I had a million and one ideas for new posts I wanted to do, but by now I've forgotten them. Ah summer...

During the last few months I've realized that my studies are exactly suited to my personality and to my interests. I get these epiphanies every once in a while, mostly they alternate with my end-of-the-year pity parties during which I feel that I've accomplished nothing and that what I'm doing at the university in no way contributes to the benefit of mankind. I guess the truth, as usual, lies somewhere in between.

One thing I really enjoy are the tidbits of information which will probably never come in handy but which, nevertheless, are very interesting. For instance, take the story of William Makepeace's mother, Anne Beacher Thackeray. She was sent to India to a pre-arranged (typically Victorian) marriage after being informed by her scheming family that her true love, Henry Charmichael-Smyth, had died. Little William Makepeace was but a year old when his father, Richmond Thackeray made the mistake of his life and invited the presumedly dead man to dinner. One can only imagine the ideas racing through the mind of young Anne, now a wife and mother. Compelled to stay with her husband by the social mores of the age, she supposedly nevertheless carried on a passionate love affair with her ex-fiance. Her husband dying conveniently a few years later, she married Henry and returned to England with her son.

Truth really is stranger than fiction.