GE2025: Son of Liu Thai Ker, this PAP new face in Aljunied GRC knows what it’s like to give up on your dreams

He also said that it boils down to them having different callings in life, much like how his father contributed to Singapore as an architect and urban planner while his grandfather, the prolific artist Liu Kang, contributed through the arts.

Growing up, like most other youth, he himself was “super interested” in music, recalling the hours he spent as a teenager looking through compact discs at music stores Tower Records or HMV.

He listened to a wide range of genres, but it was the driving beat and uplifting melodies of electronic dance music to which he was particularly drawn.

“When I have trouble concentrating on work, listening to a beat that is quite consistent helps me focus a bit more,” he said. “And also, the melodies are a bit more uplifting, so it kind of helps my own mood.”

So interested he was in the genre that he became a part-time music disc jockey at parties, taking lessons in his early 20s on mixing music and how to become a DJ.

“You do get a bit of satisfaction when you put on a song and suddenly, the number of people on the dance floor doubles or triples in size. There’s a certain magic to that,” he said of the joy of spinning the turntable.

That was when he briefly contemplated pursuing a career in music, before being dissuaded and taking up auditing work instead. He eventually went to work in the family business.

Seeing that he comes from a well-to-do family background, I wondered if he would understand some of the day-to-day difficulties that constituents may have. 

It would not be a disadvantage, he said.

“If you’re just relying on your background to connect with someone, I think you definitely get part of the way there. But I think real connection also takes hard work,” he added.

“I’m not trying to ‘fake’ where I am, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t help you to figure things out. This is the problem you tell me, I have some ideas, let me check, let me call, let me figure it out. I think that that’s just as important as well.”

MEETING HIS WIFE

On his personal life, Mr Liu said that he follows the English Premier League and became a fan of the Tottenham Hotspur football club from a young age simply because he saw their match by chance on television. 

“And I went, ‘Oh, okay, I guess this is my team now’,” he said.

He has been married for 10 years. 

In 2012, his male friend had asked someone out for a date, but the prospective date agreed to it only if it was in a group setting. 

Mr Liu’s friend thus took him along, while his friend’s date asked another woman to accompany her. That other woman was whom Mr Liu later married.

They became “serious quite soon after” that group date, Mr Liu recalled.

“So we’ve been together for more than 12 years, been married for 10 years,” he said. Their two friends on that group date did not end up together.

His wife, who is a veterinarian by profession, is the reason why, although he grew up among family members “who weren’t hardcore animal people”, he now has seven pets – two dogs, two cats and three birds.

All of them were sickly rescues that his wife took home and nursed back to health.

“It never gets easier,” he said when I asked about the emotional toll of adopting one sickly pet after another. However, he finds comfort in knowing that the animals are in his wife’s very capable hands.