I ride cabs here a couple of times a day. Going to work. Returning from work.  Whenever I go to or come back from anywhere I can’t walk … I’m in a cab. That gives me two opportunities per day to interact with people for whom English is not a mother tongue. I wouldn’t call […]

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The Heisman Trophy: I love that award. It has fascinated me since I was a child. I remember being very pleased when UCLA’s Gary Beban won it in 1967. And when USC’s Mike Garrett won it in 1965. Almost every time I was in Heritage Hall, at USC, I found myself standing on front of […]

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Mostly, I just wanted to see how many “categories” I could have at the top of this item. Now let’s see if I actually mention something about all of them. Some interesting topics playing out in U.S. sports right now and, really, I’m aware of them. Not everyone back home seems to remember we do, […]

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FIFA pulled off the World Cup draw tonight, and as television goes, it may be as lame, painfully awkward and relentlessly unfunny as any programming you can imagine. Charlize Theron babbling, a guy with a heavy French accent doing most of the talking, and a half-dozen celebrities and quasi-celebrities (David Beckham, a South African rugby […]

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Like many guys (and, I believe, most women), I don’t like changing barbers/stylists. Even if whoever you just went to wasn’t very good … if that person didn’t destroy your hair, you probably will go back. Right? Just because the next new one could be worse. But “going back” wasn’t really an option for me, […]

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Doesn’t quite roll off the tongue. Not like the “Fourth of July” or “Cinco de Mayo,” for example. But that’s what Dec. 2 is, here in the United Arab Emirates. Their Fourth of July. And we’ve just been out on the town, using our Wednesday off-night, seeing what the Second of December is about.

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The final lines of the poem inside the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor read … “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” The poem is […]

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Alcohol consumption is something you have to work at, here in Abu Dhabi. Muslim country, alcohol technically illegal … Drunkenness is a fairly serious crime, and if you have any alcohol in your system and you are involved in an auto accident … you’re going to spend some time in the Abu Dhabi Graybar Hotel. […]

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We get 21 television stations here in the hotel/apartment, 10 of them in English. Setting aside the news stations, the English-language stations are the usual collection of ancient reruns, third-tier movies, amateurish Canadian prime-time fare and the random reality show out of Australia. Stuff so bad we can go days without even turning on the […]

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Holidays here perplex me. If I stay long enough, I’m sure I will figure it out. Meantime … We are in the midst of what apparently is up to 10 consecutive off days for government workers in the United Arab Emirates. Abu Dhabi is one of the seven emirates. Not that this applies to journalists. […]

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