Over the past few decades, most humans came to grips with the reality that in exchange for “progress” we were going to have to breathe bad air. Life in nearly any megalopolis is an invitation to huff ozone and particulates. Conditions are particularly dire in the big cities of rising economies like China’s and […]

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This was the idea: We would try to live three months in each of four Mediterranean-oriented European countries, places where they enjoy at least 300 days of sunshine per year, and when we were done we would choose, presumably from those four stops, a place we would want to live for at least a year. […]

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Back in the UAE, we paid a significant amount of money to get English Premier League soccer, despite usually being limited to one game in English when as many as six were going on and getting little more than highlights in the games we didn’t see. We figured the situation would be worse in California. […]

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I have been away. Have I mentioned that? And it’s hard to see the NFL play where I was living, on the other side of the world. But, back in the USA for a slow Sunday … I slipped back into the couch potato mode and pretty much just stared at the NFL all day. […]

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An American Christmas. We had not done one of those since 2007. A semi-surprising stat, in retrospect, given that I had not been outside Southern California on December 25 for a very long time … and maybe never, through 2007. Then came Hong Kong in 2008 and Abu Dhabi from 2009 through 2014. And I’m […]

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A few cultural concepts don’t travel well outside the United States. Barbecue. “American” football. Country-and-western music. Pie. Pie doesn’t seem that difficult, does it? A fruit filling. A flaky pastry crust. A glazed top-crust. A pie tin. But it just doesn’t seem to work out, most of the time, if you are outside the borders […]

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This is a weird and memorable flight. I now have done it twice, once in coach and once in business. But we did encounter one apparent change, between the first journey on EY171 (last summer) and the second (yesterday) — the route became something that stretches our understanding of the planet. There it is, above, […]

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After six years and two months in Abu Dhabi, we leave the UAE for the final time today, headed for Los Angeles on flight EY171, Etihad’s 16-hour-plus nonstop to LAX. It was a fast six years, filled with challenges unimagined during previous incarnations as California journalists. Each of us added a significant stretch to our […]

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This has been a point of pride, in the UAE, for months now: Not only was a significant fraction of the first half hour of Star Wars: The Force Awakens filmed in the deserts of Abu Dhabi … the movie premiered for the public here yesterday, December 16, two days ahead of the North American […]

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I had no inkling this would turn into one of the most uplifting nights of my life as a sports journalist. I knew that the Switzerland-based International Sports Press Association had teamed with Abu Dhabi Media to arrange for the first global competition meant to honor the best in sports journalism. What was not clear, […]

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