Argh, so much text, and I forgot to check in what scale I’d previously done the letter parts, so it’s even smaller now. Here’s a transcript:
The only one who literally can’t wait is Yulchik. She is growing so quickly, she might be walking already before you ever got to know her in this larva stage. We can’t wait to find out what her first word will be. My bet is on “Mama”, but Yevdokiyushka is not so sure, somehow – she claims to have examined the statistical incidences of all the words she uses, and claims that it could just as well be a certain swearword, or however a baby would pronounce it, anyway. I suppose if she’s right it could be something like “fa-fa”…? Though “f” would seem like such a difficult sound for a baby to pronounce … Well, only time will tell!
How are you getting along with everyone at the cannery? When you’re inexperienced and you join a new crew, often they are going to test you. Then you’ll have to earn their respect the hard way. If you know it’s a test, it’s not that difficult. Usually the best strategy is to keep a cool head and work as hard as you can, and take it all with a sense of humour.
There are also crews that take it way too far, as a kind of hazing and trying to break you. Often in those cases it’s something that’s encouraged by the captain and the company (even with money, in that the rest of the crew gets to split the greenhorn’s wages if he or she quits early).
Sometimes it’s not even just testing, but cruel abuse. You can guess already that it’s more often than not a thing that’s deliberately used to split the crew – turn them against each other and make them antagonize their comrades instead of sticking together against those who put them in the bad situation in the first place.
Captains can play different roles – sometimes they are also just pawns set up to do the dirty work of the company and may join mutinies. Sometimes the captain is openly cruel, which is not very smart. In other cases they may also comfortably play the “good guy” while they let others below them do their dirty work.
