[thelist] OT - What is the average living rate abroad ?

[VOLKAN ÖZÇELİK]

Hi all !

This midnight, I've made a radical decision and I'm about to pass an
important milestone in my life: I decided to live and work abroad. 
I've a bunch of reasons for it in terms of career projection and
self-actualization. I have another bunch of personal/psychological
reasons: It's not that I hate my country, I love where I live in:
Istanbul is a beautiful city. But life is not a combination of plain
if's and else'es and I *feel* and *believe* that I will be much happy
abroad, than I am in here.

My best choice is England. My fiancé has been there, and she says it's
a good place to live, and I am sure I'll like there (after I get used
to the English accent and English jokes :) )

Leaving aside the cultural shock that I will possibly face in 3-4
months time, I wonder

* What is the acceptable average living rate in England ( K pounds/year) ?
* How easily can I find a developer position in England ?
* Is there legal a policy that restricts employment from abroad?
* Is "equal employment opportunity" term used and accepted there?

Given that
1) I am experienced in ASP / Java / Server-side business logic
development / SQL / Client-side scripting / CSS / Usability &
Accessibility / Standarts Compliance;
2) I know enough visual design (color theory, color schemes, color
combinations, some fireworks) to suit my needs, so that I can easiliy
co-operate with a creative designer. However I'm a developer not a
visual-designer;
3) I know the .net framework, c# and ASP.Net but I am more competent in (1).
4) I am a really fast-learner; I love researching, I love being
innovative, I love trying to look at problems from different aspects.

How are the things in other countries?

It isn't as easy for me to do it as to write this e-mail and
your on-list and off-the-list, honest comments are highly appreciated.

Thank you,
Volkan.

And here's the tip for the OT:

<tip author="Volkan Ozcelik" type="localization in .net">
The default encoding of System.IO.StreamReader and System.IO.StreamWriter
is UTF-8. If you use unicode letters the StreamReader and StreamWriter
will not transfer your locale specific character data; hence you will
have a localization problem.

To solve this there is an System.Text.Encoding class in .Net.

Simple usage example:

//1254 stands for codepage 1254 (CP-1254 - MS Equivalent to iso-8859-9)
Encoding turkce = System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding(1254);
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(sourcePath,turkce);
String strIn = sr.ReadToEnd();
sr.Close();

String strOut = someTransformation(strIn);
StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(destinationPath, false, turkce);
sw.Write(strOut);
sw.Close();
</tip>