I once did a gig at an office Christmas party in the showroom floor of a friend’s father’s home appliance shop in the suburbs of Melbourne. It was to a much older crowd. Without a microphone. Or a stage. With the queue for the buffet behind me. Ronny Chieng Read Quote
I grew up in Singapore, and I went to Australia for law school, and after law school, I started doing stand-up comedy. Ronny Chieng Read Quote
What happened was, in my final year of university in Australia, there was a campus comedy competition, and I felt like it was something I could do. I won that competition, and I kept doing it, and I couldn’t get a job in law. So I just kept doing comedy. Ronny Chieng Read Quote
If you go to Japan, you have to take the train and go visit different capital cities. Just sticking to one city would be a shame, considering how easy it is to get around. Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto all have different vibes and sights. Ronny Chieng Read Quote
We were constantly traveling between Malaysia and Singapore, which is connected by a bridge at the southernmost end of Malaysia. In fact, when I was a child, I had to go between countries twice a day to go to school, because I was living in Malaysia at the time but attending primary school in Singapore. Ronny Chieng Read Quote
When I first came to Australia, one thing that struck me was how everything closed early. Singapore is very much a 24/7 place. You can get good food any time of the day – in the middle of the night, even. Ronny Chieng Read Quote
There’s a lot of comedy in being the outsider. You can say, ‘That’s weird. Why do you do it that way? That’s foreign to me. That’s pretty weird.’ Ronny Chieng Read Quote
My approach to comedy is that whenever it comes to me, I write it. With ‘The Daily Show,’ you have to write stuff every day, and that’s a new experience for me, to not only write on someone else’s schedule but a daily schedule. Ronny Chieng Read Quote
I’ve been seesawing between not doing too much racial stuff – because I’d rather be known as the funny comedian than the funny Chinese comedian – but at the same time embracing my voice and who I am and what makes me unique, you know, which is the racial background. Ronny Chieng Read Quote
