Simplicity itself using [cpan://threads].
#! perl -slw
use strict;
use threads qw[ async ];
use Thread::Queue;

my $Qin = new Thread::Queue;
async {
    my $input;
    do { 
        chomp( $input = <STDIN> );
        $Qin->enqueue( $input );
    } until $input =~ m[^Q(?:uit)?]i;
}->detach;

my %events;

while( sleep 1 ) {
    if( $Qin->pending ) {
        my $input = $Qin->dequeue ;
        last if $input =~ m[^Q(?:uit)?]i;
        ## Process input
        print "Got: $input";
    }
    ## process timer based stuff
    if( exists $events{ scalar localtime } ) {
        ## Processing event 
    }
}
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