HTC and 89 floors into the sky

Dr. Laurence (right), Dr. Peng (center), with HTC rep (right)

Following our lesson in Chinese medicine and a tour of NTNU's campus, it was time for the business trip I had really been looking forward to. It was time to go to HTC. Upon entering in HTC, I was immediately in awe. The inside of the building looked like it was entirely made out of a white marble and it was so open. The lobby area had a lot of open space, but also artwork. It turns out that HTC purposely had a more open concept in the lobby in order to let local artist put their artwork inside the lobby. We started with a tour of the building. Like ASUS, HTC had a free buffet, a huge work out area (including a boxing ring) and a basketball court/badminton court all for their employees. Even from the beginning, their tour was extremely professional. They had employees waiting for us at the elevators (which had glass walls) and were extremely helpful and informative. What I found really interesting on the tour was that the open concept was everywhere, including in the actual work spaces. The employees really didn't have separate desks to work at. They were all working in the same room and the only thing separating them from their coworker was a very thin divider on the desk. This struck me as a very good technique to encourage cooperation among the employees and it sounded like it was working. The presentation following the tour was also the most professional one we had thus far. What was extremely clever though, was that the presentation not only presented their company and how they do business, but was basically a plug for their new product, the HTC One. We even got to have hands on demonstrations of the new phones at the end of the presentation. As a final parting gift, everyone was given a HTC memo book as well. By far, this was my favorite business trip so far.

Giant artwork in HTC's lobby

As if the day wasn't exciting enough, we were returning to Taipei 101 for a special treat. We were going to go to the observatory on the 89th floor. Just getting to that floor was special, because Taipei 101 is home to the world's fastest elevators. The elevator went up so high so fast that the change in pressure actually had my ears pop in the same way an airplane does upon takeoff. We were greeted by a beautiful view from the observatory. You could literally see for miles around and, because we were there at night, you could see the entire city lit up by the lights on buildings. We were also given little cell-phone type devices that, when the station number was inputted, a description of the area was read through the speaker. It was amazing to be able to view the city like this. Only four days into the trip and I've been able to experience so much more then I have most of my entire life. It really is getting to the point that I'm not quite sure I'm going to be able to tell for sure what my favorite part of the trip is going to be!

View from the 89th floor of Taipei 101