Ricky Shetty's Blog, page 10

YVR Travellers Launch Party

After running several #YVRBrands under the “YVR Media Group” umbrella, it was a joy to launch our latest group called YVR Travellers! Here are the YVR Brands that are already operating: YVR Dads YVR Bloggers  YVR Foodies YVR Photographers   YVR Masterminds   We just launched our #YVRTravellers Meetup Group based in Vancouver, Canada! So, if you live in Vancouver or are visiting Vancouver, we’d love to have you attend! We meet twice/month (biweekly) on the second and fourth Thursday of every month at The Art Institute. We had almost 50 attendees at our Launch Party! At our Launch Party, we had 3 speakers sharing about:   1) BC Travel – Adventure Awaits (Jami Savage)   2) Canadian Travel – Teen Across Canada (Kevin Huhn)   3) World Travel – Points U (Allen Chao)   We then had a networking break followed by my keynote presentation on “How to Make, Market, & Monetize a Travel Blog.”   If you can’t make it in person or live outside of Canada, you can still watch the recordings of our presentations on our YouTube Channel:   http://www.youtube.com/tokyoricky   Here’s more details about the group!   YVR Travellers Website:   http://www.YVRTravellers.com   Facebook Page:   http://www.facebook.com/YVRTravellers   Facebook Group:   http://www.facebook.com/groups/YVRTra...  

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Reflections on Fatherhood

Chris Dissler is the father of two kids under the age of five, which presents itself with a great number of daily fodder for his writing, so he started a blog called Wine ’N Kids, where he drinks wine and talks about being a parent. A man of many hats at his office job during the day, at night he become a self-proclaimed Daddy Play-Gym and best friend to his kids. The only true wish he has is for his kids to turn 18 and move out of the house. Follow Chris on the Social Media platforms below: Twitter: @winenkids Facebook: facebook.com/winenkids Website: http://www.winenkids.com Wait – No – Don’t do that. No matter where I am with the kids, or what we’re doing, they always find opportunities to cause me great anxiety. My four year old daughter has just entered into the age where I’m more comfortable with what she does. I’m confident that she knows right from wrong, and can make the right decision on her own. That isn’t to say I don’t still keep a keen eye on her, just have a little more faith now. My one year old son however, is a different story, and I’m remembering now what it was like when daughter was that age. Lots of watching and saying no. Whether we are at the park, playground, mall or friends house, my son always finds something to do that fills me with apprehension and I always find myself jumping into action. “Don’t eat sand” – “Don’t put that in your mouth.” – “Give him back his toy.” – “You have to wait your turn.” The list goes on and on and I had forgotten that feeling that swells in you when you are met with a situation that could cause harm or damage to your kid, a friends kid or someone else property. Just recently, we were at a dentist appointment for my daughter. It was a day that my wife was working, so I had taken the day off of work and taken both of them. While my daughter sat in her chair getting her check-up my son, curious as ever right now, started fidgeting and moving and fussing and driving me insane, so I put him on the floor to walk around. “Stay over here”, “Wait hold on buddy, we’re almost done”, “Here play with this.” I often find myself pleading with him to contain himself, knowing […]

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Family Travel Bloggers

Greetings from Tofino!! We are currently on a family trip storm watching in beautiful Tofino on the West Coast of Canada! Rianne and Ryan loved the storm watching experience – highly recommend it if you haven’t been before. It’s been good to get away to end 2015 and start 2016. As you know, our family LOVES to travel. We have traveled to over 50 countries, lived on 4 different continents, and have written dozens of blog posts on our family adventures. While Daddy Blogger has been more of a general parenting and lifestyle blog, we wanted to create something specially focused on family travel. Over the past few months, we have been working hard on our latest project called Family Travel Bloggers which we are launching publicly on Jan 1, 2016 (just over 3 years since we first launched Daddy Blogger). So far, we have been getting lots of positive reviews from the people we have shared our website with. We will be using some of the same strategies we did to build up our Daddy Blogger website including consistent quality content, regular social media posts, guest blog posts, contest giveaways, video reviews, product reviews, and more. If you love to travel, this is going to be an amazing resource to inspire you to travel even more in the New Year! We will continue to use Daddy Blogger for posts about parenting, fatherhood, and lifestyle as well as doing reviews of family-friendly products and services. We will also continue to interview dads about fatherhood. Plus, we will be interviewing other travelling families. However, since we are doing a big 1 year trip through Central and South America starting July 1, 2016 all of our travel-related blog posts will be found on Family Travel Bloggers. We will do hotel reviews, recommendations for sightseeing attractions, packing tips, suggestions for traveling with kids, how to budget so you can travel longer and cheaper, and more valuable insights for other traveling families. We are also offering a FREE Report on 21 Ways to Travel the World for Free which you can get by signing up for email updates at Family Travel Bloggers. It’s a quick, easy-to-read PDF which will be emailed directly to your Inbox and which you can keep for future reference. This report contains some of the strategies we have used to travel to over 50 countries. The report contains lots of useful […]

