In the previous post I fretted over the possibility that the Golden State Warriors could break the Los Angeles Lakers’ record NBA winning streak of 33 games. Within hours of that post going up … the Warriors lost, for the first time this season. And I will take some credit for that.

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One of the many memorable moments in Steve Martin‘s 1991 film L.A. Story involves his portrayal of local TV weatherman  Harris K. Telemacher speaking with another Angeleno about a shocking drop in temperature … all the way down to 58 degrees! They talk about “closing the windows” and “letting the cats inside”. Martin’s character sums […]

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We were at the Immigration Office in Abu Dhabi today to handle an administrative chore pertaining to passports. Eventually, pretty much everyone here spends hours at the Immigration Office. The office is in several buildings on 19th Street, near the church district. It may be one of the busiest government offices in the city, behind […]

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Is this just me, or does anyone else find a rooting interest in every sporting contest ever invented? Seems a bit odd, now that I think about it, but that’s how it works. And not just with teams I know. Within five minutes of watching a match between teams I do not know … I […]

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As a sports editor, it is easy to wonder why various fields of endeavor cannot arrange their schedules so that they don’t overlap and dilute their audience — as well as the media recognition they might get that night or the next morning. Today, for instance, we had at least four events that could have […]

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Our seventh Thanksgiving celebration since moving to the UAE, and our most Emirati version yet. Yes, the actual holiday was yesterday, but I was pulling a desk shift in the office … and people in the UAE can’t be expected to know that the dinner should have gone on the day before. When you’re out […]

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Everyone who does a road trip of any significance knows … if at all possible, you want to return by a route different than the one you took for the first half. Not a lot longer, but a little longer is OK … because you don’t want to see the same stuff twice. Obviously. What […]

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(Above, the sunrise in Fujairah, over the Indian Ocean.) This is a pretty easy question to answer. If you live in the UAE and prefer to stay in-country for vacation … but want something not at all like home … where do you go? Fujairah. This is the emirate unlike the other six.

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Six years here, and we had not seen all seven of the emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates. Which was a wasted opportunity. Because the UAE encompasses only 32,278 square miles (a little smaller than Maine, a bit bigger than South Carolina, which are 39th and 40th among the 50 U.S. states) we […]

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Lord help us, when guys with money meet new gadgets or souped-up vehicles or other unneeded things — well, yes, toys. And where better to stage a show dedicated to Toys for Big Boys than the UAE? OK, it probably should have been held in Dubai, which has a hard-earned reputation for wretched excess, but […]

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