With so many decisions to make each day, Raja had long resolved that what to eat for lunch would not be among them. Fortified by a heavy breakfast of bacon and eggs, he usually worked through the lunch hour. If he was not in the office, at a meeting or an event elsewhere, he would likely be in a bookshop browsing, ostensibly as part of his research work. His favourite haunts near his City Hall office included the MPH bookstore on Stamford Road and the second-hand bookshops on Bras Basah.

But usually at least once a week, Raja would climb the stairs one storey up to Lee's second-floor office for a working lunch – except that, for the foreign minister, it was all work and no lunch, as had become his habit. As Lee tucked into his food, Raja would sip his tea as the two men exchanged views on foreign policy and other affairs.

Because some issues were very sensitive, they did not want to discuss them openly, not even at the Cabinet level. In their one-on-one conversations, they used each other as sounding boards, bouncing off ideas, analysing approaches to issues, and defining and refining their attitudes to emerging trends and dangers. Sometimes, they dissected the developments in specific countries. Other times, “we just discussed generally as events developed, or in terms of projecting the future direction that our foreign policy should take and anticipating problems”, Raja recalled. And, occasionally, they argued.

The free-flowing exchanges, conducted over these and other meetings, allowed the two men to visualise possible scenarios and different outcomes, and to be prepared as far as possible for them – at least psychologically, if not practically. This habit helped them to check their blind spots, although not always successfully, for both men exhibited a degree of intellectual arrogance that could at times cloud their judgment.

Raja brought his analytical mind to bear on all aspects of the policy process. His method involved distinguishing real dangers from imaginary ones, and permanent dangers from temporary ones. Like so much of the framework of his thinking, this was rooted in his reading of history. Most human tragedies had arisen from the futile solutions conceived by rulers to imaginary dangers, and their failure to pinpoint the real sources of danger, which could vary from week to week, month to month and year to year.