New Neighbours Mohammed Mohashin from Bangladesh: I had a grocery business in Bangladesh before I came to Ireland; and I was studying law by night.

I'm from Dhaka and the oldest in the family - I'm aged 30. I have six sisters and five brothers. They are all studying, and they are all in Bangladesh. Through a relative from Bangladesh, I got offered a work permit to come and work in Ireland, in Tulsi, a restaurant on Baggot Street.

I thought life would be better here, so I sold the grocery business and gave up my degree. I suppose if I had stayed in Dhaka, I would be a lawyer now. Do I regret it? Life is hard in Dhaka. There are too many people there. Far too many people. I thought it would be better to go somewhere else.

Tulsi serves Indian food, and would be known as an Indian restaurant but everyone working here - there are 10 of us staff - are from Bangladesh. It is the same in many "Indian" restaurants in Ireland. We serve the same kind of food, but if you called it a Bangladeshi restaurant, nobody would know what that meant, so they all call themselves Indian restaurants. I have met very few Irish people who know anything about Bangladesh, apart from a few people who worked there as part of non-governmental organisations. I think there are about 10,000 Bangladeshi people in Ireland. Most of them are working in companies like Centra and Tesco and in restaurants.

I've been in Ireland almost six years, and I knew nothing about it when I arrived. When I came here first, I stayed with Bangladeshi friends and I worked in the kitchens and at the front of house. Now I am the manager in Tulsi and work here five days a week.

I live in Lucan and get the bus in every day. You couldn't park a car in the centre of Dublin; it is far too expensive. We open for lunch as well as dinner, so I'd work from 11am to about 2pm and then go off and take a break, and come back again from 6pm until after 11pm. It's a long day, and I don't get home in between, because it's too far.

I go back home to Dhaka once a year for a month, in January. January is the best month to be out of Ireland because of the weather - it's the one thing I really don't like about this country. I don't miss Bangladesh very much, but I miss my family. None of them have ever been to Ireland to visit me here. My brothers and sisters are younger, and my father and mother are old. They're too old to travel. My father is retired now; he was a tea-trader. He's 60. That's old in Bangladesh.

I'm Muslim, and in 2001, when I was back in Dhaka, I got married. My wife, Shika, came back to Ireland with me. She had a degree, a bachelor of commerce degree, but she doesn't work here. She is a housewife; she cleans the house. We don't have any children yet. My wife stays home during the day. She watches television a lot, I think.

The best thing about Dublin is the seaside. I like also St Stephen's Green and the Botanic Gardens. At the weekends we sometimes go visiting places. We have also been to Galway, where there is another Tulsi restaurant.

Life is better here in Ireland - I have more money. I don't know if I want to go back to Bangladesh or not. There are too many people in Dhaka. I will stay here for a few more years. Maybe, I think, maybe what I want to do in the future is to open my own restaurant, here in Ireland.

In conversation with Rosita Boland