| S.S. Marie to Toronto | June 18 | Upon arriving in Toronto, I immediately drove along Finch St. to my buddy Vince's place. Vince is a good buddy of mine from school; he's an Electrical 'geer working at a large company (which will remain nameless to protect their stock...) in Toronto. Upon arrival, Vince was in the process of returning over $1200 of merchandise to Future Shop. Apparently, earlier in the week, Vince tried to return a microwave - the salesman insisted he had to charge him a re-stocking fee, which was "indicated on the receipt". It wasn't. After talking to the manager, Vince found out the salesman was outright lying... rather, mistaken. Vince decided to return everything - the microwave, the TV, the VCR, the antenna and TV stand... all out of spite. |
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| Toronto | June 19 | While Vince was off to work, I opted to take transit downtown to do a little exploring... and found only that not that much has changed since I was last here two years ago. |
| Toronto | June 20 | Spent
much of the day exploring Scarborough (stop laughing)...
That evening, I went to see "Beauty and the Beast" at the Princess of Wales Theatre. Having never seen the movie, I didn't have any pre-conceived notion about the show. I was quite surprised how great the show actually was. The music was great, the acting very believable, and the costuming and sets were quite elaborate. |
| Toronto | June 21 | Vince
and I spent the day searching for a TV, VCR, antenna and TV stand... for
some reason, his somehow went missing... Anyways, the first store we went
to, the saleman really didn't seem all that interested in making a sale.
For example, when we asked him about the specs of a TV, he gave us the
"Are you nuts?" look, then replied he didn't have any on hand.
When we asked about the features, he didn't seem too knowledgeable either.
So, we left. We went across the street to another store where they were
far more gracious with information. In the end, Vince bought his stuff
from the guy... then we looked at the size of my trunk and almost fainted.
Fortunately, we were able to squeeze the stuff in, although closing my
hatch was out of the question.
When we got all the stuff to Vince's apartment, we set everything up. When we turned the TV on, there was some discoloration in the lower left corner of the screen, most likely due to magnetization of the screen. So, a quick phone call to the store, we decided to exchange it for another one, which we decided would be Sunday's activity. |
| Toronto | June 22 | First
thing in the morning, we lugged the TV back to the store. And then we lugged
the new one back to the apartment. Plugged it in and turned it back on...
same discoloration.. d'oh! A quick phone call back to the store, and we
decide it's time to call Panasonic about it... except it's Sunday. Deal
with it tomorrow.
We decided to go to the Ontario Science Center. But before going, we decide to stop off at Vince's work place so I can check my email. 600 messages in my Inbox later... by the time we got to the OSC, there wasn't too much time to look around too much. And of course, we made the mistake of buying tickets to the Imax movie... But, we were able to rush through most of the exhibits in the hour we had.. it does help to have some background on the stuff, I guess. It was fun though... seeing all these things we learned in school being applied somewhere... |
| Toronto | June 23 | I
spent the day exploring downtown again. Where the heck are all the independent
CD stores? I did notice that transit here is similar to Vancouver's...
in both places, people seem to avoid sitting near me. I don't know what
it is... The bus could be full, I'm there sitting on a bench... and no
one sits next to me. Maybe Mom's right... it must be cause I hadn't shaved
in a week...
A brief follow-up to Vince's electronic nightmare. When the repairman showed up at his apartment, he too was bewildered by the magnetization of the screen. He was about to pull out a large industrial magnet, when he decided to pull the TV away from the wall. Lo and behold... the purple haze vanished. Apparently, there is something in the wall that fouled up the screen. The real kicker is... the head of Vince's bed is directly on the other side of the wall! |
| Toronto | June 24 | I
decided to spend the day shopping for gifts. Vince decided since he doesn't
get much of his required reading done at work, that he'd take the day off
of work to accompany me; and to take along the reading to read while he
waited. Oddly enough, in the half hour he found to sit down at McDonalds
while I shopped, he read more than he did the entire previous day.
Anyways, I bought a nice plant - an African Violet, for Heather's (in Dryden) Mom. Unfortunately, I left it in the car while Vince and I went for lunch. Who knew? I thought an African violet would've been able to survive the African-esque temperatures of a parked car on a semi-sunny day... I guess not... |
Copyright 1997 phychan