David Beckham signed with Paris Saint-Germain today, and in my humble opinion he missed an opportunity to end his career with a dramatic and daring flourish. Signing with PSG is consistent with Beckham’s peregrinations since leaving Manchester United in 2003 — big clubs in world cities. He could have done it in a far more […]

[Read more →]

We are into Month 2 of our car rental. For our first three years here, we made do with taxis and the occasional one- or two-day rental, nearly always job-related: A car to get me to a match in Al Ain or Dubai, for example. However, after we moved to the new place, further from […]

[Read more →]

When a reader finally gets around to his first Alan Furst novel, he or she likely soon will wonder: “Why hadn’t I heard about this guy before?” Furst may be the best writer of “spy” novels who is not a major publishing star nor had one of his books adapted for the screen. He is […]

[Read more →]

Have I written about this? Or just hinted at it? You may have heard that Brits have a different word for about half of all concepts Americans would express in “English” (boot instead of trunk, bonnet instead of hood, tip instead of Dumpster, rubbish instead of trash, lift instead of elevator, ad nauseum) — which […]

[Read more →]

Doesn’t this sound like the most fun soccer event … ever? The 2013 Fifa Beach Soccer World Cup. In Tahiti. And the UAE will be one of the 16 teams playing in it, having qualified on Saturday night with an excruciatingly tight 3-2 victory over Australia. I already am angling at ways to go and […]

[Read more →]

  A new acquaintance of ours arrived in Abu Dhabi just ahead of her 30th birthday, tomorrow. She didn’t seem to mind the idea of turning 30. In fact, she said she was tired of being in her 20s. Which set me off on reverie about how “30” was once a far more significant number, […]

[Read more →]

Two months here, and not once did we go up on the roof. We had seen it for a few seconds when first looking at the place, back in November. But we had not checked it out again. We knew a pool was up there — we saw it — but we just didn’t get […]

[Read more →]

I am considered an analog guy. Most of the young people in the newsroom are amused by the wall calendar I have posted to keep track of vacations in the sports department. “How retro.” But the newspaper has no easy electronic system to track vacations, and certainly not one that allows anyone to see whoever […]

[Read more →]

By the time the UAE national football team made the final of the Gulf Cup, last week, I concede I was wondering what sums of money might be directed their way if they won it. I recalled that the president of the country gave each player on the Under 23 team Dh500,000 (about $136,000) when […]

[Read more →]

Never thought I would find an instance when something a Taliban spokesman said about hostilities in Afghanistan made sense … but with the considerable help of Britain’s Prince Harry, they have done it. Prince Harry, third in line to the British throne, in remarks published in Britain on Monday, said he had killed Taliban militants […]

[Read more →]