Name: Nyima Pratten

Age: 24

Occupation: Student

Place of birth: Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

Current residence: London

My father is Tibetan Chinese and my mother is Scottish. I was born and brought up in the UK although I have spent the majority of my early 20s living and studying in China.

I have just graduated from London College of Fashion where I studied postgraduate Fashion Buying at LCF. I also studied Management and Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham and gained a Chinese Government Scholarship to study Mandarin at Fudan University in Shanghai.

I have just finished a work experience placement on the Culture Show at the BBC and I am currently a community blogger for London360 on the Community Channel so my average days are spent researching new topics for the blog. I love running and recently completed the London 10k with a friend to raise money for Scope, a great charity that supports disabled people. We have now set our sights on running the Great Wall Half Marathon in China next year!

This week my life has been taken over by Olympic Opening Ceremony rehearsals, which are very exciting indeed! I witnessed the Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony, which told the story of China. The performers had been preparing for the ceremony for over 10 months and it was such a spectacular event with an enormous budget and made a clear statement to the rest of the world that China had arrived! For many reasons the London Opening Ceremony will be a completely different affair, many of the performers are volunteers and therefore it just isn’t possible to put on a show of the same scale as China, which was so labour intensive. Saying that, Danny Boyle is a genius and brilliant at what he does. He is very innovative and I am sure that London’s Opening Ceremony will more than live up to expectations.

It feels so great to be a part of the Olympic Opening! After receiving confirmation that I would be performing in the Opening Ceremony there was one final audition so that performers could be cast in specific roles. Soon after that I got to meet my ‘family’ who I will be preforming with. All the members of my family are blue eyed and fair-haired with ruddy complexions so I really stick out like a sore Eurasian thumb, so I hope I will be spotted easily.

The rehearsals for my segment started in May. We originally only had one rehearsal a week, which fell on a weekend and made it easy to juggle every day life with ceremony rehearsals. But as the ceremony drew closer rehearsals were increased to 2 to 3 times a week becoming more of a commitment. Even so, it has been a great experience and I have met such a wide range of people from all walks of like, who all, like me, are very excited for the London 2012 Olympics. I will definitely be supporting team GB throughout the games! I’m looking forward to watching the diving; I think that Tom Daley has the experience and the skills to win big this year.

I am a Complexd Woman because I embrace both sides of my cultural heritage be that dancing the Highland Fling in Scottish Highland Dancing competitions to spinning Tibetan prayer wheels for good luck.