There’s more grey and drizzly weather in Dublin, and I don’t venture out of the apartment for a second day in a row. I spend most of the afternoon concentrating on my CMA studies and learning how to use the multiple regression functions on my financial calculator.
The recent news cycle has been dominated by Oprah’s interview of Harry and Meghan. I haven’t been paying much attention, and honestly, the story is not particularly surprising to me.
Instead, a story about Dublin’s most prominent landmark caught my attention on the evening RTÉ radio evening news. The structures in question are the Poolbeg chimney stacks, located on a thin peninsula that stretches eastward from Dublin out into the Irish Sea. The twin chimneys, with their distinctive red and white paintwork, were built in the 1970s but decommissioned in 2006 and 2010. They are among the tallest structures in Ireland, at a height of 680 feet (208 m), and are visible from most of Dublin city. They are somewhat evocative of Sutro Tower in San Francisco, which is also red and white striped, built in the 1970s, but is much taller at 977 ft (298 m). I find the Poolbeg chimneys to be an industrial eyesore in ugly contrast to their natural surroundings, but apparently many Dubliners can’t imagine the city skyline without them. The Dublin City Council has said the chimneys may need to be encased in concrete or fibreglass at a cost of several million euro to preserve them for the long term.
A view from Sandymount beach of the Poolbeg chimneys and the modern power station which continues to generate electricity for more than half a million homes in Dublin and beyond:
The number of new daily reported COVID-19 cases in Ireland is down to 311 today from the ~500 reported most days last week. Hopefully this trend will continue! Meanwhile, some more bad news on the vaccine front — Ireland is set to receive less than half the doses it expected through March, due to slower-than-expected delivery of all three Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines.
