NTNU and KPMG

Our third full day there was going to be a busy one. After eating breakfast, we all left our hotel at and headed to National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). There, we took a survival Chinese class, which was a lot tougher then I thought it would be. Mandarin Chinese is a language that is very heavy on the tone of your voice. There are 4 main tones. The first is a high tone. The second is a rising tone. The third goes lower and then rises, while the final tone is a sharp drop. These tones make it so a word as simple as "ma" can have four different meanings. Depending on the tone used when saying "ma" it can mean "mother", "hemp", "horse", or "to yell at; scold". Trying to really understand this took a little while. However, I did learn how to The University of Michigan (which is Mixigen daxue). Thankfully, I was able to learn simple phrases like "Hello" (which is Ni hao), "Thanks" (Xie xie), "You're welcome" (Bu ke qi), and "Good-bye" (Zai jian). Mandarin Chinese is definitely one of the harder languages that I have encountered.

Once we finished our lesson in Mandarin, we met some students from NTNU. We had lunch with them and had a chance to ask them about life at the University. Once we finished lunch though, we participated in some games the students had set up. There were 3 different games. One required you to race against another team to blow a ball to different water-filled cups. Another required you to move small green bean-like objects from one bowl to another using objects like a spoon or chopsticks (the challenge being you only wanted the green beans, not the bigger black ones). The final game required two team members to move either a ping pong ball, a small marble like object, or one of the small green beans from one plate to another, and then the other two team members needed to transfer that object to yet another plate, all while only using chopsticks. My team ended up winning the first two games, but lost the third. The games were really fun though and we were given different Taiwanese treats for participating.

Dr. Laurence (left) and Dr. Peng (right) with Jeff Chang (center) from KPMG

With the games completed, it was time to go to our first business visit. This was to visit KPMG, which was located in Taipei 101. Taipei 101 is the second largest building in the world. KPMG takes up four floors within the building. We would end up being on the 68th floor. We listened to a presentation by Jeff Chang. I was surprised to hear just how big KPMG is. KPMG operates in 156 countries and has clients like Citibank, PepsiCO, Nestle, and Microsoft. The three main services provided by KPMG are audit, tax, and advisory services. The different services that the company offered to their employees was interesting too. They had a very nice cafe and also provide massages to employees for as little as about 2 USD per 30 minutes. It really seemed like KPMG worked hard to make sure that moral was kept up by utilizing these type of little perks. Overall, I was very impressed to hear about all that KPMG does and how successful they are. I really enjoyed the opportunity to visit this company.

Taipei 101

The end of the KPMG visit meant we were halfway done with our day. However, the rest of the day and more is to be continued...