From 2004 until 2011 I lived and worked in Al Ain, a small city located on the Tropic of Cancer in Southwest Asia in the United Arab Emirates, the former British Trucial States, and one of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, the Arab NATO. This blog has journal entries from that period of my life. Also, I have included letters from the time I spent in the Ivory Coast from 1980 until 1981. I am adding entries from all my journals. I was recently living in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and will be transcribing my journal entries about this experience. Off and on since about 2015 I have been doing research on the fur trade in North America for a screenplay about John Tanner, Jr. Permission to quote this blog must be given by the author.