Pokemon fatigue-ish

I think I can finally say that my Pokemon playing has finally started swaying somewhat. I think it's more to do with very little I have left to find currently within the Alpha Sapphire game. I'm starting to backtrack with Pokemon White version at the moment but I've yet to find anything that I can import across to AS via Pokemon Bank. So really it's taken me about 4-5 months of non-stop playing with AS to get a near complete set of Pokemon WITH exclusive legendaries for nearly each generation. That's all thanks to this 20th anniversary thing this year where they distribute a creature each month. The best thing about it though is that it's practically for nearly every generation up to gen 5 I believe. So by the end of this year I'll be nearly up to date to have nearly everything in time to just obtain the creatures for Sun and Moon exclusively.

I've also found myself not having the same amount of time playing it at home though which I've found odd. I'm not sure whether it's because we've become a bit more relaxed after dinner or what it is exactly. I basically haven't fully played properly since my Gastroentiritis illness a few weeks back. I also find myself playing it less even at work! (of course you didn't hear that!).

There is a slight silver lining to that though, I never realised originally that I never fully carried on playing White after the post game. So I can at least explore the untouched environments now to make it a bit more interesting. I might even be able to catch some more to import along the way.

In other news I'm still waiting on the house. The current owners are still on holiday until the end of next week. I'm still hoping that everything is still ready before my Birthday. That's the date Sofia gave for when she would be leaving the apartment. Ideally I don't want to be spending my Birthday just on a big move, it just means I've wasted time off just for that. I know it's a good thing in terms of saying "hey! I have a new house for my Birthday!" But it's not quite the way it should be. I'd at least hope by that time we've already moved in with the essentials. I just hope the next few weeks things start happening!

My thoughts on leaving the EU

I normally don't talk about politics since I find it so overbearing and depending on what type of subjects they are on about. I feel this subject is pretty relevant that effects nearly everyone on a large scale however.

So this morning we found out that we are no longer part of the EU after the huge referendum vote. Normally this wouldn't be something I would feel too bad about or would just go along with. Since being with Sofia though it feels this changes a lot. I voted to stay although I had a feeling this wasn't going to happen since there was a strong impression people wanted to leave. From what I've seen this morning it appears that London and Oxford were the strongest for voting remain, obviously that didn't help overall.

I currently feel unsure about the situation as I'm not sure how to take it and most of my thoughts are towards Sofia rather than myself as it effects her more than it does for me. It also concerns me since we're so close to signing the papers for the house within a matter of weeks now. I just feel this year has been hard work enough as it is just with trying to cope with my living situation and not knowing what the remainder of the year will bring.

I honestly can't see things going bad for us. Sofia has been here for a while now in a stable job and things won't drastically change straight away. We have a Prime Minister who announced this morning that he'll be leaving towards the end of the year so things will remain as is for the moment. Even by the time he leaves and whoever takes over next will still have a lot of cleaning and changing to do. It just means that's all we'll hear for the next year or so.

As an overall thing though I would say it makes sense for us to be away from Europe. I always had the impression we were never true Europeans in the typical European sense. It's our way of style, our mannerisms and maybe our way of life/culture. I guess it's also that we aren't connected by land to mainland Europe and it gives that feeling of disconnect somewhat. Plus we remained with the pound sterling and never transitioned to the Euro currency. So those small factors I felt still made us different than standard Europe.

As with anything though, only time will tell. Methinks the wedding ring will have to happen sooner if the country gets worse. Again I still feel it's unlikely, I just hope the time becomes right.

Using Pokemon Bank

I caved in and decided to try out Pokemon Bank in order to move my previous monsters across from the other games. My original idea was to wait until Sun & Moon came out in November. By then I would already have played X & Y in order to obtain anything up to date.

I started looking into how membership works for Bank. I knew it was an annual fee but I wanted to know whether it used the typical subscription method whereby you make your first payment and then it auto renews in a years time. I wanted to sign up for Bank and start using it and then cancel the membership so that it would remain for the rest of the year. That way I wouldn't have to worry about the auto-renew.

Ideally that's how I thought it would work. It turns out it's slightly simpler. You basically make your payment and you have that remaining for the next 365 days. That's basically it from what it seems. It would be up to you whether you would be interested in renewing once it's finished.

Now for the next part - usability. As far as organisation works, it works just as well as it would for Alpha Sapphire. I can move grouped monsters around and I can move them to either my games boxes or with the ones stored on a server. It's as simple as that really.

The only gripe I have is with the Poké Transporter app. This is used primarily for the Black & White series of games. That I have no problem with, my problem is that you can only transfer 30 at a time and ONLY with Box 1! Why only one box!?

So essentially my migration progress currently works like this:

• I can only transfer 6 pokemon per go in order to migrate from Diamond version to White. This in itself involves a mini game in order to move them across at 6 per time. The mini game itself isn't too bad once you get the hang of it.
  
• From White, I have to always arrange the next 30 I want to migrate into box 1. I then save and come out of the game and then boot up Poké Transporter.
  
• Once done I have to swap with my current game for Alpha Sapphire and boot up Bank. I then have to organise those recently imported beasts to go into the game from the 'transported' box that exists in bank.
  
•  In order to migrate more I have to go through the same rigmarole back to White version by organising those boxes in-game and then using Transporter again afterwards.

So generally I don't think there's no better time like the present for when I started using this. I don't have a major amount to migrate but I have enough to complete my collection immensely. I still say that Wonder Trade played a huge part as well. Technically you could complete a full collection using that method alone.

At least now it means once I get Pokemon Y version (I'm hoping to get that as a Birthday present) I have nearly the majority of creatures to be caught up with the current generation of creatures. Then by November I can import further into Pokemon Sun without the hassle of feeling I would need to catch up.

Granted I know it defeats the purpose of collecting, but when you've had these for so long and that there are now constant methods of moving these across to different generations I'm all for it. It absolutely annoyed me when they couldn't do this for the Gameboy games coming across to the Gameboy Advance.

This is also the ideal year since its the 20th anniversary and Nintendo have been plenty generous when it comes to distributing out legendary creatures once a month. In fact they've been able to more than a few a month if you keep a lookout on the pokemon website. What a boost!

No news is good news?

A week hasn't gone by where something hasn't happened for the house which is what I consider good news. Most of the past few weeks have mainly involved the bank's feedback in regards to their checks and so on. The solicitors (lawyers) though have been a bit more lax on that front. It's nothing too drastic but it's funny how it has to work with chasing.

I can honestly say though that so far so good within this past month that the general process for buying a house has been straight forward. I've still felt quite good about the whole thing. I haven't felt doubts. I think me and Sofia are at that stage where we just want to move in there now.

Sofia also managed to sort out her current rented location to inform the agency that she's ready to move out. We gave them an estimated date for July 19th which is typically my Birthday. The agency apparently already have someone ready to let the place so that seems to be in good order as well. So for all we know we could be sorted by at least the end of this month hopefully.

I checked with the solicitor earlier on via email and that seems to be going ahead sometime next week hopefully. As far as I'm aware this is the main paperwork which involves getting the deed to the house so I'm hoping this will be our final stop. Again it may take another week but at least week-by-week we are making progress.