Some threshold has been crossed here. I have swapped Sunday football for Sunday futbol, and I hardly notice the difference. Were we still in California I likely would have seen all of part of games like Denver at San Diego and Dallas at New Orleans. Instead?

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November is deep into Fall, in most of the northern hemisphere. Though it is a bit hard to tell, here in the UAE, where really only two seasons exist. Summer, and Not Summer. The first runs from May through October, though often it begins more in April and extends into November. Not Summer is the […]

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It lasted 23 days, but it seemed longer. Twenty-four teams, originally, from New Zealand to Canada, from Argentina to Sweden. They played 52 games in 23 days, and many of us here in the UAE got quite used to having these kids around, and watching them on Al Jazeera, the Qatar cable station that carried […]

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Emiratis like their cars big … and bigger. Envision a highway grid jammed with the biggest SUVs made in Japan, the U.S. and Europe, and that’s pretty much what the roads here look like, in the Abu Dhabi-Dubai axis. A regular occurrence for anyone driving something less than a land yacht (loaded with all the […]

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The UAE does not observe daylight savings. No moving around of clocks here. The country is four hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time the year round. That is not the case in the United States and western Europe, however, and that is handy, for those of us living here. In some ways. Not so good […]

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A pack of cigarettes can be purchased in the UAE for two dirhams. Or about 50 U.S. cents. Marlboros can be had for Dh9 — about $2.50 — per pack. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that cigarette smoking is a significant issue in the UAE. The World Health Organization puts the level of regular […]

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My age cohort comes from a generation of Americans that prefers to believe it will never be old. Certainly, it was a Baby Boomer who first uttered the infamous, “50 is the new 40” … and other riffs on that theme. And maybe, collectively, Baby Boomers will last longer and enjoy good health longer than […]

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The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix went green shortly after 5 p.m., and 22 cars charged for the first turn. Sebastian Vettel got there first. And that was, effectively, the end of the race, though they went ahead and drove 55 laps anyway. So, where is Formula One racing, at this moment in history?

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A lot of hand wringing goes on, in this part of the world, about the future of Arabic. The language. The National often prints stories about how Emirati schoolkids are not quite fluent in Arabic. Neither written nor oral. An astonishing concept, really. (Imagine American schoolkids who can’t actually speak English.) Which usually leads to […]

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This was the sports story of the day, here in Abu Dhabi. Kimi Raikkonen, former Formula One world champion, defending champion of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix … showed up a day late at the track here in the UAE today and dropped a bombshell. He said he has not been paid by his team, […]

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