Christmas Eve candlelight services are my favorite church event. I am fairly sure I have not missed one since I was 13 years old, and the acolyte for the 11 p.m. service on December 24 at First Lutheran Church in Long Beach. Again, we were at Saint Andrew’s Anglican Church, here in Abu Dhabi. Again, […]

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For those of us who did not live in temperate climes, and that is most of us, the winter solstice is a big moment. Especially in the northern hemisphere, where the days are about to get longer. The winter solstice generally is December 21, and it was, here in Abu Dhabi. It was the shortest […]

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Struck me, while walking to the nearby “public garden” today, that I had never been in a park, in Abu Dhabi. Not in four years. How could that be? –Half the year, it’s too hot in Abu Dhabi to be outdoors. You would go to a park, from May through October, only if you were […]

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Into Year 5 here and I had never been inside the Abu Dhabi Country Club, even though I lived barely a mile from it for three years. That issue was addressed tonight during a sort of staff holiday party. The second leg of the festivities, where those of us who had been putting out the […]

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Yes, they are still playing. Still alive, for that matter. The Rolling Stones. Most of them. The two that matter, anyway. Mick Jagger turned 70 in July and the hard-partying Keith Richards somehow is about to be 70, too, later this month. Their latest (last?) tour begins early next year, named the “14 on Fire […]

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Air Berlin is a pretty good name for an airline. Berlin is a hip place. The capital of modern and prosperous Germany. And German goods and services have a good reputation. “Air Berlin” … sounds like it may be cutting edge, and certainly well-run. Well, no. It is not. Air Berlin is just this side […]

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I am amused yet oddly proprietary about the World Cup and this Group of Death meme. Has to be one. At every World Cup. A Group of Death. It’s the law. And it’s silly. Cliche, vaguely morbid, overstates the importance of soccer, but it’s what we do. (And according to the link, above, the first […]

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A fair question, especially if you live in North America. Why Phuket? Hawaii or the Caribbean are very similar, and much closer. I can’t imagine I would have come here, from L.A., for instance, because the distance is so great. Hawaii is five hours; Phuket is more like 18 from LAX, with a plane change, […]

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Far as I can tell, that expression is rather like the Hawaiian “aloha” — and can be used, in Thai, as a generic greeting meaning either hello or goodbye. Yes. We are in Thailand. And it is fair to ask why someone who lives in Abu Dhabi would depart the UAE at this point on […]

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So, Thanksgiving approaches, and for the average American expat the wheels begin turning at least two weeks ahead. “Where? Who? How?”

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