A gas station burned to the ground in Dubai the other day. Created quite the scene. Black smoke over the city, etc. A few days later, The National came back with a story that probably surprised almost no one who drives in the UAE. Refueling Your Car Is Treated Too Casually in the UAE. No […]

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We are still playing soccer, here in the UAE, and the conditions get steadily more unbearable as we descend into the hell of a Gulf summer. The final competition in domestic soccer this season is the President’s Cup, which is not as big a deal as winning the league but ranks as the second-best thing […]

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When this day began it seemed inevitable Sepp Blatter would be reelected to a fifth term as Fifa president tomorrow — despite the arrests of several top Fifa officials yesterday and the amping up of the usual level of scandal surrounding global soccer. And, as I wrote for The National, that certainty began to fray, […]

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Our visitor from California was trying to open the can of Pepsi he had found in the fridge.  He lifted the ring atop the can … and nothing much happened. The metallic ring was standing up, but it hadn’t pressed into the top of the can, creating the opening consumers have learned to expect, over […]

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The UAE has fingerprints on this story. Of course it does. This is the land of extremes, most of them on the outer end of biggest-fastest-tallest-most expensive. So why not a $2 million guitar?

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Whenever someone visits us in Abu Dhabi, I try to get them to a local soccer match. As I have noted before. For one, it’s free. Also, the crowd will be overwhelmingly Emirati, and the way that crowd reacts is a revelation, too, to visitors who typically spend their days in crowds of expatriates. Which […]

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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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Being overweight is a major issue in the UAE. That was brought home again today by a story in The National noting that 45.1 percent of the women in the UAE are clinically obese, according to 2015 World Health Organization figures. Men here aren’t doing very well, either. The WHO numbers suggest 33.8 percent of […]

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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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The topic of passports comes up fairly often in the UAE, probably because about 90 percent of everyone here is a citizen of a country that is not the United Arab Emirates. You live here long enough, and you begin to notice and appreciate a strong passport. United States and United Kingdom passports are, at […]

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