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The ticket is booked and hopefully, the bus is ready because I'll be taking a short trip to Leeds today. It's roughly 2 hours from Nottingham and will be the longest trip I've taken since I travelled from London to Nottingham. 

I've left Nottingham a few times but that was just to work at neighbouring towns in Nottinghamshire that are a short commute from Nottingham town. Today, I'll be leaving Nottinghamshire for the first time since I got here. 

I'm making this trip to see some of my closest friends who have been in the UK for a while. We meet up with each other annually and this year, we're all in the UK, so we'll be meeting here. 

For what it's worth, our meetups aren't a scheduled event. However, over the years, we seem to always find time to hang out with each other and just be around each other. 

I guess our need for physically being around each other comes from the fact that for the best part of five or six years in our formative adult years, between 2007-2013, we all lived together at different stages or maybe it's because we all love each other. 

Anyway, the point is that no matter how busy our schedules get, we always find a way to make time to see each other. There's always a bit of drama as you'd expect from a gathering of different people but there's no ego and it's all love. 

The last time we were all together in one place was at my wedding in 2022. Since then, we have all branched out to live our lives and grow as individuals. Fast forward to today and all but one of us have moved to the UK. 


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Out of the lot, only two of us are married. When I and my wife landed in London, we stayed at the other married one's place and he was awesome. We've made pre-plans to host them at our place as well when they make time to visit Nottingham. 

Today, two of my closest friends are staying in Leeds and I'll be going to visit them. I am quite excited because I haven't been with one of them since 2022, the year he moved to the UK. 

Life has taken on us different journeys, shaping us all into different people but we have ensured our friendship survived. We enjoy each other's company and always help each other in times of need. It is not a perfect friendship but it's what we've got and we like it like that.