Marilou had invited me to accompany her to an education conference, as she works for the Commission of Higher Education as assistant to a director. When I climbed into the car with them, I thought I would just wander around the grounds and make myself very small. This would explain why I had put on my plain traveler's clothes and flip-flops instead of the dress I had brought for such occasions. It's not that it was a black-tie event, but it still was more formal than what I was dressed for.
Turns out I was actually seated with them at the head table. Don't get me wrong, I have participated in official events a few times in the past, but I was always prepared for them. In that instance, I did not know what to do with myself in front of all these people - especially dressed as I was, say what you want, but wearing the right clothes can really bolster your confidence.
I also didn't know where I was supposed to sit or when I was supposed to stand. I felt quite awkward.
Worst thing of all, the director proceeded to do me the honor of introducing me officially during her speech as "a friend from Canada". I then had to stand up and felt the eyes of the whole room turn to me. I felt really inadequate in light of this unwarranted attention. People came to see me afterward, thinking that I was an official from Canada. I had to explain to them that the help I could provide them was quite limited (I could basically only help them find public contact informations for universities, not push their projects forward).
This could really have been avoided with a few words on what to expect at the beginning of the day. If ever you do happen to pass along an impromptu invitation to a traveler, or even just a friend, for a formal event, please do advise on the type of event and formalities to be expected. It will save both you and the guest quite a headache about decorum.
This being said, I am grateful for the opportunity to assist to the conference. It was really interesting to hear about how they are implementing outcome-based education and are aiming at improving the standardization of education so that exchanges with other countries and global recognition can become possible.
Showing posts with label Practicalities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Practicalities. Show all posts
Wednesday, 18 June 2014
Tuesday, 14 January 2014
Travel Insurance
In this day of age, I can't really understand why anybody would go about traveling without contracting proper travel insurance. I remember this travel horror story of a poor girl who had an accident the day before heading home. She was at a party and the handrail of the second floor balcony gave out. She fell and broke her neck. Due to the critical nature of her injuries, she had to be evacuated by air ambulance to the nearest country that could offer her proper care. She didn't have insurance. She had to pay for all the fees attached to her evacuation and her treatment, which quickly raised up to tens of thousands of dollars.
When I was younger I did not always contract insurance. I didn't think the cost was justified. Now, my position has quite radically changed. I couldn't possibly think of going away without it. Insurance is not that expensive when you weigh it against costs that could result from an accident or a sickness oversea. Granted, it remains an added cost to traveling, which isn't cheap to start with. Yet, in my opinion, it's an essential protection.
For me, it came as a no brainer to get insurance for the coming trip. In fact, it's one of the first details I set in my preparations. I tried to research the subject on the internet, but there really wasn't much information for my specifics. I needed insurance for a multidestination year long trip, for which the destinations were not set in advance. No matter how hard I looked I didn't find anything. Actually, I did find one site which required you to enter all your destinations and dates. For obvious reasons, it wouldn't do for me. It could be that I didn't use the right keywords, but still.
At the advice of a fellow traveler, I ended up calling my credit card provider. They have an insurance branch, so they set me up with the medical insurance I wanted. Normally, I might have wanted to obtain and compare quotes, but without information readily available on the Internet, it wasn't very convenient. Furthermore, I was satisfied with the quote I got from my credit card company, which came to roughly $1200 for the full year. I didn't take baggage insurance, but I am now reconsidering it and might add it to the contract.
Here are the main considerations that were on my mind for insurance coverage :
My question to you, do you automatically contract insurance when you travel. If so, what do you need to have covered by your insurance to feel protected?
Edit : When I realized just how much money I spent on equipment before leaving, I decided to get covered for luggage after all. The first representative of Visa told me they couldn't add luggage covering for this long. I knew it was possible, so I pushed the issue and had them check again. Turns out it was possible when combined to the medical insurance. This is a good example of why it's important to know when to accept a no and when to push an issue.
So adding the coverage for the luggage also tripled my coverage in other areas and in the end only about $200 was added to my original bill.
When I was younger I did not always contract insurance. I didn't think the cost was justified. Now, my position has quite radically changed. I couldn't possibly think of going away without it. Insurance is not that expensive when you weigh it against costs that could result from an accident or a sickness oversea. Granted, it remains an added cost to traveling, which isn't cheap to start with. Yet, in my opinion, it's an essential protection.
For me, it came as a no brainer to get insurance for the coming trip. In fact, it's one of the first details I set in my preparations. I tried to research the subject on the internet, but there really wasn't much information for my specifics. I needed insurance for a multidestination year long trip, for which the destinations were not set in advance. No matter how hard I looked I didn't find anything. Actually, I did find one site which required you to enter all your destinations and dates. For obvious reasons, it wouldn't do for me. It could be that I didn't use the right keywords, but still.
At the advice of a fellow traveler, I ended up calling my credit card provider. They have an insurance branch, so they set me up with the medical insurance I wanted. Normally, I might have wanted to obtain and compare quotes, but without information readily available on the Internet, it wasn't very convenient. Furthermore, I was satisfied with the quote I got from my credit card company, which came to roughly $1200 for the full year. I didn't take baggage insurance, but I am now reconsidering it and might add it to the contract.
