It’s a bit mind-boggling, the numbers around the Etihad Airlines nontstop flights from Abu Dhabi to Los Angeles, instituted on June 1 of this year. They fly their Boeing 777 equipment 16.5 hours without touching ground. On “one tank of gas”, that is. And cover 8,390 miles –making it the third-longest commercial nonstop route in […]

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Just about the only time in the UAE when I feel like an American is when I am in the U.S. Embassy, which is barely a mile from where we live, near the southern end of Abu Dhabi island. Granted, I don’t feel it right off.

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Today was the first full day of Fall, if I read my almanac correctly. Fall, or Autumn, begins on the day of the autumnal equinox, when every place on Earth gets 12 hours of sun and 12 hours of night. In much of the northern hemisphere, it means cooler weather, perhaps even cold weather, in […]

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We have a handful of outdoor plants arranged on the balcony. Just for the sake of a bit of greenery in a part of the world that has very little of it, naturally. The “dirt” of Abu Dhabi island is not actually dirt. It is sand, with little or no nutrients in it. And not […]

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A curious aspect of life in the tower we have lived for nearly two years … is how many residents are convinced that some of the little guys who work in the halls of the 20-or-so stories … sleep on the roof. I am not sure I believe it, but I certainly wonder. Would it […]

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These words came out of my mouth tonight: “Mahmoud Khamis is with Nasr! That’s where he went!” Which is revealing, in this sense: I know way too much about the Arabian Gulf League, which began play in the 2014-15 season tonight. Good times!

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At The National, in Abu Dhabi, we work in a newsroom with at least 30 English and more than a dozen Scots. At the moment, the English and the Scots live in the same country and carry the same passport. That could begin to change, come Thursday, when Scotland votes on whether to leave the […]

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Utterly random anecdote. UCLA was playing DePaul in the NCAA basketball West Regionals in, oh, 1979. The game was being played at BYU, and at halftime BYU sent out a batch of dancers, and the show ran long, and the Bruins came onto the court and started warming up, shooting around … while the hometown […]

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This seemed a little bold when it was announced today. The 2014/15 edition of the Volvo Ocean Race, the nine-month, round-the-world exercise by the most intrepid and hardiest of sailors, plans to have all seven entrants sail the entire distance. As opposed to the previous Volvo race, three years ago, when the prevalence of piracy […]

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Flying to and from Europe, with Abu Dhabi at the start and finish, makes for some interesting evasive actions. On the way over last month, to Rome, we went mostly due east from the AUH, skirted Israel, then made a sudden move to the northwest, straight for Rome. Airlines that are flag carriers for the […]

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