I find the notion of “2013” awkward. It’s the 13. Not a felicitous number. Though it does sound more like a football score than anything we have had in a while. Which is good. Moreso than 20-10 or 20-09, certainly, or even 20-07. Just looking at it, it seems as if it is a prime […]

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It’s been a long time since I felt remotely connected to the Los Angeles Rams. Certainly not since 1994, their last season in Southern California before the deliciously evil Georgia Frontiere hustled them off to St. Louis for buckets of cash. The St. Louis Rams never did a thing for me. Some other team. From […]

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The final match of the Mubadala World Tennis Championship was played today, here in Abu Dhabi, and Novak Djokovic defeated Nicolas Almagro, as everyone expected. The score, however, was much closer than expected, considering the world No. 1 player was taking on No. 11. But Almagro won the first set in a tiebreaker and seemed […]

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First, Yanks may be interested to know that “vitamin” is pronounced “VITTA-min” by the Brits. True story. Thinking about it, though, I have to concede (and this rarely happens) that their pronunciation makes more sense than ours. Why should that be a long “i” sound? Another British pronunciation: “conTROVErsy” for controversy. Honest to goodness. But […]

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In yesterday’s post, I noted how difficult it is, in the Western world, to have good newspapers in the final week of the year. Parliaments are not in session, stock exchanges take days off, sources are out of town, fewer games are scheduled. At newspapers, one of the bits of enterprise often used to fill […]

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Why the British (and many of their former colonies) celebrate Boxing Day … well, it’s just odd. Apparently, they don’t even know themselves. They have guesses, but … Maybe it was one of the earliest successful pushes to extend a holiday — a notion that has led to so many modern three-day weekends in the […]

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One of the newer arrivals here at The National came to this realization while speaking with someone back in the States. “Today is Christmas, or as it is known in Abu Dhabi … Tuesday.” This was said at the office, where a plurality of staffers were working, as they would on any Tuesday during the […]

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This is a sort of cliche, in the States, especially in New York and especially among non-Christians. How to spend the Christmas Eve/Christmas period? At the movies … and with a meal at a Chinese restaurant. In this case, at the Shang Palace, here in Abu Dhabi

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Surveys come out all the time, and if you follow them long enough they will contradict each other. Or so it seems. But at the moment, it would appear Emiratis are happier about their lives than most people in the world, and especially happier than people in this region. The National took a look at […]

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So, in the new place. And no longer embarrassed by where we live. (Both of us, that is.) Let’s throw a SoCal Christmas-themed party! And what that requires, first and foremost?

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