Ever since I landed in Toronto I have
been asking people about things to buy from here. Also where to buy from.
People told me to wait for the Boxing Day. I did. But finding Toronto quite
expensive as compared to India, I had my doubts about Boxing Day sales. Also as
the Boxing Day came nearer I didn’t see many flyers or excitement in people
around.
My route to and from office
everyday includes going through Eaton Centre – the largest mall in downtown Toronto.
As the Boxing Day neared discount boards started coming up on stores. I and my
roommate Yogesh waited on for Boxing Day expecting increased discounts. While browsing
through the banners every day we figured there’s something called a boxing week
sales where-in the sales start and end before Christmas. And then there’s sale
on Boxing Day again. Also we found that in case of electronic items there is an
online sale starting the night of Dec-24. The weekend before Christmas we
decided to do some shopping as some of the deals looked good to us.
On 24th when we talked
to our office mates they said that during Boxing Day there are huge lines and
that people start queuing up from as early as 2-3 AM. None of the folks we
spoke to were actually interested in Boxing Day sales and kind of scared us. We
were undecided as to what we should do.
It was 25th – Christmas.
We found the roads almost empty. Surprisingly almost all the shops were closed.
We were told this is what is going to happen on Christmas; but knowing
Christmas is the biggest festival here we expected something. It was a dampener.
We had coffee at one of the few opened outlets and came home little
disappointed. I started checking online deals. I wanted to buy Xbox 360 and
found the Boxing Day in-store deal online. I showed it to Yogesh as well. We
browsed the site(s) and found that delivery was within a day or 2. So we
decided to order online. As I finished ordering online he changed his mind. He said
he would buy it the next day in store.
On Boxing Day Yogesh woke me up at
6 AM. We went to BestBuy and he bought Xbox 360 there. Then we came back home
to drop it; and wen t back shopping. There was hardly any crowd and we walked
down the road. We were surprised and wondering if this is what queuing up is
all about. We went to Eaton Centre and started visiting the stores looking for
things we could buy. As noon approached the crowd started increasing. We
checked out many stores and Yogesh did most of his shopping; while I didn’t do
much. We decided to pack lunch and go home. We would have our lunch at home,
drop the packets and come back for more.
When we came back the place was
fully crowded. It won’t be wrong to say that this was the biggest crowd I had
seen in my entire stay in Toronto; in fact I hadn’t seen half a crowd before in
Toronto. Almost all big shops had queues outside. Some of the stores had pretty
long queues. We didn’t enter any of those shops, but we saw what Boxing Day
sales meant to people here. We did some more shopping – this I did most of the
shopping. There was a huge queue for billing as well. It was nice to see people
standing in queues patiently waiting for their turn. Almost everyone had some
packets containing stuff they had already bought. We were exhausted by then;
legs were paining as if refusing to stand or walk. We decided it was enough for
today and returned home around 6 PM after having another coffee.
More than 10 hours of shopping
totally exhausted us. At Eaton Centre people were sitting on floors, benches,
stairs, anywhere they could find a place; everyone having several bags with
them. We had our share of bags as well. Overall it was a wonderful experience
being part of the Boxing Day shopping. The body is yearning for sleep as
tomorrow it is back to office…
