Day Three, Four, Five and Six

Day 3
I at last have some time to update the Wiki. Day three in Taipei was done visiting some of Taiwan's biggest companies. I have personally very impressed with Taiwan Semi-conductor Manufacturing Company, the world's largest foundry. Darren's comment after visiting TSMC was classic - he walks out the presentation and only thing he tell me is - "The US is screwed, we all need to move here". We also visited AU Optronics and MediaTek, both which are dominant players in their markets. After the company visits all of us headed to Carnegie's - the most US pub/bar in the entire Taiwan. The music was good and it was extremely crowded for Wed night, mainly with foreigners. I was not there till late - but I heard that it got really crazy later that night, including some bar top dancing. The highlights of Day 3 were Patrick McGowen practicing his Chinese skills, and mistakenly telling Alex (our chaperone from Cathay Life) - "Where can I find a women's orgasm" and me telling everyone in the bus, my popular "rubber" story - a classic if you never heard it.

Day 4

Day 4 involved a long bus drive to the airport and short nice flight on what is quickly becoming everyones favorite airline Cathay Pacific. The fun part of the day began when I was trying to clear immigration. According the HK custom, I was randomly selected for further questioning, although when I went to the room - there were 40 others Indian also randomly selected!!!. Anyways, the entire process took 2 hours and was the worst process I had ever seen. They all need to take Prof Sreekumar and his process improvement class. While the rest of the group left with the bus while I was being further questioned, Prof Mickey stayed back, for which I very grateful to him. Prof Mickey and I took the train and then the local metro to our hotel which is situated in the heart of HK in Causeway Bay. Interestly we only reached 30 mins after the bus arrived - traffic in HK is bad. That night we all headed for the market in Kwaloon, where I helped Darren bargain for some pearls. If you want to hear about my bargaining skills and exploits please contact Darren or Lauren.

Day 5

We visited in my opinion the best presentation by Dr. Fung of Li & Fung. Which was followed up by an insane lunch & presentation hosted by 7-11. The lunch was over the top crazy - every kind of food and desert that you can think of. We had a few hours free in the middle. Lauren, Darren and I went back to the pearl shop where I once again helped bargain a good deal for Lauren and Darren. We returned back to visit JP Morgan. Last night we all decided to celebrate Katie, Camila and Ryan birthday at HK premier party district called Lan Kwai Fong. This place is absolutely crazy, similar to Bourbon street. All the people went to a MEXICAN!!!!!! place in HK to eat, while I met up with my cousin and ate at a local shezwan place - awesome food. After food we all hung around, did some crazy bar hoping and walked on the street, which itself was an experience. I came home at 2:30 a.m. and was one of the first people to leave.

Day 6
This was our first free day so I don't know what everyone did but Lauren, Billy, Pallu, Mark and I went to Victoria Peak. Lauren, Billy and I then went to some shopping districts, including Man Kok which was amazing and crazy. The number of people of that street was amazing and so were the neon lights.

Day Two - Company Visits

Day Two started off really early, especially for some people that went bar hopping and slept at 1:00 a.m. Nevertheless, we all were in the bus at 7:30 a.m. in the morning. We started off with a wholesome breakfast at this hotel with an amazing view. First time in my life and probabaly the last time, I ate rice, pancakes, fries, watermelon, and pastries all for breakfast, btw the best view from the hotel was from the men's restroom. We then took an hour bus ride to Compal our first company visit. The presentation was short with lots of time for Q&A, unfortunately the presenter english wasn't good and so some of the answers were vague and difficult to understand. Just personal opinion I think that company is in trouble. We then ate lunch at this local Taiwanese restaurant - I ate the beef which was suprisingly excellenet, however few of us ate the small desert balls and even Darren and Justin that seem like virtually everything decided to pass on the Egg pudding. We followed Compal with a visit to Nehru Technology Park administrative office, which is temprorarly located in a fire station. This presentation was also short and good, the presenter spoke fairly good english. From there we headed to CyberLink, which was very similar to any software technology company in the US. Young, smart people wearing trendy clothing and working crazy hours. This was by far the best presentation. By the end of the presentation it was already 5:30 p.m. and we all were extremely tired. We decided to have dinner at a dumpling place that Alicia had suggest. It was surely the best dumplings I have ever had, but then again this was only second time I have had dumplings. At eight most of us headed back to Cathay Life extremely tired and ready to crash.

The highlights of the day were - Patrick's speech while presentating a token of appreciation to one of the presenters. We walking a mile in the rain to reach the dumpling place , when the bus could have dropped us in front of it. There were more moments but I just too tired to remember

Day One - Taipei

Day One - Sightseeing Tour
The day started at 7:30 a.m. and thanks to the jet lag, I don't think anyone had any issues waking up that early. We had breakfast in the city at nice breakfasty restaurant, followed up a museum tour of the National Palace Museum, which was good, however after 30 mins all the pots and pans started looking the same. From the Museum we went to mall, where some of us tried Taiwanese food, while the rest went to TGI FRIDAYS!!!!!!!!. That was followed by a trip to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Museum - ice monument. From this monument we went to Taipei 101 - The World's Tallest Building and although the weather was bad (light rain and wind), the view from the 82nd floor observatory deck was stunning. Few of us (Lauren, Billy, Andrew Mier, Alex, Amanda, Daniel and I) decided to investigate the real Taiwan. We took the Metro and went to the night market. The night market was really cool, with a lot fun snacky food and drinks. I personally tried some chicken on the stick - which was very tasty and also drank bubble tea which was terrible. We also walked around that area which is full of small stores which sell T-Shirts, shoes, interesting posters, jewelery, fake iPhones, fake WII - you get the picture. After a tiring walk we decided to find a pub. This pub was the highlight of the trip. It was a real hole in the wall, with interesting green and blue lighting and classic rock - if you ever go to this place, please visit the restroom...very interesting.
Billy, Alex and Andrew decided to have another round of beer, while the rest of us decided to head back to our the Cathay Life Training Center.

Flight to Taipei

The plane to China was long, nearly 20 hours before we reached the Cathay Life Training Center. I watched every cheesy romantic comedy there was to watch on the AA flight from Dallas to Tokyo. The Cathay Pacific flight from Tokyo to Taipei was much better. Better seats, better entertainment, better service and better hostesses, no wonder US airline company are performing so poorly. As Prof. Walker would say "they are not adding any value, nor are they cost leader - they are basically stuck in the middle". Ok, so I have still not got over the Strategy final.

The reception that we received at Cathay Life was amazing. They had group of employees lined up and as we walked in they sang an upbeat song, cheered and clapped. Although, we were dead tried, I really expected Patrick McGowen to explode any minute, we took a 45 mins tour of the facilities, followed by a welcome dinner.

I don't know about the rest..but I slept like a baby

Chinese Visa Document

Here are the links for the Chinese Visa Document and Requirement's Document

BIC Training Schedule

The library session will be from 5:20 - 6:20 in 186 Crow with Karen Leeseberg.

See ya'll there.