Life in transit

Airports are strange places that elicit equally unusual human behaviour.

- MARC WILSON

At Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington we use Microsoft Teams, and if I forget to close the app on my personal phone, calls to my work number come to wherever I am.

That's how I ended up having a delightful chat with an 88-year-old gentleman who had tried to call me at work to chat about a recent Listener column on music. He ended the call saying he'd seen me in an airport some years ago but didn't want to bother me. I then joked I'd write a column about airport behaviour, so here it is.

If you google “psychology of airports” you might get the same AI summary that I did: “Airports, as liminal spaces, evoke unique psychological responses due to their transitional and overwhelming environment.”

“Liminal spaces”? In short, “liminal” means “in between” and, unless you work in an airport, or you're Tom Hanks in that movie about the stateless dude who had to live in an airport, they are indeed places of transition. The late Douglas Adams, author of