Michel,
There are several ways you could do this.
I've seen some people toss the contents into a datatable, and then do a DataTable.Select(), or use a rowfilter, to locate the row you're looking for.
In .NET 2.0, you can use the new List Class. You can define a class with properties for all the time zone element properties, and then add them into a List class. So suppose you create a class called TimeZoneProps. You can do the following:
List<TimeZoneProps> oRecs = new List<TimeZoneProps>();
oRecs.Add(new TimeZoneProps("prop1","prop2","prop3" ));
After that, there's a Find method on the List class that you can use to get to a "record".
The syntax for generics is a little different in VB, so you'll have to do a little research.
Kevin