I watch/cover a lot of sports, but I don’t often have a strong opinion on how an event will turn out, before the fact. This is an exception. The Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets meet in Game 7 of their first-round NBA playoffs series tomorrow night, and I want to get on record with […]

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A condition of living in a place with a long and oppressive summer … is how quiet things go. We don’t always notice things that are not there. And what happens in the UAE is something like a literal silent spring (as opposed to the book of the same name). Though you don’t notice right […]

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I have driven an automobile more than 1,000 kilometers — more than 620 miles — in four days. Making it the most intense siege of driving inflicted on me since leaving California more than 2.5 years ago. And the verdict? I did not like it. At all. I have decided that, like many other activities, […]

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To live and work in the UAE is to believe water is plentiful. A fair amount of green, especially in Al Ain and Abu Dhabi. Fountains. Plenty of the stuff streaming out of our taps. Which is madness, because the UAE is on the edge of one of the driest deserts in the world, and […]

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Sharjah FC is one of the UAE’s most storied soccer franchises. The club won the first domestic title in the history of the UAE, in the pre-history of 1974, and added four more after. They also have won eight President’s Cups, the second-biggest prize in domestic football, and those eight are the biggest total among […]

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The Rams moved to St. Louis and became dead to me. Never appreciated the Raiders gangsta thing, and then they went back to Oakland. The Dodgers fell under the spell of the necromancer Frank McCourt. Never was an Angels guy. (I still consider them the Johnny-come-latelies who play 10-man ball.) Don’t care about hockey. Major […]

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I don’t make a habit of watching the final of the FA Cup, the second-biggest domestic prize in English soccer. Most of my life I just wasn’t interested enough, and I probably could not have seen it, anyway. Tonight I watched one for the second time in my life, and the first time since 1991. […]

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So, you, a Westerner, have just landed at the airport to take your job in Abu Dhabi. What would be the first 10 things that would make an impression on you? Yes, this is today’s list. 10. For a dry country, they sure do have a great variety of alcohol on sale at the duty […]

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To recap, Thursday night in the UAE is Friday night in the West. The end of the work week. And when we got word from a newsroom colleague that the detachment of Marines at the U.S. Embassy here in Abu Dhabi were hosting a Cinco de Mayo party … well, as Americans and Californians, don’t […]

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Roy Hodgson was named coach of the England national soccer team yesterday, and it was not a popular choice. Most English fans seemed to prefer Harry Redknapp, a sort of lovable rogue of a coach, in English eyes, currently at Tottenham, who has occasional bouts with the tax man and other shady doings. But “Arry” […]

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