I first heard about these events about a year ago, but something came up each and every time. It was well worth the wait. Truly, this event was a breath of fresh air on the Taipei scene.
ORIENTED is a group spread amongst many world cities, and they focus on developing business opportunities with Asia. Their Happy Hour events are social and professional networking scenes… And they’re a pretty damned good time!
That’s the formal introduction out of the way. The ORIENTED Happy Hour has a veneer of being a professional meeting place, but it’s equally social. Several of my new friends from the event go just for the social scene, and do very little professional networking. I went with the purpose of promoting Taipei After Hours, and I’m happy to say we got a very warm reception. Not only that, but I met some truly amazing people! You know who you are!
Everyone at the event was warm, friendly and sociable. English was the lingua franca, and it was easy to communicate. I spoke little Mandarin, and though I like practicing, it was nice to relax into an English environment. Most of the Taiwanese I spoke to spoke flawless English,. So we were able to chat, swap stories and generally make a party of it.
On top of the very comfortable social vibe, drinks were cheap thanks to the ORIENTED crew. The venue was also quite nice: the Agora Garden Hotel. We had the lounge booked out, and it had ample space. There was even a live band playing classic rock tunes at one end of the room. In the spirit of the evening, however, we all crowded around the bar like sharks at a feeding frenzy.
So with great people at beautiful venues and an affordable good time, I only have one criticism of the event. It’s only once a month!
If you want to know more about ORIENTED Taipei, click on the link below.
http://www.oriented.com/index.aspx?City=Global
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