Birthday Hike at the Getty View Trailhead

Marta emailed me at 10pm one night, saying that she had checked Facebook and realised that it was Zen’s birthday the next day. What…! The next hour or so was spent firing emails back and forth between Marta and I to organise something for a celebration. It was decided that I would make a card that everyone could sign, while Marta got some snacks for her.

Zen is obsessed with avocados, and the matryoshkas were part of one of the projects that we were working on. Not because I liked matryoshkas, nuh uh. *shifty eyes*

Also, I swore not to repeat the same mistake that I did for Ssen’s birthday card… but I did it again, even after reminding myself right before writing the words. If you notice the ‘d’ in ‘birthday’ has a leaf that looks very similar to the instroke of the ‘a’ after it, that was due to Ela’s suggestion of covering it up after we hurt our tummies laughing at what seems to be my severe inability to write the word ‘birthday’ properly.

A tired-looking Zen and the signed card at the end of the day. We even got Boss to sign it! Probably the best birthday card in the history of the office. Here is a picture of Marta embellishing a message, along with the Italian snacks she got Zen.

I think it was 6.30pm when Nano came up the office and asked if the rest of us left in the office wanted to go to on a short hike nearby. Of course we wanted to (though Nya had to stay behind for her ride home), and so Zen, ZHao and I found ourselves loading into Nano’s car at 7, getting stuck in ubiquitous LA traffic for half an hour, and then speed-walking up the gentle slopes of the Getty View Trailhead to catch the sun before it set at 8pm:

The hills have been ravaged by fires before, which accounts for all the blackened trees on the slopes.

You can see the Getty Center from atop the hike trail.

ZHao, Zen, and Nano.

Nano mentioned how some of these rocks could be really dated, since these hills were caused by tectonic plates colliding.

The sunset.

After that, we decided to go the shortcut down the hill. Which actually took a longer time, since Zen was wearing heeled clogs, and I platform lace-ups. Also, I think the both of us weren’t as daring as the two guys who propelled down all the steep slopes downhill. I passed my camera to Nano (hiking expert) in case I fell, and these were some of the pictures he took while waiting for us:

My why-is-there-a-camera-pointed-at-my-face face, which on hindsight, seems to be the role-reversal moment that I experience with some of my friends. XD