Putting this into historical context, I believe countries have a point where they feel a need to prove themselves to outsiders. This is when they enter their “biggest, longest, tallest” phase. Eighty years ago, the Empire State Building was built in an America coming to grips with its position in the world. As a major […]

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The UAE Falcons have been mentioned previously on this blog. Back in February I drove up to Dubai to watch them practice. A batch of guys, led by a German coach, are trying to play American football, as it is known here. (Just plain “football” in these parts being soccer.) They actually got a game […]

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One of the great urban myths from the days shortly after we arrived … was the “abandoned luxury car at the Dubai airport.” The narrative was this: High-flying foreign investor, realizes things have gone south as the real estate market implodes, well aware that white-collar crime is often heavily punished here … goes to the […]

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The most successful soccer club in the country is Al Ain FC, which happens to be located in the UAE’s version of suburbia, Al Ain City. Al Ain FC secured its 10th league title tonight in a 2-0 spanking of Al Jazira, the defending champions, who couldn’t be bothered to play hard. And UAE suburbia […]

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Just sitting here thinking of where I would go/visit … if time and money were no obstacle. Places I haven’t yet been. A fantasy list, I suppose it what it is, because it won’t happen, except in my imagination. You know the drill: top 10, with my most-like-to-see place at No. 1 10. Lisbon. Remember […]

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In the Old World, the idea of “shootout as lottery” seems deeply ingrained. When Real Madrid and Bayern Munich went to a shootout tonight in the semifinals of the Champions League, one of the British commentators on the English-language broadcast of the game, on the Al Jazeera network, trotted out those exact words. “Now it […]

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We live in a soccer culture, here in the UAE. But even after 2.5 years of being immersed in it, I do not have fully formed opinions on many of the world’s biggest teams and leagues. I have discovered, however, that two teams are beginning to bug me. And No. 1 on the list?

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I love the President’s Cup final. It’s a major domestic soccer game, the local version of England’s FA Cup final. But what I really find fascinating is how big this is with the Emirati populace. This attracts regular guys in big numbers, but it also attracts many of the most prominent sheikhs in the country […]

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This is a real story from a real newspaper. If you have been poking around in the Pan-Arabia Enquirer satire site discussed yesterday, you can be forgiven for assuming that the story I’m about to link you to is not real, either. We will start by teasing you with the online headline in The National: […]

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The Pan-Arabia Enquirer could be a regional English-language newspaper. It actually is an online satire site of The Onion ilk. And it is quite amusing, in my considered opinion, and points up the silliness of various concepts and institutions — which is the point of satire. If some of it is a little too “inside” […]

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