paradigm shift

i'm currently reading the book A La Carte: Food and Fiction edited by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard and Marily Ysip Orosa. it's a collection of short stories that deals with food. Reading this book makes me hungry for pancit molo, nilubak, dumplings and other mouth-watering delights.

one short short story featured here is Hanging Rice by Carlos Cortes. it's about puso (rice cooked in heart-shaped octahedron woven out of coconut fronds), a Cebuano way of cooking takeout rice that are sold by hawkers. he is wondering why he never came across puso while he is in manila where rice are cooked the conventional way. i liked the last paragraph of this story which goes:

"It was a revelation, and the implications of which still boggle his mind. Puso therefore isn't quintessentially Filipino: how can it be when it's unknown in Manila? Or this: Manila's racial memories are imperfect; her people no longer know how to make hearts of rice; they have given up many things once considered essential."

ang galing di ba? food pala evokes many emotions to different people; for a few, food is religion. i haven't finished reading the book but i'll recommend it to people who knows how to appreciate good food and good fiction. for its price (Php 195), it's like eating in your favorite carinderia where food is cheap but you end up gastronomically satisfied anyway.

back to Hanging Rice, its author was described in the endnote as someone who works for PAL and has written two books of fiction, but "hasn't written anything much as 911 has sent him into a paradigm shift." i vaguely remebered this phrase from my high school Earth Science subject in MaSci. Can anyone tell me what paradigm shift means?