I was asked why I chose yong321 as my Yahoo!Mail ID. In fact, I used yong321 in 
many other places as well, such as my Web page at 
http://yong321.freeshell.org/, my Medcape login, Dba-Village login, etc.

In 1998, after using a few company or school affiliated emails and changing 
them every time I left, I settled on yong321@yahoo.com, regardless where I 
work. Even back then, the user ID's yong and yong123 were already taken. 
Yong321 is not too bad except that a friend of mine once emailed yong123 by 
mistake. I particularly like the ID yong123 and even emailed yong123@yahoo.com 
asking him to give that email to me, but got no reply. (Remember domain name 
squat in late 90's?) Then I emailed Yahoo Help, who responded to the effect 
that even if that user never uses his account, I can't take his. It looks like 
yong123@yahoo.com was already taken by a Korean guy (based on 
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=yong123@yahoo.com).

So why yong321? First, my last name (Huang) is not that easy to pronounce or 
remember for people not speaking Chinese. Taking an initial and making yongh, 
for instance, just adds burden to people's memory. My first name is easy to 
pronounce and calling me by first name is the rule in most countries. So just 
yong would be a perfect username, but it was taken by somebody else. So I had 
to modify it. I figure appending numbers poses the least mental overhead. The 
numbers have to be easy to remember such as 123, 111, 222, etc. But I believe 
123 is easier to remember than the other two, and telling somebody on the phone 
my username yong123 is easier to hear than them too. 111 is actually bad 
because if he writes down, he may confuse "1" with letter "l". So yong123 is 
perfect, but it was already taken. So yong321 is not bad. The "1" at the end 
won't be confused with "l" because of "32" in front of it.