Wishing everyone a happy, healthy and wealthy 2026 🎇🥳

I know we are already 3 weeks into 2026, but I haven’t had a chance yet to type it all out, and on IG I posted a shorter version only. 

I sometimes like to sit back, think and reflect on the past year. How was 2025 for you? 

2025

• The year felt extremely long, one of the longest years in my whole life! It didn’t feel like just one year, as soo much happened and so many experiences and struggles too. They say the older you get, the faster time goes… but I don’t think that’s true at all! It’s about what happens in your life and what you experience and how you live, and that will influence the perception of time moving fast or slow.

• Was awarded as one of the top regional broadcasters in Canada in the North America Region US&CA and flown to Singapore for the awards ceremony at Marina Bay Sands. I am so grateful I could visit Singapore again and also travelled around Gili T island, Bali, for 10 days with my cousin. It was the first time seeing Bali, and I had the happiest days swimming and snorkeling in the ocean, biking around the island, dancing barefoot at beach bars and witnessing many cows everywhere, some even blocking the streets at 1am at night!

• After I succeeded in my embassy interview and got my work visa stamped in my passport, I packed up after almost 7 years in Canada and moved countries, from Canada to the USA. It’s a lot of figuring things out, starting new and finding everything new, from where to shop, how to commute, where to work out, finding health care, finding a dentist and other doctors, opening bank accounts, building US credit from zero, and much more. 

• Started going to sauna again after a years-long break (2019 was the last time before) due to Covid closures first, and then the area in Toronto where I was living literally had no saunas at all. Even in Bali in January I went to a sauna and also tried a freezing ice bath experience there for the first time ever, and then after tried ice bath here in LA too; they are a little less cold here though. 

• After a few years of covid fear resulting mainly in at-home bodyweight workouts with dumbbells only, I started going to actual gyms again to work out at machines and surrounded by people.

• Pretended to be a 7-year-old kid for a voiceover acting recording for the T.REX IMAX movie. That’s why I love it so much; you get to live and experience being a kid again even!

• Spent my first birthday ever in the US and was more than just amazed by all the birthday freebies and gifts I have gotten everywhere! I only heard about it before or from the movies, and in other countries you simply don’t get as much for free! It felt like a scavenger hunt exploring all different places and like a kid, as I didn’t need any of my own money at all and got sooo many goodies!

• Was winning Miss Bigo North America and competing for the international finals beauty pageant in Vietnam, which lasted several days seeing myself on multiple billboards all over Ho Chi Minh City. (That pic is one of them.) Then after I travelled in Vietnam for 2 weeks, also exploring Hanoi, Cat Ba Island and Con Dao Island. It was my first time ever in Vietnam, and it was absolutely amazing! 

• Had Covid for the first time ever in my life (and hopefully the last time) after I came back from Vietnam; I must have caught it on the flights back home. I also had mild dengue fever at the same time from bicycling all day around Con Dao Island. The body aches made me feel as I were100 years old, and I lost my voice completely for about 3 weeks. I tried to talk, but no words came out at all. It was terrible times; I got scared, and so I started wearing a face mask at almost all times again indoors.

• Just after I finally could talk again and felt healthy for about one month only, I tore my ACL in the gym during kickboxing exercises in June. Absolutely unexpected, I fell down, and my knee was making a loud pop and was locked for several days even. Went to urgent care the next morning and got referred to orthopaedics, MRI and physical therapy. The wait times to get appointments, all while being severely injured, needing to cancel work gigs, loss of income and expensive unexpected doctor bills were traumatising. 9.5 weeks after the injury, I finally got the first diagnosis, knowing what I have: torn ACL, MCL, LCL, bone contusions, Baker's cyst, meniscus capsular separation.

• Due to the knee injury, I couldn’t walk for 3.5 months, only limp in pain, and it was the worst time of my life with lots of uncontrollable crying. I was disabled out of nowhere, just arriving after moving countries and not knowing anyone also! Even standing or sitting was not possible for long times, mostly I was lying all day with my leg elevated and icing it. Also I developed a lot of empathy for disabled and elderly people and how they have to live always! I was also noticing that most grocery stores have no benches to sit down to take a break, and grocery shopping was such a challenge without being able to sit on a bench for a bit of rest! Like, really, there should be more benches out there! Those 3.5 months felt like the longest 3.5 months of my life; it felt like it was a whole year or something, as the days felt so long as I wasn’t able to do much at all. I am also physically not able to do many modeling projects, which often even require wearing heels, which I can’t even imagine at all now! Thankfully I could continue broadcasting, and it saved me during unpredictable times.

