Charles Kong Soo

Gi­na Marie Ling (née Sura­jdeen), is a young, in­no­v­a­tive, an­i­mal-lov­ing health fa­nat­ic and en­tre­pre­neur who crossed oceans for love.

She met her fu­ture hus­band in De­cem­ber 2014 and when his work as­sign­ment took him to Cos­ta Ri­ca in April 2015, Ling fol­lowed her heart, packed her be­long­ings, quit her job, sold her car and joined him in there.

They got en­gaged in June 2015 and were mar­ried by a jus­tice of the peace in Cos­ta Rice the fol­low­ing Au­gust 2015, fol­lowed by a Ro­man Catholic wed­ding cer­e­mo­ny in T&T in April 2016.

When the cou­ple re­turned to T&T to set­tle down the fol­low­ing year, Ling found her­self un­em­ployed as her for­mer po­si­tion at a print­ery as the pre-press de­part­ment head was al­ready tak­en.

Her hus­band en­cour­aged her to do what made her hap­py by pur­su­ing her pas­sion for cook­ing and chart­ing her pro­fes­sion­al path.

May 20 made it six years since the cou­ple start­ed sell­ing their gourmet Ran­cho’s ket­tle corn pop­corn and baked em­panadas at the Ma­coya Farm­ers’ Mar­ket in Tu­na­puna.

“Time re­al­ly flies when you love what you do,” said Ling, 41, in an in­ter­view at her Ari­ma home.

“Thank you to every­one who has been there, sup­port­ing and en­cour­ag­ing our growth. A spe­cial thank you to my sup­port­ive hus­band and par­ents, who still see the vi­sion of where we could go.

Ling said her par­ents are her biggest sup­port­ers.

She re­called: “When I just start­ed the busi­ness, my hus­band woke up at 3 am every Sun­day to ac­com­pa­ny me to the Ma­coya Farm­ers’ Mar­ket to sell our em­panadas, pop­corn and toma­to sal­sa.”

Her par­ents who re­li­gious­ly pa­tro­n­ised the mar­ket on Sun­days, would walk around telling every­one to vis­it the stall and try the tasty and healthy fare. Ling laughed as she de­scribed them as her first brand am­bas­sadors.

She cred­it­ed her “great sup­port sys­tem of fam­i­ly and friends” who be­lieved in and en­cour­aged her.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly when she first moved back to T&T from Cos­ta Ri­ca and was strug­gling to find em­ploy­ment in graph­ic de­sign and print­ing. She even start­ed a bro­ker­age com­pa­ny and had a few great clients but the busi­ness wasn’t sus­tain­able.

Ling’s de­ci­sion to make gourmet pop­corn was in­spired by a Cos­ta Ri­can com­pa­ny she pa­tro­n­ised fre­quent­ly. She no­ticed that cus­tomers at the farm­ers’ mar­ket would be look­ing for break­fast items, so she got the idea of mak­ing baked em­panadas Cos­ta Ri­can style, as well as toma­to sal­sa.

She smiled as she ad­mit­ted she didn’t know how to cook prop­er­ly un­til she met her hus­band but was forced to de­vel­op that par­tic­u­lar skill when they lived in abroad, learn­ing to pre­pare foods like roti and dou­bles.

But cook­ing and en­tre­pre­neur­ship are just two of Ling’s pas­sions. She is al­so ded­i­cat­ed to her com­mu­ni­ty of Ari­ma and ex­press­es her pride in its rich his­to­ry and cul­ture.

She ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the ef­forts of D’Abadie /O’Meara MP Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian to sup­port busi­ness­es in the com­mu­ni­ty.

She is al­so an ad­vo­cate for can­cer aware­ness and has been sup­port­ing peo­ple fight­ing the dis­ease ever since she lost her grand­fa­ther to pan­cre­at­ic can­cer two decades ago.

Her ac­tivism stems from her ex­pe­ri­ences in the Ro­tary Club of San Juan dur­ing her child­hood. Those ear­ly ex­pe­ri­ences with en­vi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion have in­spired her many oth­er in­ter­ests.

Not on­ly is she an an­i­mal lover whose ded­i­ca­tion ex­tends be­yond the wel­fare of her pets, Tyri­on and Sansa, but Ling is very fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed and is a lov­ing and sup­port­ive aunt to four beau­ti­ful nieces and two nephews who she con­sid­ers her chil­dren.

She al­so en­joys an ac­tive lifestyle which she at­trib­ut­es to grow­ing up with broth­ers and be­ing very much a tomboy who rode a moun­tain bike, at­tend­ed drag races and played var­i­ous sports in her younger years.

These days, how­ev­er, her main phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty is par­tic­i­pat­ing in 5K races, par­tic­u­lar­ly those held to raise funds and raise aware­ness for var­i­ous worth­while caus­es.

Ling re­vealed that the old­er she gets, the more she pri­ori­tis­es main­tain­ing prop­er phys­i­cal and men­tal health, al­though she ad­mit­ted that it is a strug­gle to main­tain a good work-life bal­ance. Af­ter a long hia­tus, she is fi­nal­ly mak­ing time for the gym to im­prove her phys­i­cal fit­ness, she said.

Ad­vice for en­tre­pre­neurs

Ling said en­tre­pre­neur­ship is not easy and does not nec­es­sar­i­ly equate to fi­nan­cial free­dom.

Her ad­vice to bud­ding en­tre­pre­neurs, es­pe­cial­ly women, is that they take time to pri­or­i­tize and sur­round them­selves with like-mind­ed, sup­port­ive in­di­vid­u­als who will keep them ground­ed.

“Set a goal, fo­cus, work hard and sac­ri­fice to make sure that your dreams ma­te­ri­alise,” she said

A grad­u­ate of Lak­sh­mi Girls Hin­du Col­lege and North­gate Col­lege, Ling has an As­so­ciate De­gree in Graph­ic De­sign from SBCS.

Not­ing that the pan­dem­ic brought on many chal­lenges for small busi­ness­es, she said: “It wasn’t easy. Sales were slow and that down­time to build my so­cial me­dia fol­low­ing.”

Ling was able to boost sales dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and since then us­ing the X plat­form (for­mer­ly Twit­ter).

“Un­like oth­er plat­forms, X al­lows you to join an on­line com­mu­ni­ty and in­ter­act with one an­oth­er. It gave my brand a voice in the Trin­ba­go X com­mu­ni­ty,” she said.