Wow...there's late, and then there's LATE, and I most definitely fall into the latter category. Not only was I on Karthik's team in high school, and had the honour of being co-General Manager of Simbotics (1114) last year with him, I've lived with the guy for the last half year at university.
I think my sentiments most closely match Andy Grady's comment about the "dream team"...it's now hard to imagine being on a FIRST team without Karthik, and if it ever happened, I would be very, very afraid of meeting his team in competition. (I'll be honest, though - it would be sort of fun, too).
That being said, I'm continually impressed with Karthik's complete dedication to FIRST, whether it's long-distance mentorship through Chief Delphi or MSN, running around to local teams, or organizing stuff for the Waterloo Regional. He's truly an asset to FIRST, and I hope I have the privilege of continuing to work with him in the future.
As for stories, I remember Karthik quite well from my early years on Woburn Robotics (188), where he frequently took the time to talk to me and inspire me to be more and more involved in the team, and to keep raising the bar.
And Jay, if you think the writing on notes was funny, you should have seen our strategy session in the hotel that night. Karthik installed a text-to-speech engine on his laptop...priceless. I'm laughing right now just thinking about it.
Congratulations again Karthik!
P.S. If anyone wants to hear a genuine recording of Karthik singing (he didn't know I was recording this - PDAs are handy):
www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~imackenz/karthik.wav