Splash Finals - F14

The Etobicoke Olympium had been closed for a year for renos and it reopened finally for the Splash Finals this weekend and it looks....


Almost the same. :-(



I am amazed at the length of time it was closed down and how it looks like so little was done.
But they did update and add more lighting.  But all that did was highlight the 1970-ish decor and tie-dye water colour paint scheme.

However, we were there for a swim meet not to critique the Ontario / Toronto government's Pan-Am 2015 renovation planning and execution.


It was supposed to start at 3pm, but there was a lot of confusion, so much so that the first race didn't start till 3:25pm.

Look at the confusion on these swimmers faces.



And then this SNG lady came out of no where.

Splash F2014 - Finals

Made in Japan

This is what happens when you let a 9 year old access to the internet. One with interests in Transformers.
Trying really hard to teach that marketing plays into your desires. Making you think you need something that you don't. Creating importance when their is none.

But a kid doing his research looking for a Megatron that is discontinued because they've moved on to the next show to entice kids (of ALL ages) to want the next thing.  "Because they MUST have it."

I showed him how to "Google" to figure out where he can find it, and use eBay and Amazon to determine how much and carefully read the descriptions and compare.  Because it's Buyer beware out there in the digital cloud.

In any case he showed me his research.  He showed me one Tomy-Takara and it was from Japan that it was the best version he had seen.  And it looked pretty good.  I was thinking that since it was Japan, he would be inclined to give up his quest and accept that it was out of reach.

Then he told me he clicked a button.  I found out soon he clicked "Buy Now" on my eBay account.  The last time I showed some other person who lives in this house the power of eBay. A designer bag was purchased.

I could have cancelled it.  Citing that this kid did it on my account.
But we couldn't find it anywhere locally in N.America.
So I paid for my encouragement to research the World Wide Web.

The next step was patience.  Because this thing was coming from the origin of the Transformers.  It was coming from Japan.
It wasn't going to take a day or week.  It was going to take weeks for this thing to arrive.

Even going away to Camp Kawarthas wasn't going to distract this kid from the excitement of mail-order delivery.


I thought that the toys were the same everywhere.  But in his research we discovered that there is a whole world of Japanese versions of these toys. More characters than what's available here.  And they are nicer detailed than the N.American versions.  The Megatron looked very similar to the version sold here (that's since been discontinued) in terms of size and scale. But subtle details set it apart.

The colour of the armour, the decals and overall finish were nicer.
And the instructions are of course in Japanese.
And the paper used for packing.