[3][4] Lim was born on 6 June 1961 in Muar in the Federation of Malaya,[5] the eldest of eight siblings in a Malayan Chinese family.
His childhood dream was to be a policeman, so he became a constable in the Royal Malaysia Police in the 1980s after completing his Malaysian Certificate Examination.
However, the low pay rates and weak state of the Malaysian ringgit meant that he could not share his income with his parents.
[9][10] He was later transferred to the department's Perth headquarters in 2017, and was handed the responsibility of assisting multicultural Asian groups.
[7] Lim speaks ten languages, including Malay, Mandarin Chinese and Indonesian.