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, 19 October 2007

No.183: North Korea


Full story to follow ...

Owen Powell - 19th October 2007


Alex and I made a trip to New Malden last week, where we spoke to EunJung Lee, a (South) Korean lady who runs an educational consultancy. She thought that a teacher she knew may have had some North Korean students, and a few phone calls, emails, and days later, I'm back in New Malden, waiting for Denise to take me to her classroom.

Now, I promised Denise I would let her see my write-up of my meeting with her students, so all I can confirm here is, yes, I met not one, not two, but three people from the People's Democratic Republic of Korea, their names (as far as I am concerned) were Geraldine, Keith and John, and while a couple of them have seen Buckingham Palace, none of them have had afternoon tea with the Queen.

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