Turns out, the Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner has been docked in Dubai’s port since we arrived in the UAE, nearly six years ago. Turns out, I compiled more than a few news/travel briefs pertaining to the QE2 and its “final” voyage to Dubai while working at the International Herald Tribune’s Hong Kong bureau in […]

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I got an email the other day from the L.A. Galaxy media department. “Postgame notes: L.A. Galaxy 2, Chicago Fire 0 – March 6, 2015” The Galaxy season opener, and a victory for the defending Major League Soccer champions. And it was then that I realized …

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A fair question, especially if you live in North America. Why Phuket? Hawaii or the Caribbean are very similar, and much closer. I can’t imagine I would have come here, from L.A., for instance, because the distance is so great. Hawaii is five hours; Phuket is more like 18 from LAX, with a plane change, […]

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It’s one of those stories that prompts an immediate reaction. “Are you sure you heard that right?” Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE, is the No. 4 city in the world, behind only New York, London and Paris, according to a survey of more than 18,000 people from 24 countries around the world, including the […]

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I find the notion of “2013” awkward. It’s the 13. Not a felicitous number. Though it does sound more like a football score than anything we have had in a while. Which is good. Moreso than 20-10 or 20-09, certainly, or even 20-07. Just looking at it, it seems as if it is a prime […]

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For the first time in my life, I will not be voting in a U.S. presidential election. I am not proud of that, but here are the mitigating factors:

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I could never live in the NYC. Too intense, too crowded, for a suburban SoCal kid. But for a day or three? Yeah. NYC can be a rush. My daughter and I did a week in an afternoon today, or so it seemed.

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A vanity among residents of greater Los Angeles is that they breath the world’s worst air. Not even close. It might have been true for a stretch in the 1950s and 1960s, but strict controls on automobile emissions have turned SoCal air from horrible to just bad — and that doesn’t cut it among cities […]

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I was a history major in college before I opened the door to the offices of the student newspaper, in my fourth year of school, and that was that. Had I not gone into journalism (and it is hard to imagine I wasn’t going to end up there), I would have tried to make history […]

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I have written tennis. I covered the entirety of Wimbledon in 1985 and 1986. The first year, some German kid named Boris Becker won. The second year, he won again. Tennis is fairly far down the list of sports I know best … and sports I like. But when the staffing situation at the paper […]

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