Travels, votes, forms ‘n’ beats
Well, I’m off to Spain again… Well, actually I’m already here, enjoying the 20 degree weather of Barcelona rather than the 0 degree weather of Montreal. I got here just in time for the Catalan elections on November 1 (ooh, an impressive 57% turnout! ;-).
On Monday, the day of my departure, I checked over the travel medical insurance policy I’d bought for this trip. I hadn’t really looked, until then, at the “pink form” stapled to the policy. It was a questionnaire asking about pre-existing conditions. Among other things, it asked if I had been to a doctor in the past 3 months (other than for a routine check-up), and whether I’d had any drugs prescribed in the past 3 months. All the question boxes were ticked “No”, but I wasn’t the one who’d answered them! I had obtained this policy over the phone (at the bottom, in the place of my signature was written “telephone submission”) and I was certain the agent had not asked me those questions when I bought it!
The worst part was the little message at the bottom, which said that failure to disclose would result in the entire contract being totally null and void… So, like the good uptight Canadian that I am, I phoned CAA to “fess up” to my doctor’s visit in early September, and the prescribed antibiotics for a sinus infection. Turns out it was good I did — the woman seemed very happy to hear a customer actually being honest — and she just updated my file with this info. She confirmed that indeed my policy would have been null, had there been a claim and they investigated my history… I was somewhat pissed off that they had not asked me these questions when I purchased the thing (I was told they will investigate why this did not happen). At least I noticed it before departure, even if “just”!
In other news: I was taken to a great show on Wednesday night at the Teatre Tivoli, by an Israeli percussion/dance group called Mayumana. They are something like a cross between Stomp and Blue Man Group. It’s a mix of “found” percussion, dance, singing, comedy and playfulness… It was exactly the kind of thing I should have been involved in. I also loved the way they “customized” the performance for the audience, with a fun rhythmic word-play number in Catalan. I don’t know if they’ve ever toured in North America, but certainly have in Europe and South America (especially Spain, where they’ve been all over for the past few years). [Well, turns out they even played in Toronto four years ago! In spite of what the reviewer says, I enjoyed them differently (more?) than Stomp because they are more diverse in what they do.]