Here are the main considerations that were on my mind for insurance coverage :
- Not needing to have preset destinations and time, basically open insurance for up to a year
- Having a coverage of minimum a million dollar (the one I got in the end covers up to 5 millions)
- Having the option of med evac in case no proper care is available on site
- Life insurance
- Coverage for the repatriation of the body in case of death
My question to you, do you automatically contract insurance when you travel. If so, what do you need to have covered by your insurance to feel protected?
Edit : When I realized just how much money I spent on equipment before leaving, I decided to get covered for luggage after all. The first representative of Visa told me they couldn't add luggage covering for this long. I knew it was possible, so I pushed the issue and had them check again. Turns out it was possible when combined to the medical insurance. This is a good example of why it's important to know when to accept a no and when to push an issue.
So adding the coverage for the luggage also tripled my coverage in other areas and in the end only about $200 was added to my original bill.
Wednesday, 13 November 2013
Creating a Will
If there is a topic that created almost has much waves as the announcement of the trip around the world, it’s no doubt the creation of a will in light of the said travel plans. This might seem like a needlessly gloomy topic, but it is a necessary one. Telling people about this – other than the one I was planning to name my executor – might have been a mistake, but I had been considering it since before starting to plan for this trip. It simply became a necessity for me now. Surprisingly and despite how smart producing a will is, the idea was sometimes met with an irrational reaction. Some people were under the impression that creating a will meant I thought I was going to die out there.
Truth is, if I was convinced of my impending death, I probably would not go on this trip at all. This is really just a precaution to protect my assets and make sure they go where I want them to go if something does indeed happen. Putting your head in the sand has never reduced risks or magically made problems go away.
More so, let’s consider for a second that life threatening accidents don't all happen overseas... That they can happen in your backyard, on your way to work, when you do sports, etc. I really should have created that document a long time ago. In fact, it was negligent of me not to do so before.
While creating a will is a smart move, the conversation that must follow is never fun. I suppose it has to do with forcing your loved ones and those who love you to consider something might happen to you. That you neither invincible nor eternal.
I don’t think anyone could blame me fore wanting to put my things into order before leaving for such an extensive amount of time. I just want to get rid of some of the clutter in my house, see people I haven't seen in a while and, yes, create a will.
The first step in this process is actually deciding whether or not you need a will. A will not only dictates the distribution of your assets, but names the guardians of your children, if you have some, and addresses how your remains are to be handled. There is also another document called a Power of Attorney that designates someone to take the decisions for you if you are incapacitated. In a Power of Attorney and in a Living Will, you can state what types of treatments you want or do not want to receive and you can name someone to take health care decisions for you in the event that you become unable to do so. Hard decisions, like whether or not to maintain life support, can tear a family apart. Those documents can facilitate such processes.
Now let’s say you have decided to create a will. Your next step will be deciding whether to write it yourself or to get counsel from a lawyer. In my case, I ended up deciding to go with a lawyer for a few reasons. First, I wanted my will to be done in a way that nobody could contest its content and second, I wanted my will to be easy to track down. Keeping a single copy in my safe at home, which nobody can access, would be quite counterproductive. When it came time to look for a professional, I received quotes ranging from $300 to $2500. In the end I decided to go with my family's lawyer, mainly so that the original document would be easy to track down. While this was a deciding factor for me, you have to figure out what is important to you.
To wrap up for today, I think there are few documents in adult life that are as important as a will. I’m still in the process of creating mine, so you can expect some more feedback in January as I will try to pass along other important information on the topic in case it could be useful to you.
Truth is, if I was convinced of my impending death, I probably would not go on this trip at all. This is really just a precaution to protect my assets and make sure they go where I want them to go if something does indeed happen. Putting your head in the sand has never reduced risks or magically made problems go away.
More so, let’s consider for a second that life threatening accidents don't all happen overseas... That they can happen in your backyard, on your way to work, when you do sports, etc. I really should have created that document a long time ago. In fact, it was negligent of me not to do so before.
While creating a will is a smart move, the conversation that must follow is never fun. I suppose it has to do with forcing your loved ones and those who love you to consider something might happen to you. That you neither invincible nor eternal.
I don’t think anyone could blame me fore wanting to put my things into order before leaving for such an extensive amount of time. I just want to get rid of some of the clutter in my house, see people I haven't seen in a while and, yes, create a will.
The first step in this process is actually deciding whether or not you need a will. A will not only dictates the distribution of your assets, but names the guardians of your children, if you have some, and addresses how your remains are to be handled. There is also another document called a Power of Attorney that designates someone to take the decisions for you if you are incapacitated. In a Power of Attorney and in a Living Will, you can state what types of treatments you want or do not want to receive and you can name someone to take health care decisions for you in the event that you become unable to do so. Hard decisions, like whether or not to maintain life support, can tear a family apart. Those documents can facilitate such processes.
Now let’s say you have decided to create a will. Your next step will be deciding whether to write it yourself or to get counsel from a lawyer. In my case, I ended up deciding to go with a lawyer for a few reasons. First, I wanted my will to be done in a way that nobody could contest its content and second, I wanted my will to be easy to track down. Keeping a single copy in my safe at home, which nobody can access, would be quite counterproductive. When it came time to look for a professional, I received quotes ranging from $300 to $2500. In the end I decided to go with my family's lawyer, mainly so that the original document would be easy to track down. While this was a deciding factor for me, you have to figure out what is important to you.
To wrap up for today, I think there are few documents in adult life that are as important as a will. I’m still in the process of creating mine, so you can expect some more feedback in January as I will try to pass along other important information on the topic in case it could be useful to you.
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