I flew Scoot. Budget airline, middle seat. Somewhere over the Bay of Bengal, the cabin crew handed out scratch cards, a birthday promotion. I scratched mine with a coin from my wallet.

"Woohoo, you won."

The Forum

MedTech Forum Asia Pacific 2022 ran on the theme Patient Futures 2025 . The conference hall was gala-scale: blue-lit, packed, with "MTF" in giant illuminated letters anchoring the floor.

LUCID Implants had a booth. Our first time exhibiting internationally. We stood behind a banner that read Patient-Specific Implant Solutions, co-branded with Dassault Systèmes. People stopped. They asked real questions. About HIPAA and FDA compliance, about ASEAN regulatory pathways, about whether what we were building in India could scale into this market.

The Campus

I made time for NUS Engineering. Walking into that building with the glass entrance, the awards lining the walls, the quiet weight of serious research.

The City & Food

Gardens by the Bay at night. I sat on a driftwood bench under the tree canopy and just stayed there for a while, longer than a tourist would. Marina Bay Sands across the water at blue hour. The city has a way of making ambition feel normal, almost expected.

Here's what I'll actually remember: a hawker plate of nasi goreng and mee goreng: yellow rice, crispy prawns, fried egg. And then, another evening, a quiet dim sum spread: hand-pulled noodles, xiao long bao steaming in a bamboo basket.

I came back to Hyderabad two days later. The scratch card is still somewhere in a drawer. The conversations from that booth, from that campus, from those evenings by the water, those went into something that's still compounding.

Patient futures. We're getting there.