I’m a bit slow on the uptake. Or maybe I haven’t been down to the water enough. After 4.5 years, I have decided what Abu Dhabi … well, actually, the whole of the UAE … should focus on as its business model, After The Oil. The beach. It won’t bring in megabucks, like oil has […]

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When a visitor arrives in the UAE, you pretty much have to take that person to a Dubai mall. Or two. Dubai is about shopping and malls even more than it is about top-end hotels and tall buildings. Dubai’s motto: “I shop, therefore I am.” The plan was to go to one mall, but Dubai […]

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By some fluke of typically random Al Jazeera programming, I stumbled across a re-run of last night’s Galaxy at Tijuana game in the Concacaf Champions League … And I was shocked … stunned … at the lack of energy in the match. Certainly, in the first half of a 90 minutes won 4-2 by the […]

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This is embarrassing, right? It’s one thing for the LA Galaxy to fall out of the Concacaf Champions League in the quarterfinals at the hands of, say, Monterrey. It’s another to go out against Club Tijuana, which is what the Galaxy accomplished tonight, losing 4-2 in TJ to go out 4-3 on aggregate. A couple […]

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So, nearly 4.5 years in Abu Dhabi, and not once have we been visited by someone from home. Until today! There came my daughter walking towards us in the Abu Dhabi airport, pulling two purple suitcases. We all have the week off, and we are going to take her to see some of the sights, […]

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Back in August, we first had this discussion, in The National newsroom. “Manchester United, ordinary team.” I said, “Every great sports franchise has down periods. Interludes. And it could happen to Manchester United. Like, this season.” My colleague, a United fan, said: “Not possible. Too much revenue. They can buy any player they want.” And […]

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Here is one we don’t see every weekend. Soccer’s backheel overhead goal. And this one is particularly remarkable even by the rarefied standards of that exotic genre of goals.

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And this does not involve soccer. I never thought I would encounter, in the UAE, anything even vaguely similar to the “prep football Friday nights” all sports journalists in the States know. For one, “football” here involves a round ball and, two, American football is rarely played here. As of about three years ago, it […]

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This is so Saudi. The interior ministry of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which has a long border with the UAE, has issued a ban on 50 names for newborns in the country. As the link suggests, the bans seem to fall into three broad categories. But Alice? Linda? Elaine? Lauren? All banned in Saudi […]

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Another strange story. The world’s most popular and financially successful cricket competition, the Indian Premier League, will play the first two weeks of its season in the UAE. (A story The National’s Osman Samiuddin was all over today.) How weird is that? Imagine the NFL playings its first month of games in Canada. That’s how […]

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