Hunting seasons in most parts of the world are of limited duration.  A month maybe. A few weeks. The rest of the year the creatures on the other side of the guns can live in peace. Landon Donovan, however, tends to be targeted by many U.S. soccer fans every day of the year. It’s always […]

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Don’t you love google translate? It will tackle that mass of copy in some exotic language and render it into English. Well, sorta. Late last night, one of our reporters spotted an item on the English-language homepage of the Dubai soccer club Al Wasl, in which it was reported that the team had fired their […]

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When I heard the news, it was one of those “oh, my” moments. A captain running his boat on to a shoal and having to abandon it. Oh, my. In this case, it was the Team Abu Dhabi boat in the Sailing Arabia competition. In the darkness of Wednesday night/Thursday morning the boat apparently hit […]

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Well, this would have been on the book shelf, if I were still buying books in print, which I rarely do, over here in the UAE. It’s not like I’m going to carry them out with me, some day. So, on the the Kindle, this is where the focus has been:

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Let’s count down from 10, Letterman style. 10. The roses? You wouldn’t believe how cheap they were.

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This is not a country that stints on awards and rewards. And now, merely for attending an Al Jazira soccer match, and showing some basic ability at kicking a ball, someone will win a Ferrari Italia 458 … and someone else will win a million dirhams — or $272,000. In cash. Jazira is one of […]

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No Emirati soccer player ever has played in Europe. Not one guy, unless you count Hamdan Al Kamali’s half-season with Lyon’s reserve squad, and no one does. This lack of an Emirati presence in Europe is a topic that comes up often. Fans here are keenly aware that Ali Al Habsi, from neighboring Oman, is […]

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We get visitors, here in the UAE, this time of year. Many of them are Europeans who show up with soggy clothes and dripping noses, beaten down by months of short days and foul winter weather, seeking some sun and dry land before they lose their minds. That is how, this week, the UAE becomes […]

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This is a topic that comes up fairly often, in this part of the planet, sometimes referred to as the Mena (Middle East/North Africa) region: Who is the Arab world’s greatest footballer? At the moment, a case often is made, by pundits, for an Egyptian striker named Mohamed Aboutrika, who today made his debut in […]

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I knew I was overlooking something in the previous post — the one about concepts/events that do not occur in Abu Dhabi. And that one was … birds.

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