This is a sailing event that lasts nine months, so it’s not like you need to follow it day by day on the first leg of the round-the-world race to have a sense of the eventual winner. But I am doing just that. Following it day by day.

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Production journalists are creatures of habit. They know what will fit where. How many words with how many pictures. How to assemble four blocks, or five or six, to make a page. Fitting together shapes to complete a puzzle. And coding it up becomes a synaptic exercise. Just put your fingers on the keys, and […]

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If we still lived in Southern California, I might feel differently. But not only do I not mind the San Francisco Giants winning a World Series … I prefer it to the Kansas City Royals winning it. How I arrived at this place:

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The beach? October 18? In Abu Dhabi. Probably not a good idea. But we gave it try, anyway, and aside from the part where we ate dinner on the terrace, mildly sweating the entire time … it went quite well.

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It was just one exhibition game, but Kobe Bryant scored 27 points Thursday night. After the ruptured Achilles and then the broken leg … I wasn’t sure he would score 27 again in a backyard game, let alone against an NBA team.

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It was on October 16, 2009, that we arrived in Abu Dhabi. Five years ago today. It seems longer. Not in a bad way. More in a “hard to remember life before” kind of way. A rule of thumb, among expats, is that if you do five years out of your home country, you never […]

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And I know a hare-brained sports scheme when I see one, having inflicted several dozen on myself over the past 30-some years. This one is crazy enough not even I would have done it in my youth. Probably not. Well, maybe not. And it involves 48 kids from the ages of 10 to 16. Check […]

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The national soccer team, easily the most popular and most professional of sports teams in the UAE, literally the only sport most Emiratis care about … played tonight. How did it turn out? Well, the UAE lost 4-0, at home, to Uzbekistan. Which is not what this current group of guys who, collectively, probably make […]

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Remember when Paris Hilton seemed to be on the cover of every U.S. magazine, while also getting a mention in every episode of Entertainment Tonight? But we haven’t heard much about her of late, have we? (Or maybe it’s just those of us on the other side of the world.) Well, whatever happened to …? […]

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A story in The National today told of a student in Dubai who, with some accomplices, stole two baboons and four marmosets from a farm in Dubai. What should be done with a guy like that? Laugh at him. Or maybe call a paramedic.

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