This is Leah’s observation, but I believe she nailed it. The happiest place in Abu Dhabi? The bowling alley!

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For the first two decades of my journalism career, January 1 was the zenith of college football. The Biggest Day. The Longest Day. And we planned coverage of New Year’s Day football in great detail, and needed enormous sections to display everything that happened. Four or five or six bowl games, including all of the […]

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I find the notion of “2013” awkward. It’s the 13. Not a felicitous number. Though it does sound more like a football score than anything we have had in a while. Which is good. Moreso than 20-10 or 20-09, certainly, or even 20-07. Just looking at it, it seems as if it is a prime […]

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It’s been a long time since I felt remotely connected to the Los Angeles Rams. Certainly not since 1994, their last season in Southern California before the deliciously evil Georgia Frontiere hustled them off to St. Louis for buckets of cash. The St. Louis Rams never did a thing for me. Some other team. From […]

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The final match of the Mubadala World Tennis Championship was played today, here in Abu Dhabi, and Novak Djokovic defeated Nicolas Almagro, as everyone expected. The score, however, was much closer than expected, considering the world No. 1 player was taking on No. 11. But Almagro won the first set in a tiebreaker and seemed […]

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First, Yanks may be interested to know that “vitamin” is pronounced “VITTA-min” by the Brits. True story. Thinking about it, though, I have to concede (and this rarely happens) that their pronunciation makes more sense than ours. Why should that be a long “i” sound? Another British pronunciation: “conTROVErsy” for controversy. Honest to goodness. But […]

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In yesterday’s post, I noted how difficult it is, in the Western world, to have good newspapers in the final week of the year. Parliaments are not in session, stock exchanges take days off, sources are out of town, fewer games are scheduled. At newspapers, one of the bits of enterprise often used to fill […]

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One of the newer arrivals here at The National came to this realization while speaking with someone back in the States. “Today is Christmas, or as it is known in Abu Dhabi … Tuesday.” This was said at the office, where a plurality of staffers were working, as they would on any Tuesday during the […]

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This is a sort of cliche, in the States, especially in New York and especially among non-Christians. How to spend the Christmas Eve/Christmas period? At the movies … and with a meal at a Chinese restaurant. In this case, at the Shang Palace, here in Abu Dhabi

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So, in the new place. And no longer embarrassed by where we live. (Both of us, that is.) Let’s throw a SoCal Christmas-themed party! And what that requires, first and foremost?

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