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Surprise Pregnancy Announcement

First came Rianne… Next came Ryan… Then came Baby # 3!! We are excited to announce that my beautiful wife is pregnant and due on May 28, 2016. We found out a few months ago but kept it quiet during the first trimester only telling very close family and friends. Now that Anne is in her second trimester and we are entering a New Year, we wanted to share the GOOD NEWS with all of our Daddy Blogger readers and supporters! Click on the links below to read about our previous Birth Stories: Rianne’s Birth Story Ryan’s Birth Story Now, Rianne will be a big sister again and Ryan will be a big brother for the first time. Both of our kids are SUPER EXCITED (as you can see from watching our Surprise Pregnancy Announcement video below). We still don’t know the gender – we are open to whichever gender God blesses us with. We pray more importantly that our baby is happy and healthy. We also have another exciting announcement to make – we are going to a big long-term travel adventure to Central and South America starting July 1, 2016 once the baby is born and settled down. We will be writing about our travel adventures on our brand new website which we will launch on New Years Day: Family Travel Bloggers So, there are 3 big updates for 2016: 1) New Baby – Coming May 2016 2) New Website – Launching January 2016 3) New Adventure – Starting July 2016 We are so grateful for all of you. Thank you for your support and encouragement. Thank you for following our family journey. As we become a family of five, we ask for your continued prayers that God will guide us to be the best parents possible. May Rianne and Ryan be the best big sister and best big brother they can be. May our new baby be happy and healthy. May he or she feel loved by God, us as parents, and big sister Rianne and big brother Ryan. May we continue to seek God in all of our parenting decisions and life choices. Here is how we announced the Big News to Rianne and Ryan:  

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How to Cope with Being an Unemployed Dad

This is a guest blog post by Aaron Steele, a 25 year old husband and father from Australia. A little while ago, Aaron lost my job and suddenly realized that he was overweight, broke, unemployed and had no real skills. Aaron decided that he was sick of the way his life was playing out and he wanted to make some serious and carefully planned changes. Aaron began The Lifestyle Overhaul as a means of documenting his journey from where he was to where he wanted to be: Fit and Healthy, Highly Skilled and Wealthy enough to spend all the time he wants with his kids. This is Aaron’s website: The Lifestyle Overhaul (www.thelifestyleoverhaul.com) which is about his quest as a young dad of 2 to improve his health, his finances and his payable skills. Aaron’s Facebook page can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/Aaron-Steele... How to Cope with Being an Unemployed Dad I lost my job two weeks before our second child (who we appropriately called Faith) was born. It was one of the most difficult times our little family has ever had to endure. This was the 3rd time in 2 years that I had lost my job. I had only had the job for a few months and I had been absolutely loving it, which made the sudden redundancy even harder. One of the things that really hit me when it became apparent that we would be welcoming our new baby into the world without any sort of income was that I was failing to provide what I consider to be one of the most important functions as a father: to provide for my family. It was really difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that I was failing one my most important responsibilities. I would think to myself “What sort of dad can’t even provide for his children from the moment they are born?” I was torn between the joy of having a baby daughter, a little sister for our little boy, and the grief and anxiety of suddenly becoming unemployed in a very difficult job market. I would lay awake at night worrying about how we would make ends meet and how things would work out for us. I would stay awake at night stressing out because I was overweight, unemployed and broke and had very little in the way of marketable skills. I had worked in mostly unskilled […]

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Sending Money to Family Members Overseas

