Yamaha

I can remember the days when Yamaha was a motor vehicle company, churning out thousands of Japanese cars per annum, in that sudden amazing splurge of industry that occurred in Japan in the fifties/sixties. 

The first Yamaha piano I came across was in Queenstown.  I was touring with the NZ Opera Company in one of their piano tours (a very much cut-down version of La Boheme, for half a dozen principals and no chorus) and came across this baby grand at the venue we were using.  It looked marvellous; it wasn't anything like it looked, and for some years afterwards I thought that Yamaha pianos were likely to be rubbish, as this one seemed to be.

However, there came a time when Yamaha got things right, and their pianos came within cooee of being as good as the famous old European names, like Steinway, even though the way the pianos were made was entirely different.

Afterwards, Yamaha turned to electronic keyboards and all sorts of other electronic musical devices, (such as the Yamaha emx5014c case for their stereo mixers). Now they're a brand name trusted in all sorts of circles, as you can see from these videos. 

Cities in NZ

While searching out some information on Northland, NZ, today, I found that the idea of what constitutes a 'city' in New Zealand is very loose. Some places seem to be self-proclamed cities, and others were cities, but became something else when there was a reformation of the districts.

However, New Zealanders confusion about what constitutes a city is nothing compared to what some overseas sites think are cities in the country.

Wikimedia Commons has a page named Category: Cities in New Zealand.
In this list we find the villages of Akaroa, Bluff and Port Chalmers, and the towns of Lyttelton and Mosgiel. The latter two are at the very least outer suburbs of bigger cities (Christchurch and Dunedin) and the former three have similar status.

On another site, Big Daddy Data, the Bay of Plenty is listed as a city. Considering that the Bay of Plenty is a conglomeration of little settlements, mostly independent of each other, this is peculiar.

A site called C2: Cities of New Zealand includes Queenstown as a city, but it appears to be written by a couple of bods with limited understanding of the area. Queenstown may be on the way to being a city, but I'm not sure that it's quite got there yet. The site also claims that Dunedin has 'Lousy weather much of the time.' Obviously a limited understanding. It also manages to include Blenheim, Greymouth and Hokitika as cities. Rather suspect information here.

A last example is a site called Mongabay.com, which helpfully gives the estimates of various cities throughout the country as at 2005. These have obviously been worked out by some computer somewhere that doesn't know how to round off figures. It also hasn't been programmed to eliminate places that are under a certain population figure. This one includes the cities of Dannevirke, Gore, Huntly, Kaitaia, Matamata, Waiheke Island (?) and more. Enough said. Don't believe everything you find on the Net.

Michael Hill: Golfer

So Michael Hill Jeweller has become Michael Hill Golfer, building a top-notch golf course in his backyard - literally. His recently completed Hills Golf Course is already rated to be one of the best golf courses in the world.
Hill is making a new kind of name for himself. Not content to offer just an international violin competition each year, he’s now succeeded in getting the NZ Golf Open held at his new course for the next three years. This is a substantial coup, especially since the NZ Open hasn’t been held in the South Island since 1985.
Queenstown, which is just up the road from Arrowtown, where the Golf Course is situated, is increasingly become the playground of the rich and famous. Already it has to be regarded as the number one tourist town – in the South Island at least – and international cricket games have taken place there for the last few years. On top of that, an enormous amount of building development is taking place, increasing the population of what was little more than a village a few years ago substantially.
But back to the subject of golf. No doubt some of the players at this new course will be using Ping golf equipment, Ping accessories and Ping apparel. Ping – which I must admit, seems an odd name for golfing equipment, has been creating exceptional signature merchandise for more than 40 years.
I’ll probably be sticking with ping-pong.