I hate sandstorms. It might be the biggest drawback to living in the UAE. Even worse than the six months of brutal heat. I am in my third winter in Abu Dhabi, and I was duly impressed by my first sandstorm experience, back in 2010. Winter is sandstorm season.  Sounds counter-intuitive, but we get […]

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I was still a little hazy about this, before I got to the UAE. Because in the United States, the idea of one sports league competing for at least three championships in one season … is ridiculous. One league, one champion, right? Simple. But that is not how they roll in nearly every serious soccer […]

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I was in Tommy Lasorda’s office at Dodger Stadium for the infamous “Kingman’s performance?!?” rant of May 14, 1978. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was not the Dodgers beat writer, and I can imagine I was covering the game only because we were giving a day off to our regular guy. Anyway, Dave […]

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No joke. Someone who lived here before we arrived told me about this, and I took a look … and it’s true: To go to the google map of Abu Dhabi, and to hover over the main island of the city, and to blow up the picture … is to be taken aback by how […]

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You may already know what television is popular in the States, from checking the ratings. We do not know what’s big there. We just like what we like, and may try something new if it gets a good review in the New York Times, for example. But we do watch a chunk of it. A […]

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I have several recurring dreams. In one of them, I am on the ground, and for some reason I look up in the sky to see a plane in trouble. In my dream, I seem to be the first person on the ground to have noticed this, and I watch the plane come down from […]

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Actually, I will take credit for this. The entire staff came in one day last month for a meeting with the executive editor, and I remembered some instances in the past where the sudden arrival in the same spot of a group with a common goal but far-flung addresses … seemed like a good opportunity […]

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Super Bowl Sunday is, in the Middle East … Sunday. The first day of the work week. Nothing super about it, unless you’re an American or a Canadian or one of those rare non-North Americans who are interested in the NFL. In the UAE, the big story in world football today (after the Chelsea-Manchester United […]

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We don’t get much rain in Abu Dhabi. Or the UAE. But we’re supposed to get a little. We’re about half way through the “rainy” season, with hardly a drop.

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Time for a little reminder of the best play from the best Super Bowl. Sure, you could search it, but since I have the link right here, you can look at it with one click. I wrote about Super Bowl 42 (Giants 17, Patriots 14) for The National, declaring it the best of the big […]

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