THERE IS MORE TO STEVESTON THAN FISH

At times, life on top of our rock is too much fun and we need to get away for a change of scenery. We live near the mountains and the luscious green of the Golden Ears Provincial Park.

 Sometimes, our heart desires the fresh breeze of the ocean,

This is actually a very sad representation of a beach!

  the smell of freshly caught fish,

listening to seagulls  and eating fish 'n chips wrapped in old newspaper!

All this can be found in Steveston / Richmond,

a one hour drive west from our residence!

Right from the moment we parked our car, our spontaneous trip was sprinkled with wonderful, extraordinary moments:

The bi-monthly Farmers Market was on and imagine my surprise when I met my buddy Karen.

She is my all time favourite market lady with an incredible talent and recipe for making and selling her own lemonade. Check out her Kics site here!

We explored the many different shops

and ended up chatting with three,
 sweet, young female students, sharing our philosophies on life (no, no, don't get married yet, go and travel first!)

We found our fish and chips,

we ate, we walked to the tip of the inland (Garry Point Park) and were geographically challenged.

 We couldn't figure out where downtown Vancouver is;  in short, we needed someone to point us in the right direction.  

When it comes to talking to strangers I am no stranger in making first contact. Whom better to ask than the first couple you see sitting on a bench?

We approached, politely interrupted and posed the question!
The couple answered with their perfect Dutch accent- which really got us going! Yes, we still speak the lingo- we lived there for 12 years!
After 10 minutes Tilde and echtgenot (husband) Philip  invited us to their home for Koffie en gebak (coffee and cookies).

Is it the sea breeze, is it Steveston, is it Canada?
In Holland it took SIX  (!!!!!!) years to get invited into a Dutch home ( and no, we don't smell), here we were laughing and drinking the evening away after 10 minutes only!
Thank you Tilde and Philip for making our trip extraordinary!

SELL YOUR HEART OUT

First things first:

To kick-start my fight against middle-age weight gain, wiggly upper arms and excess handles on my tummy I started using weights and went "Cold Turkey" to lose at least some weight. It seems to take forever to get any changes done in the body!                                                                                          Puh, getting older is a bitch! ! But, defeat and acceptance are not in the cards - yet!

My book should be at the publisher by now but instead I got stage freight and added more bits, deleted and replaced some. Embarrassment is a big motivator at this stage in my life!  Being embarrassed because I haven't done my best!                                                                                          I have gone through this stage when I was way younger, not any more.                                              Now It needs to be as good as it gets or even better.Therefore I want to have a polished and finished product before I will hit the route to promotion!

I am still in the industry I love best: Selling!                                                                                        For years I was selling aerobic moves across fitness centers around the world and its benefits to health.                                                                                                                                                       Then it was coffee and cakes at Strawberry Lounge, my debut into entrepreneurship and  now I am back to selling cakes again!                                                                                                                         This time as an employee for a wonderful, sweet cake company in Vancouver!     Having sold lots of things around the world, I noticed one  universal law that can be applied all over:   Apart from being appreciated and wanting to feel special ( being extra-ordinary!),  WE ALL LOVE A GOOD DEAL!                                                                                                                                                          This makes for a very straight forward equation:                                                                             selling is a piece of cake - if you sell a product people want, appreciate and love! Selling at a good price makes it even easier, fun and more worth your while. In my current 'job 'the product speaks for itself:           You don't need a hard-core persuasion technique. You don't need to go into a long drawn conversation about the pros and cons and necessity of the cake.           You either want it or you don't. You like the taste of it or not!  You have an allergy or not!  All you need is to give an encouraging word at times, some information from the ingredients list,  or to simply stand back to let your customer make up their own mind!    It is that simple! I have been very fortunate so far to gravitate toward selling what I really, really like.  But  be warned, it is only easy-peasy if you love the product and the initial selling process.

If you are able to do what you love doing, then life can be your "piece of cake!"