I've never been the world's most enthusiastic flag-waver. It can divide as well as celebrate. But there is a time and a place.
The time was 7am, the place - Mission Bay, Auckland.
I was runner 2495, ''fine tuned'' and raring to go in the Waterfront half marathon. It was the last in this year's Auckland series. I'd missed the rest, what with it being the other side of the world and everything.
But I was there for the grand finale, sporting my new Welsh dragon running top.
Mild patriotism played a small part but this was a strategic move of which Owain Glyndŵr himself would surely have approved.
I calculated that it being New Zealand, there would be a smattering of Welsh immigrants in the crowd who would see my sweat-stained top as a rallying cry to cheer me on and trumpet the homeland.
It sort of worked. I counted five and a half. There were four Come on Waleses, one Wa-ales and the half was a woman who turned to the person next to her and said with lukewarm interest: ''Oh there's someone from Wales.''
By my reckoning I was the first Welsh finisher from an admittedly tiny field. Jonathan who moved out from Cardiff a few years ago was just behind me and, well, I didn't look too closely to see if other fellow travellers had out-performed me as that would have spoiled the story.
What has struck me during my whistle-stop trip around New Zealand is the recognition factor. Not of me - I haven't had so much a squeak of an autograph request - but of Wales.
In so many countries around the world, if you say you're from Wales/Cymru it can lead down a blind alley of ignorance.
I have often used the celebrity card for a bit of context. The home of Shirley and Tom has been a reliable fall-back.
I refuse to deploy the horrendously predictable ''not unusual'' line here. But believe me, it was a close-run thing.
In his heyday, Ian Rush was a regular and now it's Bale, though his retirement is a little worrying on and off the field. Hal Robson Kanu's shelf-life, for all his Euro 2016 trickery, was short-lived.
And for a while, Ryan Giggs was a handy reference point. But right now, that's, er, gone a bit sub-judice.
Soon, I hope very soon, it'll be female stars like Jess Fishlock who can enter the mix.
And then there are the politicians. Up to a point. For all his significantly elevated profile during the pandemic, I suspect few outside the UK would be able to identify Mark Drakeford as leader of the Welsh Government.
His no-frills approach, lauded by many, lambasted by others, is certainly more post office than box office.
My greatest failure was in the US. On a family trip, when we told a man from Seattle where we were from, the conversation led on to a discussion about whale-watching, with him failing to see there was even a stick in existence, let alone getting the wrong end of it.
But here in New Zealand, it's very different. Long-standing rugby ties play a part but so do the strong connections dating back to the early arrivals from Europe.
In the spectacular mountainous playground of Queenstown, William Gilbert Rees is celebrated with not one but two statues as a pioneer and first settler.
And nearby I stumbled across a more low-key celebration of Welshness. In the lakeside town of Glenorchy, a park bench pays tribute to local ''hospo'' legend, Welsh-born Eileen Todd who died in 2021 and was renowned, among other things, for serving hot toddies to exhausted skiers. Not much call for that back home, although it might be an idea on the synthetic slopes of Pontypool Park.
There are a lot of matching place and street names too and in the middle of nowhere I encountered a couple from Nelson, the Kiwi version. I explained I came from a town not too far from its namesake. They misunderstood and excitedly thought I came from Nelson itself. So, a bit awkwardly, I went along with it. But that's for another column (sorry, not sorry).
It's at long last well-documented that well before the Welsh and other Europeans arrived, the Maoris were here first. Though for too many years, that was shamefully overlooked. Take just one example in Turangi, which has an estimated Maori population of 62 per cent. In the 1960s a hydro electric programme drove a industrialised coach and horses through Maori rights and destroyed sacred sites. Decades later, it finally resulted in compensation and a government apology.
Reading the monument inscription, the word Tryweryn flashed through my mind and another 1960s act from thousands, though not a million, miles away.
Cofiwch Turangi, a friend observed, annoyingly quicker than I could.
But my standard-bearing around New Zealand is now almost up.
To mark the occasion, I've had a swift half in Wellington in the self-procIaimed only Welsh bar in the southern hemisphere. If a second one sprouts up somewhere it'll be one heck of a pub crawl.
On the shelf of the bar, among a collection of familiar Welsh memorabilia, I spy a young, tightly-trousered Tom Jones adorning Green Green Grass of Home.
For all my half-imagined, half-marathon heroics, it's clear I've got a long long way to go to fly the flag quite like Tom.
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