To celebrate the addition of “cricket” to my categories, I have decided to give you some cricket “game story play-by-play” from this morning’s editions of The National. Remember, hundreds of millions of people understand this. Completely. And for those of you who don’t get it … go ahead and read. If just for the comedy […]

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We at The National are selecting — and writing about — the planet’s best places to see a sports event. Stadiums, arenas, race tracks (horse and motors), even a “Gulf.” This was the idea of Robert Mashburn, the sports editor here, who had a brainstorm a few months back to rank the top 10 venues […]

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Someone was banging on the outer door of the Teeny Apartment. I was there to pick up a few things, and just sit for a moment, and I had a visitor? I unlocked the door, and there was a man I had never before seen. Perhaps 35. Almost certainly from the subcontinent. And he was […]

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I have watched the Dodgers from afar. Not as the fan I was as a kid (see, “Done Bleeding Dodger Blue” from back in April), but as someone who has followed the Dodgers for half a century. After a few decades, it’s what you do, even if a team has gone badly wrong. I have […]

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For some reason, a guy celebrating a soccer goal doesn’t seem as offensive as when American football guys celebrate a touchdown. Trying to figure out why. Because goals are so rare, in soccer? Because an individual scoring happens so infrequently (really good scorers average about one goal for every two matches) that they must prepare […]

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A few days ago I noted on this blog how drag racing seems to have followed us over to the Gulf, and to the UAE and Qatar, in particular. And now we have seen that Little League Baseball, is here, too. I wrote about Little League for the Tuesday editions of The National, catching up […]

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As July dragged on, I thought I noticed a change. The Abu Dhabi gridlock … seemed to be unlocking. It hasn’t taken as long to get from Point A to Point B here in town. Or so it seemed to me. And now we seem to have actual evidence … at least anecdotal … explaining […]

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My newspaper, The National, here in Abu Dhabi, has one of those “most-read” lists on its website. One for each department. News. Business. Sports. These lists are handy, whatever the news outlet. It allows you to discover quickly which stories are getting clicked on most often, and lets you catch up to stuff you might […]

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Now we know how the other half lives. Well, actually, it’s far less than half. The other 10 percent, maybe? Housing here is expensive. The real estate crash that pummeled the city of Dubai, an hour north of us, never really happened in Abu Dhabi, and the capital of the UAE remains a place where […]

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I don’t know this. But I believe it. Rumor floating around … that Manchester City, the new big spender of the English Premier League, is trying to add Landon Donovan to its roster. Considering that he scored three goals in the World Cup and had that nice 10 weeks with Everton last winter … Sure. […]

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