• It was the hardest time of my life ever, and it was challenging to stay strong. I had a sports ankle injury before in high school, and I had surgery one day after it happened. I was on crutches for several months and in a cast; it was hard, but at least the doctors helped very fast! I felt helped and taken care of right away, so it wasn’t that hard like it was now. Now I feel like nobody cares, and all people here are treated like a number, with long wait lists to see a specialist doctor, like everyone else here too. It felt very disheartening.

• I had to relearn how to walk again; I felt like a baby literally making baby steps. I had to watch other people walking in front of me to see how they move their legs to do steps. At first also my arms were moving all weird and awkward and not naturally; it may sound crazy to a normal healthy person, but it really took a while to learn it again. But I was sooo happy and grateful that I could walk again, only slowly, but still it’s the best thing to be able to walk! Also didn’t cry at all anymore the day I could slow walk again! 

• Since the injury, physical therapy was taking over my life, 4 times per day in the beginning and it mentally drained and burnt me out to do the knee rehab that often every single day, 4 times! All my thoughts revolved only around the knee completely; I couldn’t think about anything else most of the time, and also nothing else was important anymore! All I wish for is a healthy knee again! Now I still can’t do many things yet, like running, riding a bicycle, wearing heels, jumping, kneeling, sitting cross-legged, doing yoga poses like child’s pose and walking steps and stairs. I still can only do them by holding onto the rails with my arms or walking steps backwards only. But in the last months of 2025, I always could notice little improvements and progress that felt promising! 

• Did several German voiceover acting recordings for Exile podcast season 2.

• Covid hair continues; it is even longer now! (No haircut in 6 years now!) 

• Was awarded as one of the top10 Bigo Icons of 2025 (from an international broadcaster pageant-style talent competition throughout June, July, August and September), and won several prizes, including another trophy! 

• Did a 30-day challenge without any added sugars, and I would honestly never do it again, as I am to much of a chocolatemonsta and candy lover. I am so proud that I actually succeeded, and it was probably the hardest challenge I have ever done before; the longest before was about 2 weeks without any candy/cakes/ice cream at all! That’s ok, but 30 days is just pure torture! I was just counting the days until I can eat sweets again and felt that I don’t enjoy my life fully anymore with those restrictions that took my joy away. And the healthier options exist, yes, but they simply never taste as good as the real candy; it’s not the same! Some people say after 30 days you don’t even want sugar anymore, but that certainly wasn’t the case for me! A good result of this challenge was getting more aware of how much added hidden sugar there is everywhere! For example, in yogurts and Yakult probiotics drinks, like since that challenge, I only eat plain Greek yoghurt now and add it with my own fresh fruits only! So I did incorporate some long-term changes as a positive result of the challenge. My learning lesson is to embrace my love for sweets, though, and to enjoy it, but to be aware of it and too not have to much of it, like I usually try to only have it once a week. 

• Was baking Christmas cookies for the first time in years, and it was so much fun baking, decorating and also delicious eating and sharing them (because my studio apartment in Toronto before had no oven.)

• For Christmas I was invited for Christmas brunch in Santa Barbara at the most amazingly decorated Christmas house. I had only seen so many decorations before in the Christmas movies, but that was real life, and it was absolutely magical! 

• Was traveling with my cousin for the first time ever and then even twice! It felt like a family meetup worldwide. We met up in Bali in January and in Vietnam in April, and I am more than just grateful I could experience all that before the injury turned my life upside down and travel was absolutely impossible then!

• Was swimming in the ocean in Bali, in Vietnam and briefly a bit in California before the injury. I love the ocean so much, so that’s very important to me. I had big, exciting plans actually to learn surfing even in the summer, as I now live in California! But with that injury, even any unstable surfaces like sand and waves are absolutely impossible, sadly, and I can’t even think of surfing at all!

• There were so many first-time-ever experiences in my life in 2025: first time visiting Bali and Vietnam, first time living in the US with a work visa, first birthday in the US, first time knee sport injury, first time physical therapy, first time Covid, first time winning multiple awards in just one year, first time on multiple billboards in Vietnam, first time travelling with my cousin, first time trying an ice bath, first time experiencing an amazingly decorated Christmas house like I only saw in the movies before, and first time doing a 30-day no-sugar challenge. 

The year 2025 has been like no other year ever before! Most eventful year with winning even multiple awards and flying into several countries on all expenses paid trips and hotel stays! Like what? How is this even possible?! Combine that with the challenges of moving countries and the struggles due to the most severe sport injury ever!