I’ve resisted it. This blog seemed enough, certainly when we consider how much time is involved. But everyone is doing the Twitter thing, tweeting their hearts out, and as this has mushroomed it has struck me, more than once, that I bump into a lot of little stuff, while working in a newsroom, that might […]

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One of the original members of the sports department here at The National had a farewell event at a local hotel the other night. Small, quiet and informal, some liquid refreshment out on the patio. I used my time there to try to find out a bit more about the history of the department, which […]

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A former colleague at The National, here in the UAE, posted a somewhat curious freelance item for the English-language Express Tribune of Pakistan. Entitled “10 things I hate about expatriates in the Gulf.” I guess the author is talking about me. And some (many? most?) of her former coworkers. How does a Gulf expat react […]

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I assume this happens to everyone. A tune gets into your brain and it doesn’t come out. Maybe for a week. A month even. (Random thought: Does this phenomena apply to tone-deaf people, too? Imagine how difficult it would be to hum the same tuneless song for weeks … but if you’re tone deaf you […]

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In another of our continued observations of “the world is getting smaller by the moment” … people here have been extremely interested in the enormous earthquake in Japan and the tsunami that followed. Even Al Jazeera Arabic’s news network broke away its 24/7 coverage of unrest in the region to do hours and hours on […]

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Interesting story in The National this week. About how people living here in the UAE might be prone to suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) just like those living in regions where the sun rarely shines. Here is a link to the story. If you didn’t follow the link, you must be wondering how we […]

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From the first game I saw here in the UAE, I was astonished by how often players here flop and dive. I have seen Mexican soccer. I have been to Azteca. And I thought diving and flopping could not be worse than that practiced in Mexico. Then I came here, and discovered that Mexican floppers […]

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Bernie Ecclestone seems almost like a fictional character. No one like him actually exists, right? A guy who essentially took over a whole race series, made millions (billions?) of dollars in the process, runs that race series like an autocrat and at age 80 shows no signs of slowing down or going away. But there […]

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The FIFA Club World Cup dropped by Abu Dhabi the past two Decembers. Kind of an odd tournament because it has a couple of famous clubs and then five not all that well known. And not all that many matches, either. So in some ways, the UAE having its bid accepted for the FIFA 2013 […]

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The Asian Champions League began on Tuesday. It’s just like the Champions League in Europe, except about 10 percent as lucrative. But who knows, someday it could be as big. Hard to imagine, now, but … Whatever the financial ramifications or the television ratings, the Asian Champions League is fun because it is exotic. It […]

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