It’s often been said that the older you get, the faster time passes. If that is true, 2025 has been a whiplash of a year for me and for our Zafigo team.

I began the year with a trip with a group of girlfriends to Egypt, a country that I have always wanted to visit. We did it all, from seeing the pyramids (astounding!) to taking a boat up the Nile (terrific!) and visiting many temples built by ancient Egyptian kings and queens. I just had to marvel at how advanced and sophisticated they were, constructing enormous buildings and giant statues, making artworks that are still easily viewed today, building hospitals and specialist clinics (including for obstetrics and gynaecology), and crafting beautiful artefacts and jewellery. You can’t help feeling almost primitive in the light of all these. And I loved the history, colour and liveliness of Cairo!

After that, all my travel was brief because Zafigo was going full steam ahead. In May, we launched Trybe by Zafigo, an opportunity not just for our readers to meet the team but also to try something new (hence ‘Trybe’ = tribe). We started with the most popular new sport, pickleball. It was nice to meet so many enthusiastic people willing to pick up a racquet and give the ball a whack.

We began work on ZafigoX earlier this year, so that we had more time to conceptualise the theme, Acceleration. Our speakers were very strong advocates for their various causes. We had an intergenerational discussion between two women’s rights activists, Zainah Anwar, who began in the 1990s and Ain Husniza Saiful Nizam, who began only two years ago. They talked about how advocacy methods have changed so much from the days of writing letters to newspaper editors to the use of social media today. Elaha Soroor is an Afghan singer based in the UK who sings to maintain her culture that is currently being threatened. Shenelle Rodrigo advocates for a more measured perspective on her country, Sri Lanka, when the global media presents only negative pictures of it. Yee I-Lann talked about how she is working with Sabah mat-weaving communities on artworks to show that they are world-class. Sadaf Saaz presented her work for women and young people in Bangladesh.

Our musical performances were also exemplary. Our audience couldn’t help but get on their feet both for Munirih Jebeni’s sape-playing as well as VIONA’s electropop. We were entranced by Melizarani T. Selva’s spoken word poem performance and wowed by the first all-women wayang kulit performance by Wayang Women, who reworked the traditional Southeast Asian hantu stories.

As usual, we had our panels and workshops, all of which were well-attended. Some of us learnt how to dance the inang and joget for the first time! And of course, there were booths selling food, goodies, books, ice cream, coffee, and where we could also try out Volvo’s electric car.

If you’re feeling FOMO, keep an eye out for the next ZafigoX in 2026!

At Zafigo, our aim is to provide ideas and tips for your best travel experience, because we know that it will open your world to every possibility. So keep following us on our social media and website, and we hope to see you again in person soon.

Have a terrific holiday season and a wonderful New Year!