VANCOUVER -- Jim Fong is happy.
Jim is a cameraman at CTV. He was also hungry because he is on a diet. He is always on a diet, even though he does karate and plays hockey and is thin, he is still always on a diet.
This diet has him not eating until noon.
But it is not yet noon and our job is to find something sweet and uplifting to put at the end of the news.
To do this we drive in circles and then more circles and then in straight lines until we find something. Along the way he tells me about his latest article on food, which he writes about on this website.
We pull over and I read. He has written about brightly coloured Chinese dumplings. He says they make him hungry.
In front of us I see a license plate that says: Oy Vey. This is a beautiful discovery. Oy vey is Yiddish for so many things: what you feel when you shrug your shoulders and raise your eyebrows and are bewildered. That’s oy vey.
I see a fellow get into the car but instead of jumping out and talking to him I am still hooked by the description of dumplings so I keep reading.
We drive on to Queen Elizabeth Park where we see people walking around a tree, talking to it. That is odd, but I have already done a story about them.
Then we see a fellow on Rollerblades smacking a hockey ball around. I talked to him once and he came out with the most life-affirming comments, like "It’s always a new day" and "Smiles are more valuable than gold." It made a good story.
A few days later Jim told me that the fellow on skates is his brother-in-law and he gets his uplifting philosophy from inside Hallmark cards. His brother in law says not so.
We drive back to Main Street and I wish I had talked to the oy vey man.
Imagine if we took all the opportunities life gives us.
Then we went to Granville Island and Jim sees a woman with flowers waiting for a ferry.
He also says he smells something good and he is now very hungry.
The woman calls herself a living heritage site because she was born here, and as she gets on the ferry a fellow with a scooter gets off. He says he is in his second childhood. And that is the story for tonight, a passing moment with two good people.
And Jim says he can’t resist the aroma coming from a bakery. He checks the time. It is two minutes after noon.
He buys a fragrant, steaming hot, "delicious," he says, bun. And he has a smile. He is happy.
It’s simple things that can make your day.
