Really Great Day (and tomorrow's column)

I am too tired to finish this post, so will probably post it on Sunday, but had an amazing day yesterday:

In the morning, I attended two presentations by IMF economists, compliments of Koc University's Economic Research Forum. The first presentation, by my buddy Ferhan Salman of the IMF's Strategy, Policy and Review Department, discusses a recent IMF paper on how emerging markets coped with the crisis. Then, Lorenzo Giorgianni of the same department (and of Turkey desk fame) went over the Fund's new mandate in the brave new world. Out of these presentations emerged tomorrow's Hurriyet column, where I will be going over Ferhan's presentation (and the accompanying paper) as well mine and Sumru Altug's (discussant of the paper- Koc University professor and ERF director) takes on it.

And then at night, I attended the season opener at Inonu, where my beloved Black Eagles, re-energized with the new acquisitions, demolished Bucaspor 5-1. It is true that the opponent was not very powerful, and that the real test will be against the Lazes on Wednesday, but still I was quite happy with the level of play. It seems that it starts to make a difference when you have at least 4-5 high-caliber attacking midfielders & forwards. Not only they play in better harmony with each other, it is virtually impossible for the opponent to guard against all of them. I think that is a key difference from the team from the first half. BTW, my perennial spammer had found my movie insights much better than my economic ones- I am wondering how she'll feel about my football (that's soccer for you, yanks) ones:)

And by the way, I met one of my few loyal readers in between the conference and the game...