I was taking my daily walk around the lake in my new housing complex, when I met my sister on her bicycle. She had just come back from her Tai Chi classes. We had moved to that new development for longevity's sake, because of the fresh air and where we hope to be free from noise and other pollutions.

"So you are bicycling now?" I asked her.

"Yes we have to adopt a new life style to keep fit," was her reply. "There are lots of exciting things to come in the future and we have to live long enough to see it all happen."

"Why worry," I commented, "Mother will soon be 97 and auntie Aline is 93, it's all in our genes, so we may live longer than we would like."

"No, she said, "that what we always thought, wasn't it? But longevity really depends on the food and the lifestyle. And maybe also the magic potions we drink. The health supplements now so much on display at the drugstores may have their share too. Haven't you read in the papers, that the minister of Health has said, that he is going to distribute good food? He promises that by the year 2018, Indonesians will have grown to an average of 1.75 meters a 0.10 increase of the average at present. It's not in the genes, I tell you, it's the food. If that is true, we soon will have our basketball players who can slam-dunk the balls in the baskets, just like the Harlem Globetrotters."

Wow, that is exciting I thought So, soon our future tennis players do not have to add a few inches to their rackets like Michael Chang does. But then I panicked. What if my own grandsons and granddaughters become so tall. Wouldn't that mean that I'll a stiff neck while talking to them?

But my sister replied: "Well you will get a stiff neck anyway, because we will get the highest tower in the world in Jakarta. And may be we will have cross-eyes by then for looking at the longest bridge. As for you grandchildren, do not worry, give them a chair and ask them to sit down when they talk to you."

"But don't forget that we are in the process of shrinking because of osteoporosis, so we will need a footstool for them so they can get even lower. Anyway I feel sorry for Mother, because she always boasted about the longevity gene in her family. Her grandmother, her aunts, they all became so old, by why are they mostly women? Oh, by the way I was just thinking that Napoleon and Deng Xiao Ping may not have been fed well by their parents that's why they are so short."

"Right," my sister said, "and Helmuth Kohl probably has got the right amount of Frankfurters and Berliners from his mother!"