Sir, While driving in my Toyota the other day, listening to Italian opera on my Grundig stereo on my way home from Intel, I stopped into a Shell garage to buy some Spanish oranges, because I was thirsty after my Chinese, so I went to change my English suit into my Filipino jeans and Vietnamese- made sneakers pausing a while to slip into my Finnish sauna, snack on some Iranian pistachios, listen to some Jamaican reggae, splash on some French after-shave, and run out to buy a bottle of Australian wine, as I was going to a dinner party at a Malaysian colleague's house, where we ate Thai food, and I met a fantastic-looking girl from Ipanema, The conversation cent red, of course, on how self-sufficient Ireland is now, and how singularly sure and proud we Irish must be of all our touchstones of culture, which are so prevalent in everyday life. I must say sir, as I switched on my Swedish lights that night, and settled down to read Herodotus, how proud I was of our Celtic Tiger. -Yours, etc.,
Ranelagh Village,
Dublin 6.