At the age of 20, I traveled to London with a colleague. We wanted to visit relatives in the U.K and gain new work experience. We had no trouble finding employment. My friend worked as a film editor in a film studio and I continued working as an animator.

Two years later, my friend decided to return to Australia while I chose to remain in Europe. I moved to Denmark where I once more found it easy to find work as an animator. I remained for some time in Europe, later working in studios in Madrid, Barcelona, Milano and Stockholm. Then I returned to Copenhagen for a while before traveling to the USA, where I landed a job in a major New York film studio.

As I had no residence permit I finally left New York returning to Copenhagen where I found new employment. I continued to consider Denmark my home for a number of years where I made my living not only in cartooning but in publishing a rock music magazine called Superlove and running a record/book store with my then wife, Annette. I studied part time at Copenhagen University and received an M.A. in Philosophy - I had received a B.A. from London. I also worked as a Danish-to-English translator and gave English lessons to Danish business men and women. It was in Copenhagen that I met my Finnish wife-to-be, Arja. After a year or two we chose to move to Spain (Malaga province) to escape the Danish winters. I worked in Southern Spain in the real estate business. buying land and building replicas of old farm houses. This continued until the economic crash of the late '80's (when our first daughter was born) and we relocated to Lisbon where I produced business videos and computer graphics. I later started my own video production company (George Streeton Productions Limitada). I produced videos for Nokia Telecommunications Portugal, Coca Cola, the Algarve Tourist industry and others. I also gave English lessons to local business people. Many of my video clients had personnel that needed to improve their English.

At this time my wife, who had been working in the Travel Business in Cascais, expressed a desire to return to Finland. We arrived in Helsinki in 1995 and I established a new video production company (George Streeton Productions OY). I was lucky. My first job was with Nokia for whom I produced a corporate video for the international market. Then I made in-house training videos for Ericsson. In addition to my video work I was once more teaching English to a number of professionals (in the Espoo area.)

I have since been giving in-house English training to professional men and women in companies such as Sonera, HPY, Fortum, Cap Gemini, Ericsson, Merita, Suomen Matkatoimisto, the Center for Scientific Computing, Metsäliitto, Fischer Finland, Memec Finland, Marsh Oy, Catella Property Consultants, Aktiv Kapital, Impact Electronics,MTV3,Outokumpu,LTT, Makita,Heath Lambert, and Tecnomen along with a number of individual students (of all ages)

I have been living and working in Finland for almost 7 years. My family and I are now settled here permanently with our children attending schools in Tapiola and my wife works as a General Sales Agent for Tourplanners Oy in Helsinki. I am currently putting the finishing touches to my PhD thesis on Linguistics and Philosophy (the language of Humour) at Helsinki University.

George Thomas Streeton M.A. Hauenkalliontie 12-14 H 110 02170 ESPOO Tel: + 358 (09) 420 9878 george.streeton@welho.com