The UAE is nuts about records. World records. Any of them. But especially those involving tall buildings. Dubai now claims six of the world’s seven tallest hotels, for example. It had five of the top six, but the imminent opening of Tower 1 of the JW Marriott Marquis, which tops out at 355 meters (1,165 […]

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If you think American sports franchises are quick on the trigger, when it comes to firing coaches … you have not been paying attention to sports clubs overseas. The owner of the Chelsea soccer club fires a world-famous coach about once every six months. Once you get past Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and David Moyes, […]

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It must be hard to be the brother of a star. A sports star, especially. Many of us seem to embrace the notion that if one brother is a huge talent, the other must be, too. Same parents, right? Same upbringing? Same results. Easy. Almost never works out. The “other” is generally shorter or stouter […]

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Of all the luxury brands that target the Middle East, and the UAE, in particular, Ferrari seems to have the greatest hold on the imagination of consumers here. If you spend 10 minutes on the roads, you can see a Ferrari nearly every day in Abu Dhabi, and in some parts of the capital it […]

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That was the headline to the lead story in The National a few days ago. Big news. Well, the whole of it was: “Every home in Abu Dhabi to have its own street address”. What? And all those good times of describing where you live in relation to a major landmark … could be gone […]

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When I heard the news, it was one of those “oh, my” moments. A captain running his boat on to a shoal and having to abandon it. Oh, my. In this case, it was the Team Abu Dhabi boat in the Sailing Arabia competition. In the darkness of Wednesday night/Thursday morning the boat apparently hit […]

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This is not a country that stints on awards and rewards. And now, merely for attending an Al Jazira soccer match, and showing some basic ability at kicking a ball, someone will win a Ferrari Italia 458 … and someone else will win a million dirhams — or $272,000. In cash. Jazira is one of […]

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We get visitors, here in the UAE, this time of year. Many of them are Europeans who show up with soggy clothes and dripping noses, beaten down by months of short days and foul winter weather, seeking some sun and dry land before they lose their minds. That is how, this week, the UAE becomes […]

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This is a topic that comes up fairly often, in this part of the planet, sometimes referred to as the Mena (Middle East/North Africa) region: Who is the Arab world’s greatest footballer? At the moment, a case often is made, by pundits, for an Egyptian striker named Mohamed Aboutrika, who today made his debut in […]

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I knew I was overlooking something in the previous post — the one about concepts/events that do not occur in Abu Dhabi. And that one was … birds.

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