The Return of Marcus

To all those who lived and worked in Korea with me previously, it's likely that you had an enounter with the old Plus Academy assistant stick-man, Marcus. He was Rob's close Korean buddy and he was with some of us for random times, such as Kevin Dueck, who experienced Marcus running toward him in a Jimjillbang on his second night in the country.

As you may have noticed from my previous post, Marcus tracked me down via this very blog and I was able to meet up with him today for lunch. Marcus' life has changed quite a bit in the last couple of years. He is now married and has a 15 month old baby girl! Not only that, but him and his wife are expecting their second child in June. His daughter is the cutest little thing. I thought I wanted to steal a Korean baby before...oh my god!! And when she bowed to me, the teeny little kid baby bow to say hello...I think my heart melted! She was obsessed with staring at me and making faces throughout the whole lunch. She is SO cute!

I was able to have lunch with Marcus, his wife, and his baby girl today at a place called Fishers Market, which is an all you can eat buffet that had things like Chinese food, Sushi, Pizza, Korean dumplings, cheesecake, ice cream, etc. We at all of it, it was amazing.

Marcus, who is working as a Radiologist in a hospital, was also able to 'score' me some Tylenol 3's for John. John has been sick for the past few days with an ear infection slash ruptured ear drum. He's in a lot of pain and when we went to the hospital to sort it out a few mornings ago (just before his ear drum ruptured, when the pain was the most severe) the doctor prescribed extra strength Tylenol for his pain. Absolutely ridiculous. This doctor was an ENT (ear, nose, throat) Specialist and he looks in his ears and says, "Yep, for this 6'4" dude, I'll give him 1 Extra Strength Tylenol to take every 8 hours". Every 8 hours is actually what it says on the side of the package.

Anyway, I've now given him some T3's and he's sleeping like a baby. Which is nice, since he hasn't slept in about 3 days.

The other unfortunate event was that our school hadn't applied for medical up until about a week ago. Before John was sick, I was pushing them to apply, because it's in our contract that our employer provide us with medical coverage. Not only that, but as of 2006 the Korean goverment instituted it as a law that we be provided with medical coverage as well. Anyway, of course, we get the ball rolling with the medical, but not soon enough. We ended up going to the hospital about 5 days before our medical will kick in and we came away with a $150 medical bill. Beautiful. I walked into work that day and handed my boss the bill. He complained, but he paid it. I think he realized that it's not my fault that he forgot to apply for medical 3 months ago when the school opened.

Anyway, I think John is gonna come around in the next day or two. I know that he's getting better when he starts making fun of me again, which resumed today, so I think we're on the up and up.