Re: Cost of living
 

I would think that given Jerrek's background in Computing & Math that Cambridge would be an option. Not sure about cost of living there, though - Tez?

I do agree with Pem that the East Midlands is a nice part of the country. House prices are very area dependent, however, (where aren't they?) - a house in Cleethorpes can fetch nearly £25,000 more for a semi-detached than the equivalent in Grimsby, just a mile down the road, for example.

Re: Cost of living
 

The Dutch will certainly be amused. (Afrikaans is perfectly understandable for a Dutch speaker, but it sounds extremely funny/ungrammatical). But, as you say, he'd have no problem using English...

Re: Cost of living
 

Well thanks for all the information. How feasible is it to live outside of London and commute in?

I can't just decide to go and work in Netherlands or some X country. I'd have to find a job myself. It is significantly easier to just go through the university's process where employers come to the school and there is a website that lists all the jobs, and I just put a check in the checkbox to indicate I want to apply there. They automatically mail out a resume package to the employer, and the employer, after deciding who he wants to interview, just indicates online. The system automatically schedules interviews, etc.

Re: Cost of living
 

i would suggest the majority of ppl do commute , seen as it is totally rediculous from a money point of view to live in central london , anyway london is a bit of a *****hole imo , plenty of better places to work and live :)

Re: Cost of living
 

The best way is to find a large railyway station (Liverpool Street, Euston, King's Cross, etc), look at where the routes go out of the station check here for that or this one for close to London, and try and find accomodation along the rail line (not literally, but in a town the rail line goes through).

HTH

Re: Cost of living
 

Couldn't agree more. I think of it as a dumping ground myself

Re: Cost of living
 

As you will be here for less than 6 months the cost of buying property, a car etc are all a bit arbitary.

Property Rental in London
http://thisislondon.homesandproperty...earch_rent.asp
Others have given areas to look in. I would look at where you might be placed. Finance centres are around Docklands/Canary Wharf, the E14 postcode, the City EC1-4 postcodes, Other businesses are in the West end WC postcodes. Thats all of the centre. Most people don't live in the centre, but live within the zones 1-4 of the travel card system on the tube.
http://tube.tfl.gov.uk/content/tubemap/default.asp
Also it is possible to look at flat shares, like the sub lease stuff you talk about.

Transport, if you live in or near london you won't need a car. Travel with a travel card and all bus, tube, DLR, Tram and overground lines in the central area are included in the price. If you need to get out of london, the rail network is not bad for getting to cities, or you can rent a car for pennies
http://www.easycar.com/eng/default.asp?R=

Immigration, Visas etc, will be covered by your eer. You dont have an automatic right to work here. You have no recourse to government funds.

Employment, there is a good double tax treaty with CA, so any tax you pay over here will be deducted from your CA tax liabilities.

Think the rest have been covered by other posters. Monthly utils on a small flat should be cheap <£25, TV licence etc

Clothing, unlikly you will shop over here for clothing. It's expensive. Might do to get some nice dress shirts (as you call them) from TM Lewin, give a nice expensive european look when you get back home, thats if you need to wear a suit, not the t-shirt, jeans and long hair software developer look.

International phone calls are dirt cheap. 3p a minute or less to the US (and probably CA), so calling home will not break the bank. If you have a GSM phone then you can bring it over, get a local sim card and off you go (unless it is on the CA GSM1800 network, all green logos - whatever its name is), when it is locked to the network so you will need the handset unlocked.

We use 240V so anything you might be thinking of bringing will need to be happy with a 240v input. PC power supply might need replacing, most other hardware has dual voltage transformers.

There's my bit on this thread.

Re: Cost of living
 

Dont Think anyone has mentioned this yet, but compared to the us at least, petrol(gas) is very expensive, about four times more expensive than the us if I remeber correctly, not sure how ca fits in to this, but I wouldn't expect it to be too different from the us??

Also sales tax (called VAT = Value Added Tax) is 17.5 percent, which I believe is also high compared to the us, again not sure how ca fits in

EDIT: This is regarding the uk BTW

Re: Cost of living
 

Don't forget that prices in the shops in the UK are quoted inclusive of VAT whereas prices in the shops in the USA (and I presume Canada) are quoted exclusive of sales Tax. It's wierd at first when you shop in the USA and pick up an item priced at $1 and hand over a $1 bill only to be told that's not enough and to be asked for another few cents.