We have conceded on this site that accounts of long, draining travel are nearly always boring. Meaningless to all but those who survived them. And yet, we keep talking about them. Because they are so intense. Like our 31-hour door-to-door trip from Abu Dhabi to Los Angeles or, to be exact, to San Clemente, south […]

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This has been one of the most closely followed stories of the past several months, certainly among expatriates and as measured by The National’s website: The murder of an American woman in the toilet of a mall on Reem Island, here in Abu Dhabi, on December 1. Today, the Emirati woman who carried out the […]

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You know how, sometimes, you don’t make obvious connections? And then it hits you and you slap yourself on the forehead and say, “Well, of course!” I was sitting in a pew in the chapel at St. Andrew’s Church in Abu Dhabi, moments before a wedding, when the light bulb went on. “Hey, this is […]

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* Besides looking at the DOB stats on your driver’s license. You rise shortly after dawn, drag your suitcases (thank God wheels are now attached) down to the docks, take a heaving two-hour ferry ride, followed by a one-hour taxi ride through ugly traffic to the airport, followed by three hours waiting in the lounge, […]

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He is not forgotten, exactly. The older generation remembers Gary Player. Little guy from South Africa. Always wore black. For a time was considered part of a Big Three with Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. I imagine I covered a golf tournament he played in. The Bob Hope, maybe. I do remember a co-worker, Katie […]

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Abu Dhabi, capital city of the UAE, now has two Catholic churches. St. Paul’s Church was inaugurated this weekend, and will serve the significant Christian population of Mussaffah, the suburb on the outskirts of the Abu Dhabi where many of the blue-collar expatriates live. The Catholics, many of them Filipinos or Indians, living around Mussaffah […]

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I am a big fan of the Volvo Ocean Race. Sailing around the world in eight legs, going through all the oceans, circling the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn … one of the last great romantic/daredevil adventures we can have on a planet in an era when we can get nearly anywhere by […]

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This is a very UAE story. A 155-foot super yacht with 10 bedrooms and a cruising range of 4,200 miles — and a 90 million dirham (about $24.5 million) price tag. (Its arrival, in The National, comes with the requisite slide show.) Nice yacht … sold to a “superwealthy” Gulf resident, we are told. So […]

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Granted, we are not at the epicenter of Western movie-making chatter, here in Abu Dhabi. But shouldn’t I have heard more about a very funny movie entitled Spy and starring Melissa McCarthy? This is how I came to see it tonight: “Want to see a movie?” “Could. Is that Pacino thing still in town?” “Long […]

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Whenever someone visits us in Abu Dhabi, I try to get them to a local soccer match. As I have noted before. For one, it’s free. Also, the crowd will be overwhelmingly Emirati, and the way that crowd reacts is a revelation, too, to visitors who typically spend their days in crowds of expatriates. Which […]

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