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Bandar Seri Begawan - "What!" he thundered. "This is an insult!" Who do they think I am?"

With that he threw the letter down and stamped on it in fury. He gnashed his teeth and turned red and purple in the face. The man could suffer a heart attack any moment now.

But his family watched him in silence. They were used to this ritual many a time over the years.

And as usual his wife comforted him. "Be patient Abang, the right job will come along soon one day."

The man calmed down for a minute but still glared about the room like someone who had just been terribly wronged.

"They are offering me peanuts. Do you think I am some sort of a monkey?" he demanded.

"They want to give me a mere $5,000 salary and housing and travel allowance and other little perks in addition. Do you think that I am going to fall for that? No way, sir. Ask them to go fly a kite," he hissed tearing up the letter vehemently in disgust.

"Do they realize how long I spent in the UK getting this string of degrees? Don't they know that I am one of the most qualified in Brunei for the job? Yet they do this to me!

"That is most unfair!" he declared flinging the bits of paper into the waste basket.

Ever since he returned from overseas after his studies many, many years ago he had been living with his parents.

He was then a promising young man. A bright future awaited him. He had high hopes. He then began to look for a job.

And innumerable job offers came and went. None to him was, unfortunately, suitable. Not one had come up to his expectations. Years rolled by.

He got married with the help of his father. He had three children and the eldest was about to enter university. Still he waited for the right offer to come along.

And whenever a job opportunity came he threw himself into a tantrum cursing and ranting. So life went on and it still goes on. There is no sight of a right job. How pitiful he is. Is there anyone to appreciate his ability and his string of degrees? Unfortunately none. He will soon hit 50. But how can he demean himself by taking a job beneath himself? But he will wait.

I relate this story to show how choosey some of us are. How high and mighty we hold our selves. This man perhaps will soon be a grandfather and yet he will depend himself on his father's construction business in which he would never dream of helping out.

A banker friend tells me a sorry tale. Seventy percent of the local staff are women.

But where have the men gone?

"We seldom have local men working for us more than three years. But the local female staff stay on," he said. "It has come to a point that it is a waste of time and money to train a local male staff because they soon leave to join the government or just leave, some preferring to hang about and do nothing," he added.

I asked a woman staff why she prefers to carry on with the bank after all these years. Her answer was revealing.

"I like the challenge. There is more gender equality. You are judged on performance. Of course, there is office politics and so on. But in the end there is a sense of fair play. I like that and mainly the job satisfaction," she said.

Then she mused aloud, "I wonder whether one day soon all the bosses in the commercial sector would women and the men be doing menial jobs around the office?"

Well, if the current trend continues, that could happen, I told her.

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