Articles from the author

I am not too fond of August as it was on this month some 12 years ago that I was cowering under a makeshift shelter in my apartment as Saddam's Scud missiles fell out of the night skies like old, decrepit boilers.

The first time the fire alarm went off, we shot out of our beds, I fumbled around for our landing papers, while our elder son, still disoriented but very determined, was undoing all the wires of his video game machine.

The first time I came to this region was on a Haj ship, whose engines conked out twice during the journey from Mumbai to Jeddah, leaving us drifting aimlessly in the shark-infested waters.

It's exciting but a little unnerving watching people play chicken, or whatever it's called here, on the streets of Dubai.

Khalil Ibrahim Al Abdooli, from the Dubai Men's College, has a made a five-and-a-half minute documentary that captures an exciting sport in Fujairah, which not even residents of that emirate have heard about.

After pounding on a Remington for a couple of months like a surly government department clerk, I decided to go high-tech and buy a personal computer.

When I excitedly called my wife back in Toronto and told her I had won a ticket to the Elton John show at an office raffle, she told my 12-year-old son, and his response reportedly was, "Isn't Elton John dead or something?"

"Where you comin' from Mohammed?" asked the customs officer at the huge, cavernous and surprisingly empty Newark Airport at 8.15 in the night.<br /> <br /> "Dubai," I said smiling.

"Can't I even drink water"? my son asked in a sort of feigned surprise when I told him that he and I would fast together on Sunday, his day off from school.

Expatriates who had lost contact with a friend 20 years ago in Dubai have finally traced him working for an aid agency in Afghanistan.

I gulp down my new dual juice in the morning, a mix of orange and carrot which tastes like muddy water, run down to my car, buckle up and by the time I shift into fifth gear, I reach my workplace.

There are upsides and downsides of working as a journalist in this region. The upside is that you get to hear the juiciest rumours first.