A few weeks ago, I received a call from Noor of Marcus Evans in KL. She was organising a conference on Medical Tourism and wanted to invite me to speak on "Capitalising on the Emerging Medical Tourism Market for Aesthetic Medicine". I was pretty stunned at the invite, not having spoken at a non-aesthetic conference before. I wasn't sure if I had enough info to fill the half hour slot either. So I asked for a few days to think it over, and mulled over it during Chinese New Year.
I also polled my friends on Facebook and picked at Julie's brains. The consensus was "go do it"! So I agreed.
As usual, if it's not urgent, it gets forgotten. So fortunately the e-mail came to send over the lecture slides with a 48 hour deadline. Arghhhhh!!! Talk about pressure! So everything else got swept to the side last Monday, and the lecture prepared in one night. Phew!
Yesterday was D-Day. I really did not know what to expect. And I was too busy to mull over & memorise the slides. All I had was Julie in the audience to cheer me on. Fortunately it was the second lecture of the conference, so I could get it over and done with ASAP.
So at just after 10 am on 1st March, I stepped up on stage for the first time in years, and rattled on about my views of Aesthetics & Medical Tourism. Fortunately, I have had a significant number of patients in this category, so I could just ramble on and talk nonsense. I ended to a dead silence and no questions. Oh God! Oops!!!
But fortunately, the audience were nice during tea break & said they enjoyed my speech! I was caught by one person after another, after another. Folks from South Africa, Korea, Japan, Indonesia and Taiwan came to say hello. I guess the speech can't have been that bad then! And Julie said she enjoyed it. She took lots of pictures, which I'll add to this blog at a later date.
The South African doctor was also an Anaesthetist by training, had gone into Medical Tourism and now wants to open South Africa's first medical spa. So we brought her back to see our facilities and told her more about the aesthetic business. Won't it be fabulous if we were invited over to be her Consultants! I've always wanted to visit South Africa!
All in all, it was a good experience. Something different to add into my CV. And Julie treated me to a yummy Chinese buffet lunch after to celebrate. Thanks Julie! 
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