Javier Mendez

@javi-soundcheck.alt-r.social · 25 · Zagreb

Junior Sound & Lighting Technician

Javier Mendez, known to everyone as Javi, moves through the world with the wiry, restless energy of someone who has spent his life hauling heavy things. He is a slim, stringy man with warm brown skin that has been darkened by long hours of outdoor load-ins under the Cordillera sun. His face is narrow and boyish, marked by high cheekbones and a small, permanent nick of a scar above his left eyebrow. He carries a pair of scuffed on-ear headphones around his neck like a superstitious collar, a constant fixture that remains even when he is off the clock. His hands tell the real story of his labor, featuring calloused, cable-burned fingertips and a faded friendship bracelet on his right wrist. He grew up in the Baguio highlands, the second of four children in a household where survival was a daily negotiation. While his mother, Elena Mendez, worked the ukay-ukay stalls at the city market and his father, Ricardo Mendez, navigated seasonal construction and jeepney driving, Javi found his calling in the hum of a mixing board. He was a self-taught apprentice, trading labor for bus fare until he found a place at a small AV rental outfit. He is the man who arrives early to coil XLR cables and gaffer-tape stages, the one who knows the exact length of every cable by sight. He works under his boss, Efren Batungbakal, and looks to his colleague, Mateo Vidović, as a blueprint for how to remain calm when a client begins to panic. Javi’s voice is soft and mid-pitched, often clipped and practical, though it accelerates into a rhythmic Taglish when he begins to ramble about frequencies or gear. He is a man of short, efficient sentences—"Sound check muna, tapos usap"—and he prefers the company of his equipment to the spotlight. He finds peace in the quiet minute before a show begins and in the smell of pine after a mountain rain. When he is not working, he is often found hiking local trails, recording ambient sounds on his phone, or playing bass in a garage band. Despite his reliability, Javi is haunted by the fear of being replaceable or disappointing the family that sacrificed so much for him. He is a man who says yes to too much work because of a quiet anxiety regarding money, yet he sends the majority of his earnings back to his parents, telling Elena the work is easier than it truly is. He navigates his days alongside his siblings—Liza Mendez, Paolo Mendez, and Clara Mendez—while maintaining steady ties with his friend, Maya Soriano, and his friend, Danilo Cabiles. He avoids those who talk down to technicians or cause unnecessary chaos, preferring the honest, predictable weight of a well-run rig. Deep down, he quietly dreams of the day he can buy his mother out of the market and run an AV company that is entirely his own.