[ Background Sounds ]
>> Harith Iskander: I'm known as the godfather
of Malaysian standup comedy.
Only because I started in 1991
and there was no standup comedy at the time.
In fact, there was no other standup comedians
for the next 12 to 15 years in Malaysia.
I was doing it alone.
Props to the Malaysian police.
Malaysian police are the most effective
in the world, probably.
You have the charge, arrest,
and payment system all in the same place.
[ Laughter ]
When I first started in Malaysia the majority
of the public had no idea what standup comedy was.
What the form was.
Admittedly when you do a show
in that environment you have to water it down.
My job as a comedian is to realise
where the fence is and push that fence.
So I do remember in the first five
to eight years whenever I did a show
and a corporate event the audience would look up
and then I'd start my bits.
And they didn't actually know who I was or what I was doing.
They'd think, am I the chairman?
Am I the CEO?
Am I giving a speech?
Then they'd start to laugh and they'd go, oh,
he's telling funny stories.
Any Asian will tell you in this room when you went to school,
you got your report card,
you hid it for three and a half months.
You hid your report card
until eventually your parents were like, hey,
your exams finished three months ago, where's your report card?
[laughter] Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, I forgot, I forgot [laughter].
And it does not matter what result.
You show them and Malaysian parents say, all right,
let's have a look here.
All right.
Science, 98 percent out of a possible 100.
98 percent.
All right.
What happen to the other two marks?
[laughter] Hmm?
Huh? What you ate the marks?
You ate the marks?
Huh? Huh?
How come our neighbour got a 114 [laughter]?
Well my time in Perth has become part of my standup
comedy routines and shows.
If you actually watch one
of my shows now I'll probably be doing it a bit later
in the show.
You know, as a Malaysian I'd never left Malaysia before.
Got off plane.
Got at arrival lounge.
Got into a taxi.
And I said, oh my god,
white fella driving taxi [laughter].
I said, wait man, wait man.
Let me drive.
Let me drive [laughter].
You sit behind.
You sit behind [laughter].
As a Malaysian I was not used to this.
Then we were driving along and oh,
white people doing construction.
Oh my god.
White people picking up rubbish.
Oh! What is this land called Australia?
What's going on?
And then I'm walking around and then I started to realise oh,
all right, you've got the same things.
You've got the streets.
You've got a little less traffic then there is in KL.
We have a mall.
We have malls, too.
You've got a mall.
Same kind of shops.
You've got the supermarket.
You've got the spectacle shop.
You've got the magazine shop.
Same shops.
Except one shop in Northbridge that I came across.
Black tinted windows.
XXX Adult Shop.
No this shop I had never seen in Malaysia [laughter].
I did not know what the shop was.
The windows were tinted.
It was adult shop.
Adult shop?
What is adult shop?
I was 18 at the time but I was afraid of the shop
because the windows were tinted.
I would walk past the shop every single day like,
what the hell's in this shop?
[laughter] Why are the windows-I tried to look.
I couldn't see.
Couldn't see.
Took me three months.
Three months as a young Malaysian lad to work
up the courage to finally have a look
at what is in this bloody shop.
I walked to the shop.
I remember it was a Friday afternoon.
I looked. Nobody watching.
Nobody watching.
I went in the shop.
Cling, cling, cling, cling.
Looked and all Malaysian students inside [laughter].
And one thing I realised very quickly
about Australians was everywhere I walked it was,
you know, g'day.
How are you?
Good Morning.
On the bus and the train and the shops.
Which is not a thing.
As Malaysians we don't do that.
As a Malaysian I'm like, why?
Why are you talking to me?
[ Laughter ]
What do you want?
[ Laughter ]
In Malaysia you ask somebody
to have you a good day you want something from them [laughter].
OK. I'm going to be honest.
When my parents first said, hey, you going to study in Australia
and all, I resisted it.
Only because, you know, I was 16, 17,
and I had all my buddies back in Malaysia.
Now I got to uproot and go to a different country
and start all over again.
And I resisted it big time for a long time.
When I eventually got to Curtin I took it upon myself
as a Malaysian that I actually decided
to hang out with Australians.
And that time there was a big Malaysian community but I found
that they hung out with themselves.
And the only reason I did this was not to be snobby in any way,
but I was thinking to myself, since I'm here for three,
four years, I don't want to go back home
and not know something different then from what home was.
So in terms of education I believe it's not just an
education within the walls of Curtin, what you get
from Curtin, but also the experience.
The life experience of living in a foreign country.
In this case, Perth, Western Australia.
But it was my first exposure to Australians
in a working environment.
Not just Australian but Italian Australians.
And I quickly learnt
that Italian Australians are much like Malaysians.
They scream and shout at each other all the time [laughter].
When they're not actually angry.
And that's what I tell students now,
especially students who go overseas.
And I say great.
Grab the opportunity.
But don't just think I've got to come back
with a paper and, you know, the marks.
Experience what that country's
about, the good and the bad.
[ Foreign Language ]
And I'm like is everything OK?
No, no, no.
It's all fine [laughter].
People who I work with in the corporate world, you know,
in the hiring, often say to me,
some of these kids, I want to hire them.
They're the top of their class, blah, blah, blah,
but they have no life experience.
I have performed in front of every prime minister
since my day, which is only three.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
What I am most proud of is not actually what I've done
on stage.
I've had some amazing shows handed to me.
The closing ceremony
of the Commonwealth Games in Malaysia 1999.
I hosted that.
And that was broadcast live across the world,
which I did not know at the time.
I found out later and I'm glad I did not know it was
live broadcast.
So that's massive.
I've performed in front of otters at the zoo.
The audience was there and there was an otter pond
between me and the audience.
And that was amazing, as well.
So a wide scope of experiences.
But what's made me most proud is I do remember one time I
was walking.
I was on my way to a friend's house.
I got out of the car and I got stopped
by a gentleman who said hey, Harith.
Oh, hey, how are you?
I'm your biggest fan.
And he launched into how amazing I was and how good I was
and how important I was and how he would tell my jokes
to his friends during lunchtime.
And he went on and on and on.
And I was just standing there going thank you, thank you,
thank you, thank you, thank you.
And then he got a bit embarrassed
because he wouldn't stop praising me.
And I would say thank you, thank you.
And then after 15 minutes I had a chance to speak
and I asked him what do you do, sir?
Turned out he's a paediatrician.
He's a doctor.
And not just a doctor.
A surgeon of children.
And there was an outbreak of Dengue fever,
at the time, in Malaysia.
And he was telling me about the children who had died
on his operating table and the children he had saved.
And then I felt so embarrassed
because of the 15 minutes he was praising me,
why I should have been standing there praising him
for saving children's lives.
I realised what I was to him was I was a release.
So once in a while he could come to a show of mine
or watch a video and just laugh
and then repeat my jokes to his friends.
And I, therefore, became important to him.
And I think that was-and this only happened
about six years ago-I think that was the moment
where the penny dropped and it struck me.
Oh my god, there is some value to what I do.