We exited the arrivals hall of Dubai International Airport at about 10:30 tonight. Ah, the UAE in late July! t was still 108 degrees Fahrenheit, and humid, and walking into the night was like sliding into a warm bathtub — right up to the sensation that brought to mind trying to breath warm water. But […]

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A significant percentage of the movies I have watched in the past two months has been while flying. In part, it’s because so few films I am interested in seeing have come out during that time. But a big part of it is the array of movies-on-demand available for viewing on the big and modern […]

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On Monday, my daughter decided to get married on Friday. Today, that is. Four days after she and her fiance decided to go ahead with the ceremony. How did it turn out? Remarkably well. Really well. It became a sort of social “barn-raising” — with help and effort coming from a variety of sources, mostly […]

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I love the Mediterranean climate. Who doesn’t? Almost never really hot. Almost never really cold. Not much rain. Like here in Long Beach, California. Like in Sydney and Perth, Athens and Istanbul, Algiers and Barcelona, Cape Town and Santiago. Like nearly all of Italy. Consider the description:

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A few years in Abu Dhabi might lead a person to believe homelessness is not a significant problem around the world. In the UAE, everyone has a job … or they are headed for the airport. It’s the law. Which can lead to some jarring sensations, when you leave the UAE and touch down almost […]

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Long Beach is one of those cities that Does Stuff for Free. Puts on clinics and runs things for kids in the summer and shows campy movies in parks. I imagine some of it has gone away, or acquired a price tag, since the Great Recession began in 2008. One of the most charming of […]

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It says something about Real Madrid, and perhaps the growth of soccer interest in the U.S., that the Spanish club can hold a practice at the home of the LA Galaxy — and it costs fans $35 to watch. That is the situation on August 1, two weeks hence, before the second round of the […]

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We are spending a week in a beach house in Long Beach. The California version of the LBC. And it does, in fact, have a long beach, and the sand begins at our door, and the ocean, tamed by a breakwater, begins about 100 yards from there … And the very popular biking/jogging/rolling path is […]

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Sports fans are trusting sorts. When a prominent athlete (or 10) runs afoul of a drugs test, and a prominent sports official suggests that the malefactors have been caught, and the scourge of performance-enhancing drugs ended … we tend to want to believe it. Recent evidence, however, suggests the PED Era is absolutely not over. […]

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Burgers are not in short supply in the UAE. McDonald’s seems to have franchises in every second Abu Dhabi gas station, and many hotel restaurants offer them, too. A burger shop has recently opened in the lobby of the building in which we live. (Which reminds me; burgers are always beef burgers, in the Gulf, […]

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