Why not? Those were the words from Kefah Al Kaabi, a TV and radio soccer pundit here in the UAE. The question was:

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When I left the new apartment today, the whole of the furniture was a comfy chair, a couch, an old coffee table and a couple of wicker chairs we put out on the balcony. When I got back?

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Having now moved into a tower of about 20 floors … this story has a bit more resonance with me on a personal level. A tower in one of the finest neighborhoods of the Dubai went up in flames, and it appears to be because of shoddy construction. Here is video of the 34-story building […]

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Moving and me. Until recently, it didn’t happen often. Until today it never happened without me doing much/most of the heavy lifting. There comes a time in life, however, when hauling couches around is probably not a good idea. Or renting a dolly to move those boxes of books. So, we decided to spend the […]

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I really don’t know how this works, but the UAE seems to have about a thousand major hotels. Big hotels. Name-brand hotels. They … are … everywhere. So this latest story about the UAE and hotel building? No surprise.

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We are moving. From a (mostly) furnished apartment to one without a stick of furniture. We will arrive there, then, wanting all the basics in place. Bed, mattress, wardrobe, wall unit, dining table, chairs and, given that both of us work five days a week, we would prefer to solve that in one day of […]

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We get these stories now and then. The ones about some astonishing number of men living in a small space, and an inspector catching them at it and fining the landlord. In this case, it was 20 men sharing a one-bedroom apartment in the Dubai International City neighorhood. How did they manage it?

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This guy has been on the job for about three weeks now. Work is going on — water lines, I believe — below the bus turnout on the offramp from Airport Road, about 100 yards from the front door of the apartment, in Abu Dhabi. And to help drivers grasp that they would not be […]

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For the first time in my life, I will not be voting in a U.S. presidential election. I am not proud of that, but here are the mitigating factors:

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I have written before about the caretaker/super/handyman here at our aging, low-rise apartment complex near Airport Road, here in Abu Dhabi. That would be Mr. Mohammed. He seems to have first made an appearance under that name, in this blog, nearly three years ago. If you followed the link, go past the Tiger and Frank […]

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