The Burj Khalifa, tallest building in the world, opened in Dubai in January of 2010. I was working in news at The National, back then, and I edited the “grand opening” story the night of January 4. Almost four-and-a-half years later … I finally went inside the Burj. And rode the elevator up to the […]

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This has turned into “weird Dubai-defining stories” week. The kid fined $136,000 for turning donuts on the streets of the UAE’s biggest city. The Dubai website that listed for sale an Airbus A340 jumbo jet for about $41 million. And today? The Dubai personal trainer who told a woman she was too fat to join […]

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This is a very Dubai story. An appeal to people with more money than common sense, people who believe wretched excess is the only kind worth pursuing. The kind of people who like to live in Dubai. For sale on Dubai’s leading retail website: One Airbus A340 jumbo jet, capable of carrying more than 300 […]

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We love our cars in the UAE. Yes, we do. The bigger and more muscular (or the sleeker and faster), the better. A 19-year-old Emirati recently decided to show what he could do at the wheel of his 4×4, turning donuts at an open road. He then compounded his silliness by posting the road mania […]

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Two signs of status in the UAE: 1. A license plate with three digits or fewer. 2. A mobile phone with a “distinctive” number. Like, say, 052 222 2222. One Emirati liked that number so much that he won a bidding war for it tonight and is handing over to a local telecom 8,010,000 dirhams […]

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Furious 7, the seventh installment of The Fast and the Furious movie franchise, reached movie theaters here about three weeks ago. The movies are silly, brainless fun, and I have seen just about all of them now. (Aside from Tokyo Drift, which lacks the key stars, aside from a cameo by Vin Diesel late in […]

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For the past few years, The National newspaper, in the United Arab Emirates, has been paying fairly close attention to the National Hot Rod Association, back in the United States. It wasn’t just because we like to watch people driving 300 miles per hour. (We can see that on the UAE’s freeways. Just kidding. Not.) […]

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My favorite story of the weekend. The cheating chess grandmaster in the Dubai Open tournament. Cheating how? Rigging the clock to give him extra time? Telling his opponent, “Hey, is that Bobby Fischer behind you?” and then swapping pieces? No. It’s better than that.

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One of the great things about being old is that you need pay no attention to teen culture. Or to anything “the kids” are listening to. Or doing. Or wearing. That is, you don’t reject it … you ignore it. Blissfully. Until you can’t. Which is the case presented by a boy band named One […]

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“The People’s Horse”. Apparently, California Chrome occasionally is known by that sobriquet. The notion being that, in the horse world, Chrome is a regular guy. Chrome’s mother, in particular, was very much a commoner in the Sport of Kings, yet here is Chrome, winning the Kentucky Derby and Preakness for a couple of regular guys […]

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