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FREE: Buddakan Dining Room in Chelsea, Manhattan

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Looking like the mansion scene in "Eyes Wide Shut" with an orgy of socializing rather than shtupping, this cavernous restaurant/bar is total trip for the senses. It features a massive, chandelier-feastooned central dining room harking from some Edwardian era (or a Hollywood set thereof), flanked by little dark nooks and crannies and passageways crammed with people drinking and schmoozing and shouting about the meaninglessness of life and 30 Rock. It's like being in one of the big ballrooms of the Titanic before it sprung a leak. Best of all, unlike most nightspots in Chelsea, there's no velvet rope and unhappy attitude that goes with it - probably because it is a restaurant, not a nightclub, and restaurants always need all the chompers they can get. A server said "We're in the business of hospitality." And he said it with a genuine smile. Whoa! They clearly have a great boss or they're on drugs. You can always spot a bad boss - it comes out

$22 Haircut with da works @ Jun Salon (Chinatown, NY)

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MULTIMEDIA : $22 'do with the works @ Jun Salon "It's just hair." This, from a card-carrying hairdressing salon owner. It's a statement that might freak some cashed-up coiffsters right out, and put others at ease - like me. After umming and ahhing at spending $65-100+ on a trim in Manhattan I thought, there must be a cheaper, yet choosier, way. I mean, look at our Asian hair - straight as the highway to hell and in any color you like as long as it's black - what's so hard about that? I decided to try the well-reviewed-considering (see yelp.com) Jun Salon in Chinatown. Jun is an unpretentious gal who reminds me of one of my favorite gal cousins. She says she use to do $105+ Uptown cuts before she went cheap'n'choosy - and many of her clients followed her, not minding having to pick their way along the cracked and cabbage-strewn sidewalks of Chinatown for their discount 'do. There is something twee (we use the word 'daggy' downunder) a

Cheap'n'Chocolatey: Galfromdownunder 3+ minute Vegan Chocolate Mug Cake

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This is my slightly healthier spin on the 5-minute Chocolate Mug Cake recipe circulating furiously around the internet. I say 3+ minutes because abandoning it in the nuker for 5 minutes can lead to burned bits - better to coax it gently to doneness ... here's me doing the dishes in County Kerry back in 1999 Galfromdownunder 3+ minute Vegan Chocolate Mug Cake ( with original, non-vegan substitutions indicated) 4 Tablespoons buckwheat pancake mix (or ordinary flour) 3-4 Tablespoons Splenda/Stevia (or sugar) 2 Tablespoons good cocoa (I used Fair Trade Organic unsweetened) 2 tbsp no-sugar fruit conserve (not in original recipe - I used Wholefoods grapejuice sweetened Raspberry spread) 1 glob of soy yoghurt (or 1 Egg) 3 Tablespoons almond milk (or regular milk/half&half) 3 Tablespoons grapeseed oil (or regular oil) Few chocolate drops/chunks (optional - I used 70% chunks because I like it dark) Few nuts (optional) 1 Mug Method: Mix dry ingredients in 1 mug. Mix wet ingredients in

NYC <$20 a pair: Dumpster Diving on the Upper West Side

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Score! (As we say downunder) MOVIE : Dumpster Diving on the Upper West Side, NY What's cheaper and choosier than finding a rococo chaise at the Salvos? Pouncing on a pair of apple green boudoir chairs turfed out with the trash! It was precisely the good fortune of fellow Aussie Sarhys Page and me after emerging from a Cheap'n'Choosy night at the Hudson Hotel . The hipper than thou Hudson - recently tarted up by Philippe Starck - turns hotel design on its head, with a pair of escalators bathed in a yellow light as the "stark" entrance, leading up to an impossibly dark lobby dominated by a dangerously low hanging mega-chandelier. (I need to publicly berate Mr Stark for placing mirrors in the ladies' restroom too high for anyone under 5-foot nothing). On this night I was carousing with the first person to give me a break in advertising Downunder, John Doorley, and budding Aussie actress Sarhys (pronounced Sar-reece). We were partly celebrating being

New York: Ducking overpriced workout gear at Daffy's

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THE MOMENT I found an impossibly cheap'n'choosy yoga class in Manhattan, the next task was finding cheap-not-cheesy workout gear. By cheesy, I mean the ubiquitous pastel pink, ice blue and minty green styles of the styleless triathlon world replete with arbitrary detailing. Chintzy inserts, piping and words like "Workout World" - for those who regularly confuse their sweats with their Sunday burka - who pays these "designers"? It's as annoying as those no-doubt all-male designers who insist on making pastel pink hiking pants for women. Oh yeah, give me some camel shit to smear on 'em in Egypt ... I also dislike the arbitrary ornamentation on running shoes too. They Inc. would tell you it's for technical reasons, but I doubt it. I have a pair of ASICS "neutral" runners recommended by the knowledgeable hasher who sold them to me. They look like a crazy paver sewed them. They're white and an equally mud-magnetizing pastel blue. Appare

New York: Downward Dog Days at a Buddha's price

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YESTERDAY I mentioned the donate-what-you-will daily yoga class at Laughing Lotus . I did my second session this week, as one can, when a class is affordable and you're paid a Northwest salary in NYC. The studio is on the third floor of an old building with an old lift and a big, cheerful orange and pink banner out front. The 1 1/4 hour 'community class', offered at 2.30pm each week day, is taught by student or "blossoming" teachers, as they are called. The suggested donation on the website is $5.50, yet I understand attendees donate between $0 and the standard class price of $11, depending on their capacity. The donations are directed each month to a charity of the school's choosing - it was the Obama campaign at one time, the Tsunami another. It's heated - great in winter - who needs Bikrim? It walls are painted with soft yet vibrant colors, depicting deities like Ganesha , "Lord of success and destroyer of evil and obstacles ... an elepha

New York: Chowderhounds, rejoice - $3.50

Welcome Skintsters, to Cheap 'n' Choosy. This blog was originally inspired by an article I wrote for the Eugene Weekly's Back to Campus Guide in 2005 . Eugene is the land of the sliding scale, bartering for babysitting and 1001 different ways to make tofu palatable. It abounds with sub-5-10 dollar options to make you forget you're stuck in Eugene, like the amazing Pizza Research Institute's Vegan Chef Special slice, $4 , or the Keystone Cafe's famous sesame oat pancake . Even $10 is a big night out there, so the hunt for the superlative yet sub-$5 life experience has become my own private Idaho, ever since leaving Australia in 1997 to travel the world on a folding bicycle . Since then I've been sharing my finds for the discerning yet frugal fashionista, foodie and funseeker in my general Galfromdownunder blog . But today, while partaking of a $3.50 cup of the dangerously addictive New England Chowder at the Lobster Place in Manhattan's Chelsea Market,