I've Found 1 and a Half Icelanders

QUEST

For my quest I need to find 32 different people. Each must be from a country participating at the 2018 World Cup. I've been casting my net far and wide in Bangkok trying to find these rare humans. I've emailed all the embassies I could find online. I've plundered Bangkok Facebook groups.

I've written before about the odds of a team getting past the group stages and earning extra games here https://steemit.com/blog/@highselfesteem/my-world-cup-quest-watch-every-country-with-every-fan

Now I'm also going to look at the population of each country. The population of the biggest country is 610 times that of the smallest country, Brazil and Iceland respectively. As Brazil are also favourites for this tournament I'm not at all worried about seeing them in their first two group games. Iceland (32) and Uruguay(31) are the least populated countries competing at the World Cup. My focus must start with them.

HOW MANY PEOPLE LIVE THERE?

Rank Population

1 Brazil 207,353,391
2 Nigeria 190,632,261
3 Russia 142,257,519
4 Japan 126,451,398
5 Mexico 124,574,795
6 Egypt 97,041,072
7 Iran 82,021,564
8 Germany 80,594,017
9 France 67,106,161
10 England 54,786,300
11 South Korea 51,181,299
12 Spain 48,958,159
13 Colombia 47,698,524
14 Argentina 44,293,293
15 Poland 38,476,269
16 Morocco 33,986,655
17 Peru 31,036,656
18 Saudi Arabia 28,571,770
19 Australia 23,232,413
20 Senegal 14,668,522
21 Belgium 11,491,346
22 Tunisia 11,403,800
23 Portugal 10,839,514
24 Sweden 9,960,487
25 Switzerland 8,236,303
26 Serbia 7,111,024
27 Denmark 5,605,948
28 Costa Rica 4,930,258
29 Croatia 4,292,095
30 Panama 3,753,142
31 Uruguay 3,360,148
32 Iceland 339,747

WHERE HAVE ALL THE ICELANDERS GONE?

My first line of attack was the Icelandic embassy. The attack failed miserably when I realised that Iceland doesn't have an embassy in Thailand. In fact Iceland only has 18 embassies worldwide, none of which are in South East Asia. Instead the crafty Icelanders have outsourced their visa application process to the Danish. Or as the website suggests the embassy of a country named Danmark in a city called Bangkong. These Icelanders just don't want to found.

HALF THE WORLD AWAY

After much searching on Facebook I found a post from 2013 with some Icelandic looking names. Not only that but they were looking to watch the Iceland national football team online. They were sharing streams and moved between the English and Icelandic languages. A glimmer of hope. Bangkok is a very transient place and five years is a long time but I commented " If any of you Icelanders are still here I'd like to watch a game with you". No point beating around the bush. I'd sent an email to every embassy that day and it was midnight. I needed to know if these Icelanders were going to play ball or not. Just before I closed my laptop I got a new friend request. Charles introduced himself as half Icelandic but full Icelandic in his heart. He very kindly offered to meet up with me for Iceland's second game at his film studio home in east Bangkok.

ITS A GAME OF THREE HALVES

I had also posted my shout out for World Cup friends on a small Facebook group with less than 500 members. It is a supporters group for my local football team. I have been told a Peruvian chef words at Above Eleven restaurant.

Within a few hours we'd worked out that a friend of a friend of a friend knows an Icelander. A "full bred" Icelander at that. Both the friend and the friend of the friend seemed to think that the friend of the friend of the friend would be very up for helping me on my challenge. There may be only 339,747 of them but I've now got myself 1 and a half Icelanders.

Join me in my quest by following my account. My quest started here https://steemit.com/sport/@highselfesteem/i-m-going-to-watch-the-world-cup-with-a-fan-from-every-country-in-bangkok-or-sleep-trying and will contine for the duration of the World Cup.

References: https://www.sporcle.com/games/Milan/world-cup-2018-nations-by-population (A fun quiz where you can guess the population of each country participating at the World Cup in Russia. Can you complete it in 8 minutes?)