  Since my wife lives in Vancouver and her parents live in the Philippines, we often send money home to support them in daily expenses, getting medicine, and special occasions. After all, they are both retired and they don’t have a Government Pension Plan like Canada does. That’s one thing I love about Filipino culture – the strong family ties. Even though the kids are overseas, they don’t forget their parents who were instrumental in raising them up. I’ve seen it time and time again, not just with my wife, but with her Filipino coworkers and friends – almost all of them work hard to support themselves here but also support their families at home. There are several ways to send money overseas from traditional services such as Western Union to more modern approaches such as PayPal. However, there is usually a fee associated with Western Union while the problem with PayPal is that it takes a few days to  be transferred to their bank account. So, is there a faster and cheaper alternative? Thank you to CIBC’s No Fee GMT (Global Money Transfer), you can save your family money (no fee on either end) and save time as well (fast and free turnaround).  Here is an article about 12 ways you can send money online. As you can see from reading the points, almost all of them have an associated fee and turn-around time. The feature that really stands out with CIBC is the no fees and easy accessibility. Plus, CIBC has a strong and solid banking reputation unlike some other fly-by-night companies. We have been CIBC customers for a few years now so we are looking forward to sending money to Anne’s family in the Philippines this holiday seasons. We would love to hear about how you send money overseas. Once again, to find out more details and try out CIBC No Fee GMT for yourself, check out: CIBC No Fee GMT *DISCLAIMER: This post is brought to you by CIBC Global Money Transfer™. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

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Life Lessons from My Dad

This is a guest blog post by Dr. Julian Hosp – an author, entrepreneur, and leapfrog high performer. Julian was born in 1986 in Austria. In his teens he played professional basketball in Austria and then went on to become a professional kitesurfer for almost ten years. There he wrote his first book, “Kitesurfing Tricktionary”. He graduated from Innsbruck Medical University in 2011, but later he decided to employ his hard-earned skills and discipline in the business world, rather than in medicine. Looking back, he describes that decision as one of the hardest ones in his life, as both his family and friends expected him to develop a career as a medical doctor. In 2012 Julian moved to Hong Kong, together with his partner Bettina, to expand his business ventures in Asia. Today he is not only a successful author and entrepreneur, but has become a much sought-after public speaker, coach, and motivational trainer for individuals and companies all over the world. His life motto is “work-life-balance is all about doing that one thing 100%” and his favourite food is the fastest food available to save time. Currently Julian is still based in Hong Kong and when not pursuing his next venture is out playing basketball or rocking the waves, kitesurfing. The best ways to connect with Julian are: www.25stories.org www.facebook.com/25stories www.twitter.com/25_stories www.instagram.com/25stories A precious life lesson from my dad When I launched my book “25 stories I would tell my Younger Self” mid November of 2015, people soon inquired why my early tales had been both about my mother and sports, but not so much about my father, which would normally be one of the most critical male role models for a youngster. My parents’ roles were that my dad worked as a self-employed architect, so my mom, who was a teacher before I was born, could spend greater time with my sister and myself. So clearly, both my sister and I did sports activities, homework and many other activities with her, rather than my dad, who was bringing the “food on the table”. This changed once I graduated from High School a few years later, when I spent especially a lot of time with him as I worked on becoming a professional kitesurfer. However I recall a very special event happened with him while I was in Primary School, where he had a large and lasting crucial influence […]

