Excerpts

"hey guys,

i dunno if you guys share the same concern for the environment, energy conservation and the poor as I do, but an idea just popped into my mind for a business/charity based on those causes.

I thought I'd like to attempt to help people convert waste heat to do something useful around the house like dry clothes.

An initial attempt would be to channel the coolant from a fridge to a larger area that can be maintained and cleaned so that the clothes can be dried on it.

I reckon this idea will not be immediately attractive as the cost savings will be quite little - maybe under $100 a year? and the initial cost of labor and raw materials to set it up may be way above that order of magnitude (some survey will have to go into this).

There are also several technical and aesthetic/design issues to concern oneself with - whether we can come up with designs for each situation that is functional and simple enough to be of casual utility, and that will be the thing which determines if this idea takes off.

In this climate of tightening belts and of people looking for something worthwhile to do, we can take otherwise unemployed people (ourselves) and apply them to helping the poor whom a few dollars in savings would matter to.

It could serve as a springboard/source of experience to implementing ideas that involve higher tech, more complication and more cost e.g. I envision solar powered windows to absorb energy from the sunlight to power air conditioners, or an external system to aid in cooling the computer, which is becoming the central problem with computing these days (incorporating the home server with the home water heating system). It has the scope of utilizing some of our trainings - varun's business skills, chua's design training, and perhaps shamir could help us market the product using videos - getting the message across to the our target audience."

To Gabriel:
applaud your thinking that went into this. Am greatly encouraged that friends like you remind me of where i came from. Without people just trying to do something worthwhile in this life like yourself, we'd all be screwed (for want of a better term). Note to self: do something small but worthwhile this week and stop screwing around with selfish ambitions.

Cheers
Chua aka The Creature