Where high-tech meets nature

WHAT a scorching, eventful week it has been. As I'm writing this story in Singapore's 31 deg C weather, I'm reminiscing my whirlwind work trip to Hyderabad (where it was 41 deg C), and how my flight to the south Indian city on Tuesday night was delayed by an agonising five hours, no thanks to the fateful fire at Changi Airport.

But that intensity and heat aside, I enjoyed my visit to India. Officially, it was to attend Microsoft's 2017 Asia Innovation Tour - for which I, along with eight other journalists from across Asia, spent most of our two days at the Microsoft Hyderabad campus. Nestled in 22 hectares of land, it is the only Microsoft campus in India, and home to the Microsoft India Development Center, which is one of the company's largest software development centres outside its headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

I found this campus most fascinating - even though I've been to a number of tech offices (or "high-tech playgrounds for adults", as they are notoriously known). Those range from the colossal, avant garde headquarters of tech giants in California to the youthful, splashy workspaces of startups in Tel Aviv.