 Hi, my name is Pochay. You can call me Miss Pochay if you want. So again, I'm Pochay for the adults. Good morning as well. Good morning adults! Good morning! Very good. Thank you very much. Welcome to the launch of the rice book for kids written by Miss Norma Chikiamko and of course published by Anvil Corporation. So this will be fun filled, hopefully hour and a half, fun filled hour and a half and we will not only launch the book but toward the end we will have storytelling sessions and games for the kids. Are you excited about that? What about for our adult friends? Are you also excited about that? Very excited. Okay, that's good. So to get started, let's get started with a day. Let me call on Mr. Gene Hadwell. He is the head of the department's CPS here at Erie. Thank you very much. Good morning everyone. Hello. Excited this morning? On behalf of the International Rice Research Institute, it is my distinct honor to welcome you here this morning to this important launching of the Rice Book for Kids by Norma Chikiamko and published by Anvil Press right here in the Philippines. Erie is pleased to be the locale for this launching as well as to source of lots of information and many of the photos within the book's pages. Called Cannon in Filipino, Nasi Mountain in Malaysian, Gohan in Japanese, Baok in Korean, Muton in Mandarin, Rose in Spanish or 1500 names pointed out in the book. Erie believes that it is important to get the message out to our young people about the importance of rice. I think this book speaks to an important audience. As future consumers, producers, or even as scientists working to improve the crop, we need you to get kids excited about rice like you guys right here. The book's 32 pages are loaded with facts about rice, how it is an important part of our culture, how it is processed, and what it takes to produce the crop. All written in simple, easy-to-follow style in addition to some yummy recipes and creative illustrations by Martin Malabanan aid in introducing rice to our younger audience. More than 26,000 people visit Erie annually and more than 17,000 of these, 66% are students. And many of these students are elementary age. Like our guest here today represented by the Brain International School right here on campus and the local Christian School International and the Bergong Salang Elementary School. So, welcome all of you this morning. With so many kids who are in a target audience of this book visiting Erie, I'm sure that the initial 100 copies consigned by the bookstore next door will not be staying on the shelves for very long. So, welcome again to all of you. Let's get on with the launch. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Hetul. Again, Mr. Jean Hetul is the head of the communication and publication services of the International Rice Research Institute. Kids, would you like to give Mr. Hetul a round of applause? Thank you very much. Let's continue, shall we? Of course, again, the book is the rice book for kids. Again, it's written by Miss Norma Chiktyamko and it is available at the bookstore. So, hopefully after the day, if you'd like to purchase a book and if you'd like the author to have it signed as well, please feel free to visit our bookstore. Okey-dokey? All right, so let's continue. Of course, this lovely book would not happen if not for our author. But to introduce our author, Ms. Karina Balaskos. She is the Assistant General Manager of Anvil Publishing. Let's please give her a round of applause. Good morning, everyone. This is the rice book that we are launching today. This is actually a first because most of the children's books are story books, right? Story books are read to you or you read them and they are fully illustrated. There's lots of pictures, nice pictures. So what we tried to do at Anvil is to produce a book that would tell you, that would give you information, not necessarily a story but different sets of information about something that's so common that we take it for granted, right? Do you all eat rice? Yes. Okay, and sometimes we take it for granted because it's every day, it's there on the table but we don't know how it is grown, where it comes from, how old, how many people are eating rice, how long have we been eating rice. All these questions about rice will be answered by this book. And we worked with an, aside from the author who did the text, we worked with an illustrator to make this more interesting for children. So it's a combination of photographs and art by illustrator. And this is a first because we'd like to be able to also make children interested in research. You know what research means? Really? What does research mean? Anybody? Research. What do you do when you research? Okay. You find out more, oh, you're raising your hand. Justine, come on. Your idea of research. Go, Justine. Good boy. When you need to find out what's something, when you need to find out what's more, internet or Google, to add something to that or it was raising his hand. So we want you also, as early as possible, we want children to also learn to find out things about things for themselves. Because normally you just ask a question and you hope that the adult around you would tell you the right things, right? But if you know how to do it yourself, then that makes you more independent. And critical, you develop also critical skills in the process. So we don't want only stories or story books for the imagination. We also want books that will help encourage research and critical skills in children. So at this point, I would like to introduce the author who painstakingly did the research for this. And a lot of it, understandably, was done here at IRI because this is the International Rise Research Institute. And she, we go a long way back. We've done food books. She ran the food magazine. She started it and ran it for over 10 years. I think about 12 years. And she still writes for the Philippine Daily Inquirer and makes recipes that are featured in the newspaper. So this is painstaking research and written in a manner that children will understand. So let me call our author, our star for this morning. She's behind me here. Norma Chingkyamko. First of all, I would like to thank IRI and the officers and staff for hosting this book launching here in the premises in this very beautiful place. It is such an honor and a privilege to be here and to be with the scientists who are so well-renowned like our national scientist, Dr. Vergara, who is here now in Yakunonich's presence. And of course, Jean Hetel and all our other scientists who are here. And of course, the children for whom I wrote this book. Thank you also to Anne Will for having faith in me. They trusted me to come up in a book that's both informative and entertaining. I think children, you would like to know more about rice. So do you know how many of you know what are the different colors of rice? You know? Okay. Yes. Yes. What others? Yes. Correct. Brown. Correct. So that there's also black. There's also black rice. And there's also violet rice. Purple. Yeah, purple rice. Like the color of ube. We have rice that color also. So rice comes in the different colors of the rainbow. Just like people. Yes. Yes, orange color. Orange. When you put herbs in it, the white rice becomes orange. You paint orange. Yeah, very nice. Yes? Red rice. And what other colors? Yes. See, so there are many, but have you eaten those different colors of rice? Have you eaten the purple rice? Yeah, it's good. And sometimes you make it into rice cakes. Yeah. Yes. Brown rice is very good for the health. Maybe Erie can make blue rice next time. White rice. White rice. White rice, yes. That's also good. And the rice you like. White and yellow rice. Yes. That's great. Sometimes rice can be sweet. It can also be savory. It can be salty. It can be spicy. If you put ketchup, if you put chilies, it can be spicy. It's called ampaw. It has like sugar. Different kind of rice. Into flour. So with this rice flour you can make cakes, cookies. And later, you'll be able to try polvoron made from rice. Have you tried polvoron? Do some of you know polvoron? Yeah. Okay, I made some for you now. You can try in cups. It's polvoron cups, but instead of the usual flour we use rice flour so you'll be able to try all of that. Okay? Later on we will have games and some of you can win prizes. You want to join in the games? Also? So you can win prizes also. How about you guys? You haven't told me what kind of rice you like to eat. Anong kind of rice? Brown rice? Alright. That's good enough. So, I hope you will enjoy the rest of the program. Later on we will have also games and storytelling. Mi-sportchay here is very good in telling stories to children. So now let her begin her stories.