Food: Art and Culture

I definitely consider cooking and food an art, even now you can enrol into a university and study culinary arts where apart from cooking you learn how to manage and administrate a business related to hospitality maybe a restaurant, a café, a hotel or a bar. In this way looking around the world is very nice to see how all this art and cultures of cooking and spices and ingredients from the entire world fusion, in different countries because of migration or because of marketing.  With food is really easy to view cultures other than your own because you have it in your weekly menu.

Let see:  A normal day in my life menu will be if I only consider dinners...

Monday: Peruvian dish cebiche, fish cooked in Lime juice and chilli

Tuesday: Pasta spaghetti Bolognese easy to make (Italian food?)

Wednesday to slacker to cook I will eat Maccas/Subway/KFC/ Junk process food (United States)

Thursday: Fried rice? (Chinese)  could be Malaysian, Thai, Vietnamese or even Peruvian style fried rice

Friday: I might go out, eat in a fancy restaurant could be anything, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, fusion? etc.

Saturday: maybe another Peruvian dish can´t forget where I am from.

Sunday: an Argentinean BBQ in my house with a German beer? Nice!!!

In this way saying how many cultures and way of cooking is around my life all this has influenced in what I eat, what I drink, what I cook and not just me, I am sure everybody because you just don't eat typical food from your country you always want to try other flavours other spices and if you like to cook, other ways other techniques of cooking. I am sure you can find a Chinese restaurant or a Mexican restaurant everywhere but they would not taste the same they will adapt to the culture of the country where it is.

The biggest example for me happen in Peru with Chinese restaurants.

My girlfriend is Taiwanese and she speak mandarin. One day I asked her what “CHIFA” means ? she say it's not a mandarin word , I say that's how Peruvians call to Chinese restaurants in Peru. Then I show her a menu with the names of all the dishes with photos and she couldn't recognize any: “that's not Chinese food” she said… awkward they all sound Chinese for me but taste different from any other Chinese restaurant I ever eat. 

Technologisation

I born in the late 80´s, my Dad in 1949, and my brother in the 90´s we are definitely form different generations and have seen technology change in several ways. In my case all what I study at Uni back in Perú using computers, programming, configuring routers and making systems models, everything have change. Now computers have different Operative Systems, The way to configure routers has change and there are new models of system development.  In conclusion I will never end studying. But if you think that is a big change in technology lets talk about what happen to my dad in his long professional career.

My dad is a Commercial Airplane Pilot with 43 years experience. One of the biggest changes in his career is that he depends from a computer now. When he start as a pilot everything was manual.

“I used to set up everything manual, now I give orders to a computer, is like playing flight simulator”

 That is something that change his career mostly because the computer replace what a human used to do. There was something called a flight engineer before, he used to do all the tasks the computer do now, before they were 3 people in the cockpit now there are 2 and a computer. 

With flight engineer

With out flight engineer (either case I don´t understand it) 

It doesn´t feel right for my dad but my brother that is studying to be a pilot in this new generation, is loving it. For him is easy going and easy to understand.

Because of this, there was a huge economy change in companies. They invest changing old airplanes for new ones and forget about flight engineer salaries. My dad have seen lots of flight engineers lose their jobs, because companies didn´t want to promote all of them and make them pilots or second officers, because there were not enough spots. “you can´t fit 3 if there is only space for 2”.

Following Appadurai's 5 –scapes we can say that Technoscapes bring about new types of cultural interactions and exchanges through the power of technology, which can now happen at unprecedented speeds. Technology, of course, is very close tied with the economy, which is constantly in flux and, despite our best efforts to manipulate, is wildly unpredictable and change every day.

References:

Rantanan, T 2005, ‘Theorizing media and globalisation’, Media and globolisation 2005, SAGE Publications, London, pp. 6

Appadurai, A. (1990) ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’, Theory Culture Society, Sage Publications, London.

Me

Hello, my name is Sergio Alva, I am an International Student from Lima, Perú, and I study Information Technology Security at Deakin University.

I decide to come to Australia after living and working in different places around the world doing different part time jobs or working in Information Technology as a systems engineer.

As a South American I love Football (real one)… I think they call it soccer in some places… for the moment I coach different soccer programs for schools and kids with Melbourne institute of sport, grasshopper soccer and in a senior Level with Deakin Women’s Soccer (Deakin Lions). Apart from coaching I also play in 2 different leagues; one is a friendly multicultural league and the other is the football federation Victoria league

To make it short I just want to say that; I love football, cooking, Cars, computers, Punk and latin american music J