Dispatch from Pyeongchang: Convenience coffee unbottles a warm memory

Bottled coffee. (CTV News / Genevieve Beauchemin)

We got off to a somewhat early start, a five a.m. departure for a shoot a few hours away, so I hoped for a roadside coffee stop.

The only open shop was a convenience store that sells hot coffee (pre-heated) packaged in a metal bottle. It is not the way I often drink my cup a day, but it reminded me of a kind gesture on our first trip to South Korea.

My cameraman Dave and I were here in the fall to cover escalating nuclear tensions, and learned about the tough logistics of the time difference. We were shooting our stories during the day, and doing lives over what was the Korean night, but daytime back home.

One night, we had picked a spot on a street a short walk from our hotel. We had been there for a couple of hours, when an elderly man walked by, engaged us in conversation in Korean. We could get only basic facts across through a combination of hand gestures and Google translation. Then he saw our Canadian flag, smiled and walked away. I wish now I knew whether he has a connection to our home country.

We didn't tell him we were damp, and cold, and sleepless. But a few minutes later, he came back to our live location, with two of those hot coffees in cans from a nearby convenience store, and handed them to us.

That was the first time I had one of those, and it made our day.