something, I really thought he would just keep walking but he stopped for a heartbeat and called back "say what?" So I repeated my question "Why were you barefoot in Georgia?" he contemplated for a sec and just simply said " .. coz sometimes boots hurt" So that's the barefoot mystery solved

So that's the story of how I met DC in my country, I'm not sure if I'll be able to wean out of this addiction soon especially as David AND David mania is now gripping our Nation I'll try to upload the link to pics and vids ASAP and please tune in to the Cookistas thread for more crumbs