Like secret pop superstar Hannah Montana, Ms Elisha Tan leads a double life. She spends her days on her laptop in her San Francisco apartment, toggling between emails and meetings as a developer programmes manager at Meta. At night, the 38-year-old steps onto spotlit stages in dimly lit bars, facing a room of strangers armed with nothing but a microphone and her wits, hoping to make them laugh. Being a stand-up comedian is not the most natural job for Singaporeans, who often have a reputation for being strait-laced and rule-abiding.Ms Tan recalled spending much of her childhood and teen years in a rigid classroom environment, where cracking jokes was often quickly condemned as disruptiveness. "Because of that 'naughty' label, many of us learn to suppress our funny sides," she said, adding that being funny was also typically seen as "more acceptable" in boys than in girls."I was called 'chor lor' (Hokkien for rough or uncouth) and told I was 'too much' many times growing up."The way she sees it, adults and authority figures in Singapore tend to classify class clowns as problem kids to be taken in hand. "I don’t think we've historically nurtured comedic voices or really valued comedy as a culture, especially for women."