A visitor driving the streets of any UAE city over the past week may puzzle over the large, rectangular photos of Emiratis along the sides of major roads. The signs invariably picture an Emirati man or woman in national dress, with a few lines Arabic script below the photo and a three-digit number. And, sometimes, […]

[Read more →]

It is tempting to say that little Mohammed Khaled is the first kid on his block to have a Bentley, but given the mania for cars in the UAE, that’s an assumption we can’t make. It is fair to suggest he will have the longest wait to get behind the wheel of the new Bentley […]

[Read more →]

Jorge Valdivia is known for being … a bit controversial. Arguments with soccer authorities, rumors about off-the-field issues … But he usually overcomes any of that with his football skills, which are advanced. Al Ain fans still get a bit rapturous when recalling his two-season stay with the team from 2008 to 10. Fans in […]

[Read more →]

The game we know from April through August changes markedly the final month of the season, due to Major League Baseball’s roster expansion. Limited to 25 players for the first five months, they can add eight, nine, 10, 15 extra players beginning on September 1, which allows for more one-dimensional players and a lot more […]

[Read more →]

Qualifying for the 2018 World Cup is really the only international sports story of any significance in the UAE over the next two years. Some runners, swimmers and shooters will go to the Rio Olympics, the government is crazy about jiu-jitsu, various global golf and tennis and cycling tours will pass through the country between […]

[Read more →]

We like where we live. Quite a bit. Particularly given where we lived the first three years in Abu Dhabi. “Functional” would be the biggest compliment we could pay those two apartments. Where we are now is a tower of about 20 stories. Maybe four years old. With a gym, a swimming pool and several […]

[Read more →]

Actually, we’re pushing 60 percent finished with the current decade, given that we persist in starting decades and centuries and millennia on years that end in zero. (Digression alert!) And, by the by, what are we calling this decade? Apparently we haven’t decided because it’s varieties of stupid/awkward. Back in 2009, the BBC did a […]

[Read more →]

This was predictable. A UAE team playing in Tehran against an Iranian team in the quarterfinals of the Asian Champions League … No way it was going to come off as a tribute to sportsmanship. But the reality was even uglier than I had expected, mostly (thankfully) in small, petulant ways — jersey-grabbing, shin-kicking, faking, […]

[Read more →]

One of the biggest selling points for people and businesses relocating to the UAE, over the first 44 years of its existence, has been the near universal absence of individual taxes. No individual income tax. No sales tax. No inheritance taxes. No property taxes. If you were paid $100,000 by your employer … you received […]

[Read more →]

Summer is grim, in the soccer-loving precincts of the world. Most countries have soccer leagues that play from August and into May. And in June and July? A whole lot of nothing, aside from some tennis, some golf and … (ack!) cricket. For what seems like a month, the sports department TV, which sits poised […]

[Read more →]