Metamorphosis

Yesterday, as Maura and I sat on the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) train approaching Donaghmede, on our way into Dublin, I happened to glance out towards the construction, when suddenly I realised that, in the midst of the construction, were five, or perhaps six, huge columns with those windmill blades which betrayed them as wind turbines, for generating electricity, and I started thinking.
When we came back to Ireland to live, perhaps twenty years ago, nothing much had changed, since I was a little boy. Unemployment was almost twenty percent, and people questione our sanity leaving America. The construction cranes are not as numerous as they were, and they say growth will be two and a half per this year instead of five or six per cent, but the change is still extraordinary.
The government has been trying, since the 1930's to bring the Irish Language, Gaelic, back, but the other day I read that the second most widespread language spoken here is Mandarin Chinese. The construction around the River Liffey, and in other parts of the city, could be compared to the most expensive in New York City, and the multitude of foreign languages which other passersby are speaking on O'Connell Street is incredible. The majority of the residents of central Dublin are foreign-born.