Hello!

This is a project that Owen Powell and Alex Horne started on October 24th, 2006 (United Nations Day), and finished on October 24th, 2007. Our aim was to prove that London is the most cosmopolitan city in the world, by endeavouring to meet and chat to a citizen from every country in the world who currently lives and works in London.

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We managed to meet people from 189 countries. According to the UN, there are 192 countries in the world, so we've proved that at the very least, London contains over 98.4% of the nations of the world!

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We are still looking for people from three countries:

Marshall Islands; Palau; Tuvalu.

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The final encounters during our year appear below, but to follow our story from the start please click on the links under 'How we're doing' on the left-hand side.  The countries appear in the order in which we found their representative. (Any country with an asterisk * next to it has a brief account of the interview - longer versions will appear in the future!)

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To find out more about the project, including our self-imposed rules, then click here.

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Follow this link if you have the urge to see us looking awkward on Channel 4 news.  Or just below you can see us when we were half-way through the project being interviewed by George Alagiah on BBC World.

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Please email us on worldinonecity@hotmail.com if you want to get in touch, or if you know any shy Londoners who are also Tuvaluan, Palauan or Marshallese.

George Alagiah interviews us on the BBC

Friday, 12 October 2007

No.174: Maldives


Full story to follow ...

Owen Powell - 12th October 2007

Ismail is in his second stint in London. The first came as a student, firstly doing a degree in Biochemistry, then two years at the London Film School. I hover my pen over my notebook, trying to make the link. "I had no interest in Biochemistry," says Ismail. "My parents were keen for me to have something to fall back on, but now I feel it was wasted time. I always wanted to go into film or TV - in fact, I made short films even during my first degree."

He arrived back in London this year, after five years studying film and working in TV in Los Angeles. (If you've seen any of the US Big Brother, you may have seen some of Ismail's editing work). He's now looking to move away from the 'reality' genre into more narrative work.

He goes back to the Maldives regularly to see friends and family (many of his friends are in Sri Lanka, where he went to school). While he was there in 2004, his plane was on a runway when the tsunami hit. "Things were a lot worse elsewhere, further south. But the runway flooded, and we were stranded for twelve hours. I remember I'd felt the earthquake earlier in the day - I'd felt a few in LA - but this went on for over a minute."
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