Discretion is the better part of valour, or so Shakespeare wrote long before the first business traveller stumbled up against the Chinese preoccupation with "saving face".
"You could try a clear, spray on adhesive," my honey suggests with a smirk when I make the mistake of telling him about my preoccupation with my face.
A lot of its preoccupations are still my preoccupations: European colonies, wars of independence in Africa, a preoccupation with the grubbier side of provincial England.
Whereas QoL appeared as a criticised concept (given the particular context of the perinatal period, with the possibility of medical termination of pregnancy, which in France can be performed up to term), reflection has made it possible to pass from preoccupation when faced with quantified evaluation of QoL, to preoccupation for the patient.
And this preoccupation with death and dying is faced directly in an even more disturbing series titled "What Remains" (2000-04), where Mann was given access to the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center.
Her face wears that look so characteristic of the elderly, an expression of preoccupation with inalterable things.
Each shows a preoccupation with Byzantine models for figures and faces.
But the main problem, which also plagues the museum generally and to deadly effect, is the preoccupation with art history as linear in the face of its messy simultaneity, and compartmentalized into exclusive groups of like-minded individuals.
Look for signs of preoccupation with food.
The opportunity is to transcend its preoccupation with president and to start tackling the two huge problems Pakistan faces: the spread of Islamist militancy and a fast-sinking economy.First, though, Mr Musharraf should go.
