Events

Conversations with Communicators talk series II: Crossing Cultures with Comedy

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Date:

10 Sep 2018

Time:

6:30pm – 8:00pm

Venue:

Lecture Theatre 2, Yasumoto International Academic Park, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Speaker(s):

Mr. Vivek Mahbubani

Biography of Speaker:

Vivek Mahbubani is a Hong Kong-bred bilingual stand-up comedian performing in both Cantonese and English. Having been crowned the Funniest Person (in Chinese) in Hong Kong in 2007 followed by his victory in the English category at the Hong Kong International Comedy Competition in 2008, Vivek has had the opportunity to take his sense of humor all over Asia including Hong Kong, China, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, Manila, Bangkok, Sri Lanka and India.

Having been ranked as the top comedian in Hong Kong, in 2014, the World Famous Laugh Factory in USA ranked Vivek as one of the top 10 comedians in their Annual Funniest Person in the World Competition. In 2015, he was handpicked as one of the comedians to represent Asia’s best in Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s inaugural “Comedy Zone Asia” shows. In 2016, he was featured in Comedy Central’s first ever “Stand up Asia!” shows.

One of Vivek’s passions is reading and his favorite book is Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Oddly, his favorite colour is hot pink.

Enquiries:

com@cuhk.edu.hk

Synopsis of Lecture:

Cultural diversity in a global city is important, and learning to not only accept but appreciate our differences is something that will let people come closer. Instead of finding certain cultural habits odd or even problematic, sometimes shifting our perspective can shed a whole new light on the matter.

Stand-up comedy does exactly that. Instead of saying what is right or wrong, it looks at everything from a different perspective and finds the funny angle, so we put aside our personal biases and laugh about our differences.

As one of the most successful stand-up comedians in Hong Kong and the region, Vivek Mahbubani will talk about comedy as an important form of communication to touch upon sensitive and cultural issues, allowing us to discuss often out-of-bounds or taboo topics that we may deem insensitive to even bring up.