Only by leaving the country can Yanks grasp what a thoroughly American holiday Thanksgiving is. If the country an American expat has landed in has a Canadian community (like this one does), the locals will become particularly confused about this Thanksgiving business — because Canada has a Thanksgiving day of its own. But theirs is […]

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The UAE is having a hard time in soccer/football. Which wouldn’t be as big an issue if the game weren’t the national sport. The senior team is suffering through its most difficult and disappointing World Cup qualifying, with five defeats in five matches, and was eliminated before the final round of Brazil 2014 qualifying. The […]

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Just when it looked safe — but premature — to get behind the Los Angeles Dodgers again … the club announced a promotional schedule for 2012 … with 10 bobblehead nights, led by a Sandy Koufax doll. And yes, I would do something as lame as pay $50 for a bad seat to an unappealing […]

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Living in the United States, it’s easy to think: “United Arab Emirates? Makes no difference to me. Not even sure where it is.” Two news stories in The National’s business section ought to make you reconsider that. One involves Boeing. The other involves Ford.

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The biggest event on the sports calendar in the UAE is the annual Formula One race, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, and that went down today. F1 probably brings more tourists to the country than any other event. People from the region, certainly, but Europe, as well. The newsroom at The National very much had […]

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Since coming to the UAE, I drink a lot of tea. Which is curious, because I have never liked it. Not hot and not cold. Turns out, I learn from my reading of a story in The National about tea sales and production in India, that the world’s largest consumers of tea, on a per […]

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You think your national soccer team has problems? (Well, if your team is China, it does.) The UAE fell out of contention for the 2014 World Cup today, November 11, 2011 — three-and-a-half years ahead of the 2014 World Cup. Done. Out of it. Can’t survive the second-to-last round of Asia Confederation qualifying. That’s right. […]

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We return to our discussion of interesting days on the calendar, and this time we are joined by, apparently, a lot of people in the UAE. The National has done an 11-11-11 story for Friday (November 11, 2011) noting how many weddings and big events have been scheduled for the day, including Caesarian sections so […]

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Our first two years here … we must have worked on the first day of Eid Al Adha, one of the biggest holidays of the year. Because we bumped into several noteworthy (for a non-Muslim expat) concepts in the course of things today.

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Sometimes I’m slow on the uptake. No question. It was about this time a year ago that a couple of goats and perhaps a sheep appeared in the long narrow park that runs between our home and the busy highway. Kids were standing around the creatures, petting and patting them, and the goats and sheep […]

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