.NET headaches!

I hate Variants, but unfortunately I have to use them. Since, the components I am writing are supposed to enhance Datasnap somehow, I had to figure out how I could "package" info (to be sent from client to server and vice versa) as OleVariants (in VarArrays of VarBytes so that this would succeed in any circumstances). I implemented a couple of classes that do this kind of stuff (is marshaling the correct term?). These classes used a lot of Move, VarArrayLock e.t.c. instructions and pointers and (with a little help from Manuel Parma) I was able to achieve what I wanted at first place.
And then, a brilliant idea came! I should at least try and port this code to .NET ! That gave me a big disappointment. (I am a newbie to .NET and I don't think the starting point of learning .NET should be how to use IntPtr and Marshal). Besides, OleVariants (variant arrays of VarBytes at least) have a new format (they should be just simply casted to TBytes if I've figured it right).
At first, all my code was stuffed with IFDEFs and that was a real pain. Then, I read this excellent article from Chad Hower and decided to follow his advice. I tried to use polymorphism and tried to isolate all IFDEFs in a particular unit. But, may be the most difficult part was to get rid of all these pointer operations (redesign and reimplement the related classes). I am in the middle of this, but am thinking of wrapping a TMemoryStream to do all the job I need (both in Win32 and CLR) .
I think I 'll also follow another advice I've read somewhere (don't remember where, may be in the same article) and stick to the RTL. For example, I decided to convert all my TList objects to TObjectList and this way avoid doing all these hard type casts like:
TObject(FooList[i]).Free;
.NET is a new world for me and even though it seems fascinating in many aspects, trying to build a cross platform app (component) is a real headache! I would certainly appreciate any kind of help (may be I should buy a book or something) , but I certainly don't like others doing my homework. So, I'll just keep trying on my own!