You would think I would have written this post three years ago. And parts of it I could have, and probably did. Other concepts dawn on a person slowly. Especially the absence of something. Here is a short list with items, I have mentioned before, and at least one I have not.

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So, you live in Abu Dhabi and want to see the Super Bowl? Have to be prepared to go all night long. With a couple of Americans new to town living just one floor away, at the new digs, we invited them over and watched the game (or I did, anyway) — which ran from […]

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Yes, you’re officially old but vaguely hip (or were) if you recognize that headline as coming from a song from 25 years ago: “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” One of those “let’s get a bunch of celebrity singers together for a big, star-powered song to raise money for starving people somewhere” recordings. Can’t say I […]

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I generally have loathed the San Francisco Giants, but I have rarely felt the same way about the San Francisco 49ers. It probably has to do with the 49ers generally being bad when I was young and a fan of the Los Angeles Rams. The Niners did me no harm. If I think about it […]

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David Beckham signed with Paris Saint-Germain today, and in my humble opinion he missed an opportunity to end his career with a dramatic and daring flourish. Signing with PSG is consistent with Beckham’s peregrinations since leaving Manchester United in 2003 — big clubs in world cities. He could have done it in a far more […]

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We are into Month 2 of our car rental. For our first three years here, we made do with taxis and the occasional one- or two-day rental, nearly always job-related: A car to get me to a match in Al Ain or Dubai, for example. However, after we moved to the new place, further from […]

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Have I written about this? Or just hinted at it? You may have heard that Brits have a different word for about half of all concepts Americans would express in “English” (boot instead of trunk, bonnet instead of hood, tip instead of Dumpster, rubbish instead of trash, lift instead of elevator, ad nauseum) — which […]

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  A new acquaintance of ours arrived in Abu Dhabi just ahead of her 30th birthday, tomorrow. She didn’t seem to mind the idea of turning 30. In fact, she said she was tired of being in her 20s. Which set me off on reverie about how “30” was once a far more significant number, […]

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Two months here, and not once did we go up on the roof. We had seen it for a few seconds when first looking at the place, back in November. But we had not checked it out again. We knew a pool was up there — we saw it — but we just didn’t get […]

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I am considered an analog guy. Most of the young people in the newsroom are amused by the wall calendar I have posted to keep track of vacations in the sports department. “How retro.” But the newspaper has no easy electronic system to track vacations, and certainly not one that allows anyone to see whoever […]

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