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Once Upon a Christmas

We are always looking for creative activities to do every Christmas! Yes, of course, there are the annual traditions such as the Bright Nights Stanley Park Train, Canyon Lights at Capilano Suspension Bridge, and North Pole BC. However, this year, we were overjoyed to get an invitation to attend the opening night of “Once Upon a Christmas” – an original story written and directed by Kristy Provan, the owner of My Little Princess. The premise is that Superman, Kristoff from Frozen, along with three well-known Princesses (Anna, Ariel, and Snow White) sing and share stories as they wait for the arrival of Santa Claus. It’s a good mix of acting, singing, and dancing with adventure, romance, humour, and friendship all mixed into one fast-paced and action-packed show. Our kids absolutely loved the show. Normally, we can’t get our kids to sit still for an entire hour. However, for this show, they were “Frozen” (pun intended) to their seats as some of their favourite movie characters came to life before their cute little eyes. Every few minutes, my wife and I glanced down at our kids to see their eyes wide open with huge smiles on their faces. Even for us adults, I could hear the laughter of the moms and dads in the audience. The writing was clever appealing both to the innocent hearts of the kids in the room as well as the intellect of the adults who had come to support their sons and daughters. At a lot of kid’s shows, I see parents tune out but at this one, all ages were entertained and amused. I especially liked Snow White’s creative humour (bringing up the dwarfs and even Cinderella when talking about cleaning the chimney), Anna’s reference to “Raincouver” when the magic carpet encountered some rain, Ariel’s numerous underwater references, Kristoff’s inspiring rendition of “All I Want for Christmas” as he proposed to Anna, and Superman’s recanting of his victories in countless DC movies. Another highlight of the evening was the Epic Snow Rap Showdown between Anna and Snow White which was hilarious! The show plays at Granville Island from Monday, Dec 7, 2015 – Sunday, Dec 13, 2015 (with both matinee and evening shows on the weekend). There are some light refreshments as well as CD’s on sale. Plus, at the end of each show, there is a meet and greet with the characters which is […]

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Global Money Transfers with CIBC

Can you really send money around the world with no service fee? Thanks to CIBC Global Money Transfer, CIBC customers can send money to family, friends, or business associates anywhere in the world at no charge. My wife regularly sends money to her family in the Philippines. This will also come in handy for birthdays, holidays, and other special occasions throughout the year. Plus, we will be doing some long-term travel next year, so it’s good to know that our family can send us money with no fees if we ever get stuck. CIBC Global Money Transfer lets you send money anytime, usually within 1 business day. Here are some of the key reasons to use CIBC Global Money Transfer: ● Zero fee to send transfers, with very competitive rates ● Can send money to 35+ countries worldwide, including India, Philippines, and the Eurozone countries ● Done conveniently and quickly, send money online or through a branch ● Very secure delivery of money Please note that Standard foreign exchange rates apply. Also, please ensure you check that the country you want to send money to is available. Not all countries mentioned above are available. You can find out more at the #CIBCnofeeGMT Twitter Party this Wednesday, Dec 9, 2015 at 6:30 pm PST. I’ll be joining in and helping moderate the discussion so I look forward to tweeting with you this Wednesday! Follow @CammiPham and @RossanaWyatt for questions and prizing. Make sure you RSVP here as there will be $2000+ up for grabs: http://bit.ly/nofeeGMT *DISCLAIMER: This post is brought to you by CIBC Global Money Transfer™. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

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Manning Park Resort

For the last few months, we have been contemplating renting out our place on Airbnb. Finally, we got our first ever booking this weekend. It was a last minute booking so we decided to rent out our place and we took a mini-vacation to Manning Park Resort. We cleaned like crazy, checked-in our guests, and then we were off for a weekend adventure! We have driven past Manning Park Resort a few times when going to and from the Okanagan but this was our first time stopping to stay overnight and explore the area. I am surprised that more people don’t do a getaway to Manning Park instead of touristy places like Whistler, Vancouver Island, or the Sunshine Coast. It is close, convenient, and cheap to stay at! Manning Park Resort makes a perfect weekend getaway from Vancouver (only a 2.5 hour drive each way). They have a restaurant, pub, and shop on site as well as swimming pool, sauna, and hot tub. They have a variety of rooms from the standard lodge-style rooms to more private chalets and cabins. Make sure you dress warm if you go up in the winter as it is much colder than in Vancouver. Also, make sure you fill up for gas in Hope as there are no stations from Hope to Manning Park. They do have some emergency gas at the resort for about $20/10 litres. You can do a lot at Manning Park in all four seasons. From hiking, camping, and exploring the lakes in the summer to ski-ing, snowboarding, and snow-shoeing in the winter. Of course, you can bring your own sled or toboggan so the kids can enjoy. Plus, they have delicious Mountain Spring Water so bring along a couple of water bottles to fill up for the drive home. Make sure you get a meal at the on-site restaurant as well – super delicious! We got a great deal on Social Shopper which was about $80/night and we rent out our place for $110/night on Airbnb so we made a little bit of profit while on vacation! Who doesn’t enjoy getting paid to travel? We enjoyed our time at the Manning Park Resort and definitely recommend it as a nice getaway which is way less touristy than Whistler or some of the other ski areas close to Vancouver.

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