This is always a dreary day, here in the UAE. The first day in 2014 when we realized, with horror … “oh, my … it’s time to turn on the air-conditioner.” March 8. Ack.

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I saw Demetrius Walker play three or four times when he was a freshman and/or a sophomore at Fontana High School, about 50 miles east of Los Angeles. I remember thinking “he’s OK, but not great”. He was good around the basket, he could leap, but he was only 6-foot-3 (later reduced to 6-2, in […]

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This struck me today. At the morning news meeting, as I looked around the crowded round table: The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi has to be one of the most diverse print media outlets in the world. Let’s enumerate.

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Some of us are getting old waiting for Roger Federer to live up to our declarations of his imminent tennis demise. The man will be 33 in August, which (historically) has been too old to accomplish much, in tennis. And since the days of his absolute domination of the men’s game in the middle of […]

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If you saw the movie Sex, Lies, and Videotape, you may remember the character played by Andie McDowell and her concern about “the garbage” … and where it all is going to go. How will it be handled? How will it be disposed? (The actual quote, per IMDB.com, is: “Garbage. All I’ve been thinking about […]

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Two weeks ago, the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, women’s version, looked like what the Brits would call “a damp squib”. A dud, that is. (A squib being a firecracker. Yes, they have a different word for everything.) The tournament was hanging its hat on Agnieszka Radwanska, the world No. 3, but not exactly a […]

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We spend a lot of time in the UAE thinking about Floyd Mayweather Jr. No. Really. We do. The strange part of that is … he is an American boxer, on the other side of the world from us in the Gulf … and he is a boxer in an age of UFC … In […]

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  The Rolling Stones are playing Abu Dhabi this weekend. Yes. Those Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger and the rest of the geriatric crew. Who landed on the island today and posed for this photo, posted on their Facebook page. And you would be amazed at the fuss.

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The guys who come to the UAE to wash and sweep and polish and clean have a sideline business, after hours, that no doubt makes them a fair amount of money. Washing cars.

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This brought back some memories, absolutely. A place not known for bicycles but interested in notions of healthy living and reducing carbon emissions, ready to be convinced that cycling is a good thing, somehow or other … bringing in a professional race over a series of days, and everyone sorta gawking at it, and some […]

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