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| Original Photo from Peppy Atilas's Facebook account |
On Sunday, May 8 I met Dante Basco. He's the voice actor for my long-time childhood crush, Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender. He also played Rufio in Hook (1991).
Dante arranged a meet up for his fans because he was in the Philippines for a few days to visit and spend time with his family. Local fans asked him for a meet up and in his free time, he did. Starbucks, Greenbelt 3 was the meeting place.
I had already arrived at Starbucks at around 2:45PM and I saw a bunch of people gathered outside for the same reason why I went there. Before Dante arrived, I talked to some people about Homestuck, a webcomic created by Andrew Hussie. Rufio(h) was a character in the said webcomic and Dante read up about it and became a fan. Later on, he would work with Hussie on projects regarding the webcomic.
More and more people arrived to meet this man, He mentioned in his tweet that the meet up would take place at 3PM but based on his Snapchat story that day, he got lost before he found Starbucks. As he was arriving, some screamed but the others tried to contain them because we were still in a public place and it wasn't an official event. Dante was taken by surprise. I'm guessing he too didn't expect that many people to attend. Before the actual meet up began, he bought coffee and tea for the crowd.
When everyone gathered around him, he spoke to us. He asked us about how we were, what was going on, so on, and so forth. I asked him if we could call him Tito* Dante because while he was in Starbucks I was in a conversation with two people who said that he was at tito age. He agreed anyway.
About 20 minutes in the meet up, security asked us to leave. Because of the elections taking place the day after, the crowd might give people the wrong idea. I had to leave early before I could move to Washington Scyip Park and Legaspi Park with the others but nonetheless it was great seeing Dante and spending time with him!
Dante is the most humble and the nicest celebrity I've ever met. Even if the list of famous people I've met is short, he's my favourite so far. He spoke to everyone and he didn't have to but he met us in his free time. I hope to meet him soon again some day and hang out with him more if given the chance!
*"Tito" means uncle in Tagalog.
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