I liked to write: I interviewed Dev Patel today

Dev Patel in Lion.

You can read my full Q&A here or turn to the print edition of The National on Thursday for a write-through. (Please keep in mind I only had 10 minutes to speak to him. This is de rigeur for celebrity interviews but it always gets my heart racing a bit. And don't even get me started about how much I worry that I'm going to erase the recording - you simply can't do notes when you've got so little time.) 

I can report Patel is as handsome as ever, very tall (6'2, he said during a group elevator ride at the Four Seasons DIFC in Dubai, where the interviews took place), thoughtful, fun and very polite. 

I like to write: An Observing Life column about the terrible scourge of gyms that insist on measuring your performance

“Ann Marie, you’re losing!”

That’s what the RPM instructor bellowed out at me during the apex of a recent class in Abu Dhabi, right at the point where I am usually so angry and tired that I hate the world.

Read more here.

I like to write: The Argo and I hate Big Sugar edition

A bit behind on these, but I've written two pieces for The Review (in The National) in recent months.

For the Argo piece, I interviewed the former Canadian ambassador to Iran, Ken Taylor (portrayed by fellow Canadian Victor Garber in what was, its emphasis on the CIA aside, a very fine film), about meeting an apologetic Ben Affleck and how what's going on in the Middle East and how it's not so different.

Last week I read an article about the new Coke anti-obesity television ad, then watched it, and because I was so riled up I wrote this column (which was accompanied by a really cool illustration) about how in the fullness of time Big Sugar will likely rival Big Tobacco when it comes to decades of well-funded attempts to manipulate the public into believing its products are harmless when, as is increasingly being proven, they most definitely are not. 

I like to write: Did you see Argo? Want to read my interview with former Iranian ambassador Ken Taylor?

In which he talks about hanging out with Ben Affleck, his role in helping six escaped hostages get to freedom in The Canadian Caper, the tragedy in Benghazi and why Canada should have kept its embassy in Tehran open? What a guy. Anyway, it's all here. 

And by the way, if you haven't heard, the movie is well worth your time. Just don't look for a nuanced portrayal of Iranians at the time. (Although I liked the little history lesson at the beginning acknowledging America's oil-inspired interference with Iran's democratically elected government in the 1950s, which played a major role in the whole crappy mess.)

I like to write: the exercise ball edition

A colleague and I recently started sitting on exercise balls at work. We have been the object of much ridicule, but we don't care because we are strengthening our cores and fighting the scourge that is inactivity. We also like to make a lot of jokes and puns with the word ball, as you do.

Here's our take. And by the way, if you don't mind people laughing at you, then I highly recommend it.

I like to write: Kim Kardashian's Dubai limo discussion may not have actually happened in Dubai

An entry  (by moi, BRING IT ON Anonymous) from The National's Scene & Heard blog:

A story making the rounds (and finally popping up in the UAE over at Emirates 24/7) indicates that Kim Kardashian and her mom, Kris Jenner, may have faked a key "scene" in the Dubai episode of E!'s Kourtney & Kim Take New York. In it, the pair sit in a limo with blacked-out windows, with zero background sound, and have the world's most non-emotional conversation (Blackberry checking included) about what in any other family would prompt screams if not physical violence: a daughter confessing to her mother that just weeks after her extremely expensive, big-deal wedding, she is having second thoughts. The "evidence" being presented online are pap photos taken in December, showing the pair leaving an LA production studio separately, Kardashian wearing the exact same outfit and hair, Jenner's tell-tale purple tunic seen trailing behind her.


To continue reading click here.

I like to write: Famous in Abu Dhabi:

I wrote an observing life column in The National recently about one of the biggest differences between my life here and back in Canada. Here, much of the time, I stick out like a sore thumb. And most of the time I don't mind: