By Yaowanart Chatchaidamrong, BBA#14
“Friendship will never get along well with business.” If that is the quote we commonly must listen to in our everyday life, I would like to express my disagreement. My 9 days and 8 nights trip to the ASES Summit 2007 in Taiwan changed my outlook forever!
Really early on the morning of August 28th at Suvarnabhumi Airport, Miss Ruksawaan (Gift) Yanyongkasemsuk, BBA#13 and I, Yaowanart (Ling Ling) Chatchaidamrong, BBA#14, began our journey to the ASES summit in Taipei. We coincidentally took the same flight with the delegates from the ASES India chapter. They were sitting in the same row with us, though I did not realize it until we reached Taoyuan, Taiwan International Airport. As my first step touched the ground, I knew right away that something wonderful was waiting for me to discover. We were warmly welcomed by the ASES Taiwan staff and surrounded by delegates from other chapters such as Canada, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Stanford.
Our first task was to present a10-minute Power Point slide show about ASES Thailand’s recent performance. Throughout the whole week, we attended lectures by a great number of influential guest speakers and CEOs from famous Taiwanese companies such as the CEO of Crystal Ventures and the CEO of BIONET. In the middle of the week, we were divided into groups to have a business competition. The task was to create a website for the ASES global network. We were sitting at a roundtable, talking and working on the project until 2 A.M. I was so keen to listen to the ideas and share mine with the bright future entrepreneurs from around the world.
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Not only as the representatives from the ASES Thailand chapter, we were also honored to be representing Thammasat University so P’Gift and I decided to wear our school uniforms to the meetings during the summit. We got feedback from one of our Stanford friends that our uniform looked professional while one of the Hong Kong delegates said that it looked really cute since I suppose that Thailand might be the only country in the world that still has uniforms for university students.
The most enlightening part of the summit was the time when some of the delegates presented their own business models with interesting ideas. Some had even begun their future plans already. I was amazed and extremely inspired by these people.
We made two company visits: to ASUS (a Main-board producer) and the Eslite Bookstore, the biggest chain of bookstores in Taiwan. Plus we had a campus tour around NTU (National Taiwan University) where the activities were held during the whole summit. NTU is considered to be one of the most prestigious and oldest universities in Taiwan.
Time passed quickly and the summit came to an end. I did not realize it until we started saying goodbye to several delegates in the lobby of the hostel. Now here I am, back at the Tha Prachan campus but something will never be the same again. Before the summit, I would head back home right after classes were over. However, after the summit, I now spend some time sending mail to my Indian friends, a couple of Filipinos and dozens from Stanford to find out how they are doing back in their home country. Or sometimes I ask for their opinions about my new business idea. Don’t you agree with me now that friendship can actually go along very well with business?
Posted date: September 25, 2007 – 11:20 hrs. |
