So, walking home. I’ve been doing that for three months now. The Tiny Apartment is a brisk, 20-minute march from the office. And I save 10 dirhams ($2.70) by not taking a cab! Though it is beginning to get a little sticky and warm out there, even at midnight. May have to give it up, […]

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I am looking at my television. Looking at the machine, that is. Not at anything that might be on it. We have a TV in the corner of our living room. But we never watch it. Because we aren’t paying to have it hooked up. How is that working out?

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Dirhams. Generally pronounced DEER-ems. That’s what we spend over here in the United Arab Emirates. It’s the currency. Dh100 (shorthand for 100 dirhams) is equal to $27.20. The contribution to enter the Abu Dhabi Ballers III NCAA Tournament competition was … Dh50. Or about $13.60. And did it keep me from rooting for Northern Iowa […]

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Where was this when I was growing up with two brothers and a father who talked about destroying all-you-can-eat restaurants? Guys who would snatch choice morsels off your plate if you looked over at the TV for three seconds or blow through a half-gallon of chocolate chip you brought home last night. A refrigerator with […]

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For those of you waiting with bated breath for how I made my NCAA Tournament picks … After mulling this for, oh, five minutes two days ago, I went with the most weasel-y way of all:

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When you move into a rental, don’t you wonder who lived there before you? Maybe even the several someones who lived there before you? (Or in the case of our place in Long Beach, in a building built in 1925, the hundreds of somebodies and perhaps quite a few nobodies who lived there?) Here at […]

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Tore up my flip-flop … A couple of lines from “Margaritaville” by Jimmy Buffet … and something I think of every day when I walk outside here in Abu Dhabi. Some of you may be too young even to know what a pop top is. If you came to the United Arab Emirates, however, you […]

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Well, yes. Looks like I’ll be filling one out. Even though I have paid less attention to this college basketball season than any since … well, maybe when I was10 years old — just before UCLA started winning NCAA championships. But newsrooms like to organize tournament pools, and one of the sporting guys on the […]

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Sad but true. March not even half complete, and I’m done exercising outdoors, during the day, in this town until, oh … maybe late November. But not to worry. Sufficiently alarmed at the idea of 90-degree days for the next week (and much worse in the next five months) … I have solved my exercise […]

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It was fun. It was exciting. It was madcap. And it appears to have been a bit draining, as well. For all that, I’m sure it was 10 weeks Landon Donovan won’t soon forget, his 2010 loan to Everton of the English Premier League. But it is official: He is on the big bird back […]

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