¡Hola a todos! This week I will be writing about my past weekend and updates on my projects at Establishment Labs.

Highlights:

• Finally prototyping our solutions
• Finishing my IoT/Biosensor project
• The food options at El Mestizo

Lowlights:

• Guanacaste trip getting cancelled because of COVID

Weekend Fun

On Saturday our cohort went to Multiplaza Escazu, one of Costa Rica’s largest shopping malls. The mall was indeed impressively large, and it was filled with stores of many recognizable brands. The overall style of the mall closely resembled the ones in the U.S. Unfortunately, the prices in the stores also closely resembled the ones in the U.S. I didn’t end up buying anything because of that, but it was still cool to see such a flourishing mall in Costa Rica. After visiting the mall we headed over to El Mestizo, a dining area with a large array of different food vendors. They had vendors that served Asian food, Peruvian food, Carribean food, and European food just to name a few. It was honestly quite overwhelming to decide on what to eat because all of the options looked so good! After much thought I ended up getting a casado with freshly made chicharrones from a Costa Rican place, and a blueberry margarita from the Caribbean place. After we ate, we got trdelniks from the European place as a special dessert to celebrate Raniyah’s birthday. This Czech dessert consisted of a cylindrical pastry covered in cinnamon sugar and was filled with Nutella, strawberries, whipped cream and ice cream. It was very sweet and satisfying.

Multiplaza Escazu – looks basically the same as a U.S. mall

So many food options at El Mestizo

My chicharrones casado

Strawberry Nutellla trdelnik – complete with a small Czech flag

The next day our cohort returned to Escalante to eat and hang out once more. We first got some gelato and then played Uno and Monopoly Deal together as a group in Lolita. We then went to Amor de Barrio for dinner. This place was similar to El Mestizo in that it housed several different places to eat. I ordered birria tacos and we all had a fun time socializing. 

Gelato and games at Lolita

My birria tacos from Amor de Barrio

Establishment Labs

This week Vanessa and I finally started making prototypes of our solutions out of the materials we bought from Tips. It was a little challenging to do so however, because there wasn’t a dedicated prototyping space in the building. With some elbow grease and improvisation, we ended up being able to make prototypes of two of our ideas. However, when we actually tested them with an implant, they did not work as well as we thought they were going to. Although conceptually they worked, we realized that the main problems of the prototypes stemmed from one component. I believe we were still able to create good proof of concepts and validate our designs. Our next step would be to determine a proper material for the one component so that the prototypes could be fully functional. We had CAD models of different versions of the component created, and they will be 3D printed on the Formlabs resin printer in the office. I’m excited to test the deployment of the implants with our new parts next week.

For the IoT/biosensor project, I finally finished my biosensor technologies document and my list of potential biosensor features. This means that I have finally finished all of my assigned documentation that relate to the IoT/biosensor project. It was interesting doing research and looking at the unique biosensor wearables that currently exist on the market. I hope that my documents and findings serves as a great head start for when this project moves from the pre-concept to the concept phase.

That wraps it up for this week. We had a big trip to Guanacaste planned for this upcoming three day weekend, however, unfortunately due to COVID, those plans have been cancelled. We still hope to be able to take a day trip somewhere fun instead. Tune in next week to hear about my final week in Costa Rica!