Tough start, but a Kirk woman has made a career in Cyprus.

Trish Brown comes from the coastal town of Johal in County Cork. She is the youngest of a family of 14 children - ten boys and four girls - and her early life was not easy. Her father died when she was just two years old and 12 years later, when she was just 14, she lost her mother to cancer. But that didn't stop her and for the past 23 years Trish has lived in Cyprus where she runs her own company, Blue Surf Property. It's a real estate agency based in the heart of Protaras on the east coast of the island, and it's thriving.

Some credit for this can be given to her mother.

Missis Brown understood the value of a good education, so when Trish graduated from Presentation Convent in Johal, her mother sent her to Scoil na nÓg - an all-Irish''an inner-city school in Glenmere. The move initially traumatized the child, who didn't know a word of Irish and hated the place from the start. Over time, however, she began to grow to love it. After her mother died, Trish lived with various family members when she wasn't in boarding school, so she never had a real home. Her siblings took good care of her, but it wasn't the same. After elementary school, she spent the next six years at Coláiste an Phiarsaigh, and after matriculation she went to DCU to start studying communications.

But Trish soon became disillusioned and began to question her choice of direction.

She decided to take a break and travel. She was already working''Parallel in a bar when she was studying at DCU and her boss told her about a friend of his who had a bar in Cyprus. He said that if she was going to travel, she should try Cyprus. She took his advice and went to the airport with her friend. On January 28, 1999, she bought a one-way ticket to Cyprus. Her plan was to spend some time there first and then travel further, but as soon as she arrived, she began to wonder if she had made a terrible mistake. January was not a good time to visit the island for the first time. Everything was closed for the winter, and the only things to be seen on the streets were weeds. It wasn't exactly what Trish had envisioned, but she had made her choice, and there was no going back''There was an option.

By the end of the season she had fallen in love with Cyprus.

She loved her job at the bar and gave it her best effort. At the time, she thought she might end up opening her own pub, but by the end of the next season, she changed her mind. From her teenage years, Trish knew she wanted to own her own business. She was ambitious and had lots of ideas about how to make money. Many of them were silly, but she consoled herself by at least thinking about it. After that, she changed direction and worked for a year at a travel agency selling''cruises to Egypt and Israel, but soon tired of the job, and the next season she took a job with First Choice, which owned JWT and Falcon Holidays.

They had just lost some guides, so she was thrown in at the deep end without any training, but she says it was the best learning experience. Trish quickly got used to finding solutions to problems and dealing with disgruntled clients, and although she was a shy person by nature, the experience gave her a lot of confidence. By then Cyprus was preparing to join the European Union and the rules for buying and selling real estate were being simplified. There were rapid changes in the real estate industry on the island. Giovani project developers invited Trish to join their team as a salesperson, and after all''A few weeks of working with them, she realized this is what she wanted to do with her life. It wasn't just about selling real estate. She was selling a lifestyle, and it brought her pleasure. She did that for the next seven years.

At that time she was married to a Cypriot man.

And after maternity leave for the birth of her first son, she had the opportunity to work under the license of another estate agency, Island Homes. The Cork woman worked there for another seven years until she had the desire to start her own agency. She rented a small office, hired three other girls and Blue Surf Property came into being. Thanks to her Greek language skills, she was able to pass the real estate exam and became the only non-Greek in Cyprus,