When I was accepted into the Fitness Challenge I faithfully promised the Winter Festival management and personal trainer Richie Lambert I would stick to my exercise and nutrition programme while on holiday in New York.
I even suggested Richie set a programme for me to complete while I was here.
I didn't expect to be taken seriously.
Nevertheless, I am a person of my word, so, here I am in New York - one of the food capitals of the world - and I'm frequenting the gym.
Still, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra, if I can make the Fitness Challenge work here I can make it work anywhere.
After airline sagas, the first night of my holiday was spent in an Auckland airport hotel with bad buffet food.
My vision was martinis in Manhattan with an old school friend; my reality was coffee in Mangere.
The bulk of the time was spent on the phone, on hold to travel insurance company, interspersed with bursts of press-ups, squats and planks on grubby carpet.
There was no point getting upset about the flight delays. Life has taught me there are times when you have choices and times when you don't. End of story.
Finally the insurers booked me on a flight landing at JFK Airport late on Sunday - it's fortunate most lawyers are not good at taking no for an answer. We like to get our own way. If I lacked tenacity, I'd have spent my birthday stuck in an airport.
I made it to the Big Apple and here in the city that never sleeps I demanded Tamara get out of bed, get dressed and head out on the town - to celebrate my birthday. I reminded myself Coco Chanel observed Champagne is the drink of the complexion. I'm sure Catherine Zeta-Jones herself was quoted as saying she enjoys a glass of Champagne too.
Anyway, surely power walking to cocktail bars counts as exercise?
My birthday was brilliant and I relished spending it in one of the world's greatest cities.
Virtually all museums and galleries in New York are closed on Mondays, so after a decadent brunch and coffee, we sauntered though the city, starting with Fifth Avenue and Tiffany's (time for a Holly Golightly moment), on to Trump Tower, St Patrick's Cathedral, Central Park, Times Square and the New York Public Library, where Carrie was supposed to marry Mr Big in Sex and the City.
It was a spontaneous and thoroughly enjoyable self-designed walking tour that should also help my fitness. I'm actually writing this column from the superb library - well worth a visit.
We found a quaint Portuguese restaurant in Soho for dinner - the food was delicious and even healthy. The restaurant came with its own live theatre in the form of a bar patron holding forth about her life including regular Botox shots and her boyfriend's insistence she get breast implants.
I'm quite fond of volunteering my opinion (another lawyer trait) so it was hard to resist getting my oar in. She may not have understood me though, as most people here can't understand my accent.
Meanwhile, at the gym I was distraught to discover 10km on the exercise bike took me far longer than at home. It transpired the bike was calculating the distance in miles. By the end I had travelled 16 miles ... more than 25km. The music in the gym is interesting. There's the usual techno funk head-pounding stuff but along with that is Elton John and Frank Sinatra. I love Sinatra but I associate it with jazz bars, not the tedious slog of the cross-trainer.
The lightest "free weights" are 10kg so I've had to step up to a new challenge.
On the plus side, the bikes and cross-trainers each have a TV attached so I can engross myself in ice hockey and news channels (predominantly focused on the Middle East conflict and Arnold Schwarzenegger's love child).
In addition to the arduous sessions in the gym, I've walked for miles. From Greenwich Village to the Upper East Side and everywhere in between, I've pounded the pavements.
I reckon walking 50 or more blocks to get from A to B, then back again has got to almost equal a gym class, even with coffee breaks. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a workout in itself for both mind and body. Walking is a fantastic way to immerse myself in everything the city has to offer.
I like the New Yorkers too; they speak their mind, love their food, stay up late and are wonderfully eccentric. My kind of people.
On almost every corner are pretzels, hot dogs and policemen. So far I've managed to keep out of trouble with all three.
