'The day after the news filled with Hilary Clinton's pneumonia diagnosis, I found the Al-Salaam restaurant closed. I looked up and down my local stretch of Changi Road, wondering where else I could get some breakfast roti, and quickly gathered this wasn't a normal Singapore weekday. A large crowd - Malays, Indians, Arabs, others - was leaving the local mosque. A hawker centre was dense with patrons eating noodles with conspicuous unhurriedness. Families strolled along a canal leading down to the beach.' (Publication abstract)