Welcome to The Second Act

By Sandy Burgham   Like most-mid lifers I swing from thinking I should live like there’s no tomorrow, to ensuring I am making prudent choices that might see me through another 30 to 40 years. So as I was sauntering along in a carefree manner to get coffee at the airport recently, wearing what I thought to be boots of

by Sandy Burgham   I’m really trying to get with the social media programme like, “normal people” but I just can’t seem to get the point of it. Until around seven years ago, I wasn’t even on Facebook, but fearing that I was heading to 50 and being left behind, I hired a pointy-headed friend who made a living up-skilling

By Sandy Burgham     I am mopping up my degree this year with two papers taken for sheer enjoyment, one of them being the history of NZ popular music. By now, I am well used to being the oldest one in the class, but this particular paper has me considering my age. Aside from the fact that my classmate

By Sandy Burgham     The conversation goes like this. Young person: “I don’t really know what I want to do with my life.” Parent: “Do what you love.”   This is both helpful and unhelpful, but what usually kills any potential in this conversation is the chaser, thinly veiled as good “practical advice”, which is a lecture on financial

by Sandy Burgham   I noted with some interest a new research report out of the UK, and picked up by media in NZ, that women start to feel invisible as they age. Really? My friend in her mid-50s has indeed complained for some time that she increasingly notices people not noticing her, particularly in cafes and retail outlets, where

by Sandy Burgham     I may have been the only one scribbling notes while listening to — namedrop alert — President Obama at that fancy schmancy dinner recently. While his observations on leadership were insightful, the one that has stuck with me is about when to give up power, when to stand aside to let younger, more relevant voices

by Sandy Burgham 1928/29 Hiroshima. My mother Michiko Burgham (nee Sado) with my uncles – Chikao and Nobuo – on either side of the Buddhist Priest, and a family friend to the left. Not pictured is my Uncle Muneo who just recently passed, he would have just been born at this point.   When I am in Hiroshima, my heart

by Sandy Burgham Hurrying my husband along recently as he avoided going to the DIY store, I grabbed my keys and iPhone and shouted out, “Oookayyy, let’s go!”   While he remained stubbornly silent, a clipped British voice responded, somewhat eager to please: “I’m ok if you’re ok”! Turns out, I had inadvertently activated Siri, the iPhone personal assistant.  

by Sandy Burgham I was both intrigued and a little saddened to hear that the most popular course, ever, at Yale is a recent addition to their curriculum. “Psychology and the Good Life” is a basic happiness course that teaches young ones how to be happy and flourish. Around a quarter of the student body has enrolled in it. It

by Sandy Burgham I am half Asian, half Pākehā. But this is a fairly recent thing. I was born to a Japanese mother, and until say, 10 years or so ago, I had always thought of myself as half-Japanese. When kids at school found out Mum was Japanese — a fact of which I was, and am, extremely proud —