Whether a plane to Singapore, a subway in Manhattan, or the streets of Cincinnati, I search for meaningful conversation wherever I may travel. Without it, I believe we lose the ability to not only understand others, but more importantly, ourselves.

China is a great manufacturing center, but it's actually mostly an assembly plant. So it assembles parts and components, high technology that comes from the surrounding industrial - more advanced industrial centers - Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, the United States, Europe - and it basically assembles them.

I began my career as a medical doctor in Ama Keng, a poor village in Lim Chu Kang. The people I cared for were ordinary Singaporeans. They were simple people who despite their hard work, had barely enough for themselves.

I was very impressed with the street food of Singapore. I was very impressed with the dishes that they did.

Nobody in Singapore drinks Singapore Slings. It's one of the first things you find out there. What you do in Singapore is eat. It's a really food-crazy culture, where all of this great food is available in a kind of hawker-stand environment.

At least when it comes to food, there's no snobbery in Singapore.

Our regular fitness programme means that the race lasting longer than others should not be a problem, but something you have to prepare for in Singapore is ensuring you always keep well-hydrated, as the heat and humidity can easily dehydrate you.

Urban design as a discipline barely exists in most American and Canadian cities. In Singapore, there are innovative transportation strategies at work.

I'm completely taken and impressed by the planning authority of Singapore and its Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). It's the most cutting-edge agency in the world. They have very effective guidelines for development, and they review design as it evolves.

Growing up in a Singaporean Chinese family, for me food is almost the primary means of communication between family members, both immediate and extended... hey, it beats discussing which cousin did better at end of semester exams, or who's getting married next, right?

Singapore is likely to be the world's first market for self-driving cars. Commercial services around self-driving vehicles will likely be in Singapore before they are anywhere else in the world.

If you go to Singapore or Amsterdam or Seoul or Buenos Aires or Islamabad or Johannesburg or Tampa or Istanbul or Kyoto, you'll find that the people differ wildly in the way they dress, in their marriage customs, in the holidays they observe, in their religious rituals, and so on, but they all expect the food to be under lock and key. It's all owned, and if you want some, you'll have to buy it.

The countries who do the best in international comparisons whether it's Finland or Japan Denmark or Singapore do well because they have professional teachers who are respected and they also have family and community which support learning.