Pablo the Phone and the International Crisis of Sleep

I knew Thursday was already becoming dramatic before I had even left my bed.

The moment I opened my eyes and saw the time — six fifty — my heart nearly stopped. Not because the world was ending, but because I had missed Lunch with the Mayor and Fruitloop again. For two weeks in a row, Pablo the Phone had betrayed me in the middle of the night. One moment his battery looked perfectly healthy, and the next morning he was lying there completely dead, like a man who had spent the entire night partying instead of doing his one simple job: waking me up.

Naturally, Frank immediately turned this into a philosophical debate about sleep.

“The solution is simple,” the Mayor announced dramatically. “Don’t go to bed.”

According to him, sleep is entirely unnecessary. While normal people waste precious hours unconscious, apparently he prefers staying awake so he doesn’t miss any exciting activity happening on Earth. He spoke about sleep as though it were an inconvenient hobby people should really reconsider. Fruitloop, however, defended beauty sleep with calm dignity, reminding him that some of us need rest to remain functional human beings.

I appreciated the support.

Especially because the Mayor was behaving as though my absence had emotionally destroyed him. He claimed he had spent an entire hour alone with Fruitloop the previous week and aged six hundred years from the stress. Honestly, if anyone deserves an award for dramatic suffering, it is Frank.

Still, once my missing meeting had been thoroughly investigated, the conversation moved toward the real criminal in the story: my mobile phone.

Or rather, Pablo.

Or Enrico.

Or Stefano.

The phone collected names throughout the morning like an actor collecting fake passports. Frank became deeply suspicious about Pablo’s nighttime behaviour. If the battery died while I slept, what exactly had the phone been doing all night? Sneaking out to discos? Dancing recklessly in São Paulo? Secretly living another life after midnight?

By the end of the conversation, my phone had somehow transformed into a handsome but unreliable soap-opera villain.

And honestly? It suited him.

The funniest part was realising how emotionally attached we all became to this fictional personality. Pablo was lazy but charming. Completely unreliable at waking me up, but excellent at giving directions. In fact, I admitted that he had recently accompanied me to the theatre because I had gone alone and needed help finding the address. My phone guided me there in English, which still amazes me sometimes. I can walk through a city I do not know while a tiny voice inside my mobile calmly explains where to turn.

Frank immediately pointed out that technically I had not gone to the theatre alone at all.

“Your phone was your date,” he declared.

Which only became worse when he asked whether Pablo had at least bought me a drink during the interval.

Unfortunately, no. Typical bad-boy behaviour.

The theatre itself became another beautiful part of the conversation. I told them about the play, which celebrated a famous Brazilian singer whose music travelled far beyond Brazil. Frank even recognised the song immediately, proving that somewhere inside every German man there is apparently an old international radio station permanently switched on.

That discussion opened the door to something deeper: how people see Brazil from outside the country.

I found myself explaining that yes, Brazil has football and samba and carnival, but we also have theatre, poetry, music, literature, and culture that moves across oceans. Sometimes people reduce Brazil to postcards and stereotypes, and I wanted them to understand how much more exists underneath that surface.

The Mayor, naturally, twisted this into another joke.

“So only Brazilians are nice people?” he asked dramatically before pretending to leave the meeting forever.

Fruitloop rescued the situation immediately with the perfectly timed phrase: “Well rescued.”

That is one thing I love about these lunches. Nobody is trying to win conversations. The jokes move gently around the table like passing cups of coffee. Even misunderstandings become part of the fun.

And there were many misunderstandings.

At one point we discussed accents and language differences — British English, American English, Brazilian Portuguese, regional accents inside Brazil itself. I explained how American pronunciation often feels easier for me because I studied English in Florida years ago. British accents sometimes feel more difficult depending on the speaker, although I kept repeating that kindness matters far more than pronunciation.

Language itself became part of the story.

I would stop searching for a word, and nobody rushed me. The Mayor teased me occasionally, Fruitloop translated gently when needed, and somehow the conversation always found its way forward. Nobody at that table speaks perfect English all the time, which is exactly why the atmosphere feels safe.

Then the meeting drifted into the official theme of the morning: playful thinking.

Fruitloop introduced an imaginary scenario where she entered a meeting wearing bright purple shoes and announced that everyone must solve problems backwards. This eventually turned into a flooded office emergency where — according to the Mayor — the only truly important thing was saving expensive shoes before the water reached them.

Not the computers.

Not the furniture.

Not the office itself.

The shoes.

And somehow, ridiculous as it sounded, we all completely understood the assignment.

Fruitloop later asked one of my favourite questions of the morning: “If playful thinking came to dinner, what food would it bring?”

Immediately I imagined a colourful Caesar salad. Purple lettuce, little tomatoes, olives, crunchy croutons, and shredded chicken.

The phrase “shredded chicken” unexpectedly became an entire language lesson.

“Shhh,” Frank coached patiently.

“Red.”

“Shred.”

“Shredded.”

For several minutes we sat there practising the word together like children learning a magic spell. It was silly and warm and strangely comforting.

That is what Lunch feels like most of the time.

A group of people wandering happily between philosophy and nonsense.

One moment we were discussing beauty sleep and dead phone batteries. The next moment Frank was telling us about The Magic Pudding, a strange Australian children’s story about a pudding that magically regenerates every time someone eats it. Fruitloop imagined warm stew for rainy weather. I spoke about wanting to visit Africa someday after seeing the peaceful garden Frank once showed me.

Compared to noisy São Paulo, that quiet space looked almost unreal.

Grass. Calmness. Silence.

The kind of place where people probably sleep responsibly and phones behave themselves.

By the end of the meeting, the Mayor gave me strict instructions never to disappear again. Fruitloop reminded me to charge Pablo properly. I promised both of them that next Thursday I would absolutely be awake.

Hopefully.

Because somewhere between the laughter, the accents, the theatre stories, and the shredded chicken, I realised something important.

Sometimes playful thinking is not about solving problems at all.

Sometimes it is simply about sitting with people who allow your mind to breathe a little softer for an hour.