The 2018 Enterprise Visit is a very educative, intuitive and refreshing enterprise visit. Thanks to all stakeholders, especially, CTCI Foundation, who made this event possible. The tour provides a comprehensive view of some Taiwanese companies and helps to establish connections between the international graduate students and the companies. I personally gained a lot in the areas of getting exposed to opportunities available in the job-market and also had the chance to meet, discuss and share with other international students from diverse educational and cultural backgrounds. This has extended my professional network-base and will pave way for future collaborative research to augment the efforts of industry to improve the standard of living. Before this enterprise visit, I believed working in Taiwan as a professional was nearly impossible, but this thought has changed after visiting InvesTaiwan. The CEO and the managers of InvesTaiwan are doing so much to make the stay and living of foreign professionals in Taiwan easier and better. And they projected Taiwan very well to increase our desire of working and living here. Taiwan is highlighted as a major global exporter of ICT products and semiconductors and produce highest quality of high-tech products. According to the Global Competitiveness Report 2017-2018, Taiwan ranked 15th out of 140 countries and also 15th in the Doing Business Report 2018 by World Bank. And what is most refreshing is that, according to the Business Environment Rankings, Taiwan ranks as the top 15 most investor-friendly nation between 2014 and 2018. The visiting companies were E.Sun Bank, Foxgreen Co., Taiwan Life Insurance Co., TOPCO Scientific Co., and CTCI Corporation. Our stop at the CTCI Corp. was an eye-opening encounter—CTCI Corp. introduces itself as a leading engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) firm. Over the years, CTCI has broadened its horizon in the areas of infrastructure, waste-to-energy, environmental protection, power and storage & terminal from the conventional services they used to provide, such as chemicals and petrochemicals refining. Talking about waste-to-energy, our stop at the offices of Foxgreen, a company that is poised to developing green products and environmental technologies, was also an educative one. Foxgreen applies microbial technology to convert biological wastes into useful products, such as animal feed biomass energy and nutritive liquids. What makes products from Foxgreen stand out from others is the fact that their treatment processes require low energy and no harmful byproducts are produced. Visits to TOPCO, E.SUN Bank and Taiwan Life Insurance were no less interesting and educative. For instance, the story surrounding the existence of E.SUN Bank is quite inspiring. Aside from being named after the peak of Taiwan Jade Mountain, the bank not only focuses on financial services, but also very much into the area of environmental sustainability. No wonder it emerged as the best bank in Asia-Pacific in 2017 (Taiwan’s first bank to win this award) according to The Asian Banker. Besides visiting enterprises, we were also given the opportunity to visit three notable attractions of Anyo Museum, National Center for Traditional Arts, and the Kili Bay Pearl Milk Tea Cultural Center. I must also commend the accompanying staffs for exhibiting professionalism in all their dealings with the trip from the first day we arrived till we departed at Taipei Main Station. Kudos to all of them, and I hope they can be retained for future duties. Thank you CTCI Foundation!
