L (Significant Birthday)

Favorite Posts, Living

  9 October 2011 6:15 a.m. Gulf Standard Time (GST) The alarm goes off. I think to myself that back in New York, where it is 10:15 p.m. EDT, it is still October 8, and I am still in my forties. I remember that, when I turned 40, it was not even a month after...
11-9-11

11-9-11

Favorite Posts, Living

  Here in Abu Dhabi (as in many parts of the world aside from the US) we write today’s date this way: 11-9-11 I like the symmetry of that, which won’t be repeated for another hundred years. It makes today special among anniversaries of 9/11. The next...
Globalize My Playlist

Globalize My Playlist

Favorite Posts, Music, Slider

One of the things that I have loved about attending the Candidate Weekends at NYU Abu Dhabi is hearing about all the different kinds of music that the candidates have on their iPods. So I’m asking for help from those of you who have attended one of the weekends:...
Freej

Freej

Favorite Posts, Pop Culture, Slider, Travel

I picked up the first two seasons of the television show Freej at one of the duty-free shops in the Abu Dhabi airport. Freej is a 3D animated cartoon produced in Dubai, which has been a big hit in the Emirates since it debuted in 2006. The series depicts the lives of...

NYUAD Institute Talk

Favorite Posts, Scholarship and Teaching, Travel

By all accounts, the lecture that I gave for the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute on Wednesday night went well. The title of the talk was “Cosmopolitanism, Multiculturalism, and the Promise of Literature.” Like Joanna’s lecture on the Silk Road, it took place...