Caveat: Waiting Rooms in Famous Hospitals

Like old times, I am at the cancer center. I have my first-annual follow-up PET scan, a fairly involved affair, but just as always there is a lot of time to be killed sitting in waiting rooms, and so I decided to post this blog entry from my phone. as I did so often last year.
I am struck by how many nations are represented here. . . although Korea is so homogeneous, this cancer hospital is not. I have heard Chinese, something from India, French and English in the last 20 minutes.

Caveat: 줍는 사람이 임자다

This is an aphorism from my aphorism book.

줍는 사람이 임자다
jup·neun sa·ram·i im·ja·da
pick-up-PRESPART person-SUBJ owner-VERB
The person who picks [it] up [is] the owner.

“Finders keepers.” This seems strange to me only in that normally to VERBify a noun like “owner” (임자) you attach the copula -이다. This example is only attaching -다, which seems like a logical contraction but I confess I’ve never seen it before and it seems a little bit extreme as a contraction. But in any event it makes sense.
picture[daily log: walking, km]

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