Buenas tardes!
Hope everyone is off to a great week! This past week was my fourth week working at MicroVention and the company began the validation process for a production line they are transferring from California to Costa Rica. I was in the clean room the majority of last week seeing exactly what this process looks like and helped out wherever was needed. I was tasked with taking pictures of all the rejected units that came out of the validation process for documentation purposes. Basically, I would grab a rejected unit, read the note describing exactly why it got rejected, ask the corresponding operator to show me where this defect was located, and finally take a picture of this defect under the microscope. I created an excel sheet to keep track of all the rejected units and a folder with the corresponding images. Due to the nature of rejected units during the validation process, I will have to continue working on this project this week.
I also learned how to edit existing documents, which I found out is referred to as “redlining documents”. We have to edit documents in review mode, which tracks the changes in red and underlines them to make it easier for reviewers to see the modifications. Thus, people use the term “redlining documents” for this process, having a draft and then a clean copy once the edits have been approved by the corresponding department representatives. Redlining documents takes some time, as you have to use the right verbiage, respect the template of the document, and ensure the formatting looks good after the edits have been made. It is very interesting to see all the work that must be done to have documents edited and released in the online database. I knew that large medical companies had to have everything well documented and justified, and now I’m finally learning how this is achieved.
Over the weekend, my friends and I decided to make a very spontaneous trip to visit Volcán Irazú. We planned this trip the day before after learning there was a public bus from San Jose straight to the volcano, about a 2-hour drive with a few bus stops included. We left San Jose at 8 AM and arrived to Irazú at around 10 AM, stayed there for around 2 hours until getting on the bus at 12:30 AM. Even though we were only there for 2.5 hours, this was plenty of time to look at the volcano, take pictures, walk around the crater section, and finally eat some pastries before heading back. Here are some cool pictures of the volcano!
It wasn’t until we got back on the bus that we realized the bus stopped at Cartago rather than San Jose, so we had a slight detour on the way home. For reference here is a map below.
While we were in Cartago, we decided to stop by the Ruinas de Cartago and the Basilica de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles. The historical ruins were very pretty, and the basilica was even more beautiful. This was a great unexpected experience, and we had fun visiting Cartago. Afterwards, we took a public bus from Cartago back to San Jose, which took around 1 hour. Here are some pictures we took while in Cartago!
Overall, this was a good week and had a great time over the weekend exploring more of Costa Rica. Hope everyone has a great rest of the week!