Long time, no see!

As you may have noticed, Joker-to-the-Thief has been silent for months now but it is being brought BACK TO LIFE. (back to reality...)
The reason for this long silence is that both of us were too busy. No…. Really.!
One of us was working on his Harvard PhD thesis while raising kids, and the other was studying for a highly selective civil service competitive examination (known as the Agregation in France). The good news is that our break from the blog was not totally unwarranted – since to our own amazement, we both passed.

So now we are BACK - we owe it to our faithful readers as much as to ourselves to resume our discussions on France and the United States from our cross-cultural perspective.

Hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we do. And please, don’t hesitate to step in and leave your comment.

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PS: Incidently, I have always been told that the non-English syntax of "long time, no see" found its origins in an American-indian expression:

The 'OED New Supp.' cites the oldest use in literature in 1901 in "31 Years on Plain" by W. F. Drannan. 'When we rode up to him (an American Indian), he said: "Good mornin. Long time no see you".' It is used in Harry C. Witwer's 'Love and Learn,' 1924 (p. 73)

But apparently, it is of Chinese origin:

The Simplified Chinese is 好久不见 ('hao jiu bu jian' or 'ho noi mou gin' in Cantonese) which literally means, "very long-time no see".

(Wiki source)