Can I get a tall cup of happiness.....

With some whipped cream...
And a li’l bit of chocolate drizzle...
Thanks...

I was watching the Lenscrafters' commercial with the ‘unconditional happiness guarantee’ and my first reaction was amusement.

I have never believed that happiness can be bought (or guaranteed for that matter). Reason why the two professions I can ever imagine being in both pay a pittance but usually give me oodles of happiness, one with some stipulated conditions (make sure a microliter is ONLY a microliter) and the other quite unconditionally thus far.

But that was when I was green and naive and closeted under the cloud cover of family in the next room or an o/n bus-ride away, a sworn "friends-forever" clique that loved you no matter what or a campus desi bunch in an alien land (read: whose lives revolved around you as much as yours around theirs ;)) that guaranteed taking you out for beer or hosting you for a well-cooked meal whenever you were low.

But when you’re single AND working in a foreign land and you’re sprawled in front of the very television that comes as close to the happiness guarantee as the commercial you are watching proclaims, you begin to agree that happiness does sadly (and may I say, thankfully) come in little bits of paper, also called the "dollar".

Since I base all my statements on fact ;), here’s my evidence...

I don’t feel like getting out from under the comforter and goin to work.... hmmmm, maybe I'll stop at Starbucks and pick up a mocha with their patented whipped cream. A surefire way to spring out of bed....

I couldn't spend an entire weekend without Bill M's Real Time! Are you kidding? An HBO subscription for 80 bucks a month to make sure you have a good weekend when your limited number of pals have nothing exciting planned [not to mention Sex & the City and Coupling at the touch of a button (disclaimer: if Comcast is your provider, 3 more and an interminable "One moment please")]

A few hours spent at the local B&N: unfortunately it ensures more than just a wonderful feeling – an upto-50 bucks “impulse” buy -- that book I always wanted, the CD I gotta listen to or that oh-so-fancy-I've-never-seen-before writer’s pen (isn’t that what pens are for?)

A co-worker comes up to you and says, ‘I’ve had a bad couple of days... The sun’s out and I thought today could be crepe day?’ Any day could be crepe day, and I haven’t exactly had a great couple of days myself. Sure!

The girl hiding inside me that occasionally cries out for the Rachel-Green-Carrie-Bradshaw cure-all - a cloth-shopping spree at the neighborhood mall, sometimes resulting in something as outrageous as the very floral, pink skirt hanging in my closet :) But as long as it’s not a 400-buck-pair of shoes (made merely to make the process of walking on the leveled, macadamized roads of Sam's land feel like mountain climbing -- now, if you're at EMS, that's a couple hundred worth spending), I am sure I’m still sane, a little disoriented yes, what with the bright spots of color, but sane, nonetheless.

For the weirdoes out there, the complete First season of Friends DVD: may cost 50 bucks but also unfailingly delivers 12 hours of unconditional cheer (now that’s a commercial Warner Brothers might want to lay their hands on)...

And when I am feeling especially spendy (or especially sad), a trip to the land of unadulterated joy (for the uninitiated, that would mean an hour-long, fifty-buck trip to NYC, short for the city-that-never-fails-to-pep-me-up).

So, can happiness be bought? Not really, but sometimes it does come dangerously close to counting on your wallet (or what’s in it, as the case may be ;)).....