I was never really a fan of 2013, the year. Not that 2013 did anything to harm me, far as I know. The number was awkward. That was the main thing. It might have helped if a number that awkward were a prime; that would give it some cachet. But no. It is divisible by […]

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The UAE is oriented towards the sea. Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ajman, Umm Al Qawain and Ras Al Khaimah face west to the Gulf. Fujairah faces east to the Indian Ocean; Sharjah touches both bodies of water. The explanation for the waterside population centers is easy: Between those bodies of water is not much more than […]

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Thank goodness we have Indians working in the newsroom of The National, because a major Bollywood star died in the UAE this weekend, and the newspaper’s Western and Arab staffers were unlikely to have known him. It shows up again what I have pondered a few times previously — the cultural divide between India and […]

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This is a big deal for Dubai and the UAE — winning a vote to stage the 2020 World Expo. No event of this magnitude has been awarded to the city or the country. So that would explain the thousands of people in the streets of Dubai, celebrating.

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The UAE has soccer “derbies”, in the English sense — rivalries between neighbors. Al Wahda and Al Jazira, for instance, located only a couple of miles apart, here in Abu Dhabi. Sharjah’s two teams, Al Shaab and Sharjah, have a strong rivalry, too. But the country does not really have rivalries involving teams from different […]

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The Dubai Airshow began today, and the first day was an orgy of spending. Or at least an orgy of commitments to spend. It apparently was the biggest day in the history of the aviation business. Boeing and Airbus, the world leaders (and rivals) in building big passenger planes, were the major benefactors of the […]

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Sticks and stones? It clearly is possible to hurt someone with words in the UAE, as a Canadian expat could tell you — as soon as he gets out of jail. Insults are taken very seriously in the UAE, as the case of the soccer coach Walter Zenga and a local reporter demonstrated. Zenga called […]

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The UAE uses scads of energy. Oodles. Just lighting up the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, is like lighting up a small city, in much of the world. A story today in The National notes that the country’s demand for energy is rising at 9 percent per year, which is three times the global […]

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Emiratis like their cars big … and bigger. Envision a highway grid jammed with the biggest SUVs made in Japan, the U.S. and Europe, and that’s pretty much what the roads here look like, in the Abu Dhabi-Dubai axis. A regular occurrence for anyone driving something less than a land yacht (loaded with all the […]

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This was a bit of a scandal, here in the UAE: The South African cricketer found tampering with the ball. Yes, they mess with the ball in cricket, too. Meaning it is a story that baseball fans can relate to. First, have a look at television footage showing South Africa’s Faf du Plessis attempting to […]

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